Exporting Instanced Particles for Standalone/VRayCloud

[Joelaff]

I have a TyFlow setup that instances a few objects over a bunch of particles. I would like to render this in standalone in an efficient manner.

Method #1
If I simply export for standalone all the instances get saved as meshes in the vrscene and this makes for a giant vrscene (20GB).


Method #2
Exporting the already meshed particles to an ABC is also extremely big.


Method #3
Exporting to vrproxy from TyFlow made a file a few HUNDRED Gigs...


Method #4
Exporting just the particles to an ABC point cloud (points only including position, rotation and scale) makes for a small ABC, and then I can load this ABC point cloud in with VRayProxy and clone the objects using VRayInstancer. This should work, right? Well, it renders fine, but exporting for standalone again embeds a ton of stuff in the vrscene, even though it should not have to. I think this method makes for around a 12GB vrscene. In this case the export to vrscene should NOT embed the point cloud data. It should just reference the ABC point cloud and then let VRayInstancer instance it at render time.

Why does this not work? Can it PLEASE be made to work?

Method #5
Also tried exporting to PRT form TyFlow. Then loading with PRTReader, and instancing with VRayInstancer. This sort of works. I think PRTReader only loads in the position data (maybe rotation, but not scale). So I then have to scale my objects to be instanced, and since VRayInstancer doe not have a randomize scale option this becomes difficult to achieve the desired look I had in TyFlow. I have used this method before and then faked it with Instancer, but this changes the look of the shot, and it is not desired. If PRTReader could support reading the rotation and scale data this would fix this method. PRTLoader (from Krakatoa) works correctly, but if you load the PRT with PRTLoader then you end up with the giant vrscene export again.


Trying to find a way to do this which simply references the external particle data and instances it with VRayInstancer.

Any other thoughts? Any magic settings in VRayProxy to keep it from exporting all the data with the Alembic method (method #4) described above?

Standalone is sooo close to handling all of our needs now, but there is the occasional gotcha left, like this.

Thanks in advance.

[Joelaff]

Maybe Svetlin.Nikolov or georgi.zhekov has a thought about the use of PRTReader for this. PRTReader doesn't seem to load in the scale of the particles. Is that possible? Could it be?

(Sorry to ping you guys, but I know you hang out mainly in the Phoenix forum, and didn't want to cross-post.)

Thanks.

[georgi.zhekov]

Hey man,

Can't say anything for the vrscene export, but the scale should be already supported in the PRT reader. Supported channels are: Age, Color, Viscosity, Position, Velocity, Speed, Size, ID, Orientation, Scale.

Can you send over a scene and a particle cache where it doesn't work?

Thanks!

[Joelaff]

When things calm down I will put something together. What version number added the scale support to PRT? I thought it didn't used to be supported. I am actually running a nightly from April. So it is quite behind. Been very busy, unable to upgrade.

[georgi.zhekov]

Thanks a lot. The code for the scale is in for quite some time, it should be in the nightly from April - so I suspect it has something to do with the setup.

[Joelaff]

OK. Thanks. I will have to try again when things slow down.

[Joelaff]

Here is a test scene.

Using the exporter in TyFlow export the PRT sequence to the location of your choice, and then relink to the PRTReader.

I get this:


Rotation works, but scale does not. I tried exporting only Scale and Only Radius. Not matter what I get no scale.

Note I am using VRayInstancer because I am trying to render in Standalone without generating huge vrscene files on export. (Actual particles system has many more particles...)

Thanks.
PRTScaleIssue.zip