what is the advantage of using V-ray proxies over Maya's native referencing?

[Richard7666]

Could someone fill me in? I can't really find much info on the subject

Cheers

[pechart]

Vray won't need to translate the geometry before rendering starts. It can just kick off right away. References are not the right thing to compare to proxies, as they (refs) are much more flexible and offer much more possibilities, but also tend to break stuff in your scenes if you're not carefull.
Proxies are "just" a cache format, i'd say.

[Zach Gray]

Referencing loads an entire maya scene file from a pointer included in your scene. The advantage is that it helps with organization, keeps your scene sizes down, and allows for a hierarchical and collaborative workflow.

Proxies, or alembic, or maya geoCache files are all just cached geometry data. This gives you many advantages of the above, but also massively reduces overhead of including an entire scene for rendering or simulation. Like pechart mentioned, the proxies are saved in an optimized format that allows vRay to load only a portion of the mesh into memory for rendering, which opens the door for rendering billions of polys with limited memory, much like a .tx or tiled .exr.

[Richard7666]

Excellent, thank you very much guys!