Vray Proxy work flow and questions...

[RobPhoboS]

Hey guys,

I'm just putting something together at the moment, and I have approximately 50 identical objects which are all animated.
The *.ma file is around 800mb, which is a little inconvenient, although surprisingly not taxing the viewports too much.

If I texture one, get things looking correct, save the shaders with something like Sunday Pipeline/Shadermonger.

What do I do next in order to take advantage of the proxy's ?

Can I apply the animation from one object (which unfortunately is in multiple groups), and add it to the proxy - basically rinse repeat 50x ?

Where should I do the texture applying, to one proxy then duplicate it, or apply the textures to each proxy part individually ?



Apologies for the questions, I just like to figure out a work-flow before delving in.

[Morbid Angel]

I am not sure how to handle this sort of thing with vray proxies (objects inside groups) and the way proxies bind to materials. But what I may suggest is, if you are simply looking to reduce file size, why not just reference those repeating objects and handle them that way? It is almost the same as proxies if you are not looking to take advantage of dynamic memory handling, this maybe more desirable.

[RobPhoboS]

That's a good suggestion Dmitry, I've not worked with referencing files before but we did just have a little tutorial in one of our classes about it.
At least there are a couple of options, and that could well be the best way.

Actually, we are doing that in our class precisely because of file size issues, heh - brain isn't up to speed yet

Cheers,
Rob

[stezza]

Reference is the way to go, we use references for all our maya scene files every object/character is referenced into our scenes. we can have a Maya scene file with say 20 characters in it with a village and the file size would only be no more than a 1meg in size. But just make sure your edits if you need to make any our done on the Master file and not in your scene file.
One good feature in Maya is that you can edit your imported reference and save out those new changes back to the master ref file.

We have a village model with is made up of 15 other reference files and some of these have vray proxy trees in them so you can mix if you want to.

[RobPhoboS]

Finally tested the References.

Fantastic.
Exactly what I required

[RobPhoboS]

I did stumble across a LOT of problems though (with reference files), namely when you have to import the objects back in, and shaders vanishing etc.
I found a lengthy work around but I can't tell right this moment but I think it was a fault with Maya, I'll have to check it out with MR shaders as well.

[stezza]

Can you explain your work flow here?

[RobPhoboS]

Can you explain your work flow here?

Yep, I'll do it ASAP.

Essentially, I had to send some renders to an online render farm, my poor computer can't cope !
And they don't support references (flipping typical), so after importing them, when the reference goes, it takes the shaders and messes things up. I don't know if this is Maya 2011 bug, or Vray shaders.
But be warned, ref's may not be useful if you're sending things out of you're own place.

[Morbid Angel]

this is not correct. The reference work fine with the shaders. I just completed a project in maya 2011 and vray 2.x with all bunch of references and network rendering on the farm was without problem. Make sure you use unc paths and that your references are found on network machines.

[stezza]

We have 3 locations on the server each one is a folder for Projects, Assets, and Vray. We then map those folders to a drive letter P=projects R=reference assets and V for all Vray maps.
Every maya scene points to any of these mapped folders for referenced assets or proxys.

[RobPhoboS]

Remember I'm sending it to an online company, nothing to do with my own kit at home, and they don't support reference files at all, it even says on the file checking utility.
However, once I'm done with some work I'll explain what has been happening but it's not a one off, every single file it's done this with, so either something is wrong with Maya or yes, I'm doing something drastically wrong ! (wouldn't surprise me)