Vrmesh with shaders included, like Arnold Standin *.ass file.

[SDSNATCHER]

Hi guys,

On a previous project that I've worked on, we where working with Arnold renderer.
There was some functionality that I really liked in Arnold, and that is working with Arnold Standins.
I haven't used Vray Proxys that much. So I could be missing some knowhow.

But with Arnold we where able to include the shaders of an object within the Arnold Standin itself.

One of the things that i really hate about Maya, is that once you get a couple of complex models in your scene.
Like trees or other object that exists of many nodes. Your Hypershade gets extremely cluttered.
You are no longer able to use the right mouse button click on an object, to use the "Assign an Existing Shader".
Because the list just became way to long, because of all the shaders that come in, when importing a couple of trees by example.
(because Maya also shows all the child shader nodes, so if you have like a vray Blend Material, with a couple of shaders. It will
not only show the vrayBlendNode (parent) but also all the children in the right mouse click)

For Example: Try to download a couple of the Free Xfrog Trees with Vray Shaders in them. and you can forget using your
Hypershade. Because it just became unworkable of all the nodes that come along with the model. Its just to cluttered.


So my question is, is there some way to use this same functionality when working with Vray?
So just select an object and save it as a VrayMesh that includes all the shading nodes in it. So when I reference
this vrmesh / package in. These shaders are "baked / combined" in the vrmesh file itself. So when I look in my Hypershade I
won't see the shaders that are loaded in at rendertime. If I want to change my shaders on this object I'll have to open the original
file again and do the changes there. I Cannot do that in the scene that i'm currently working in, But that's oke.
Once a Prop/Asset has been created correctly, I normally don't need to change the shaders in/on it.


Or is there some way that someone can teach me, how you guys work with a scene that has like 5 Xfrog trees in it.
And still have a workable Hypershade, that isn't cluttered with a 100 or more nodes. How do you guys work around this?


Thanks for the help

[joconnell]

Vrscene will do this for you - I used it to convert a max scene that used a load of scattered grass and some geometry objects, vray materials on all the objects and two vray lights. I was able to load this in with the vray scene manager in maya and it all came through fine.

[vlado]

Like John mentioned, we already have that since a while now; see here:
https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/.../Scene+Manager

Best regards,
Vlado

[SDSNATCHER]

Hi Joconnel and Vlado, Thanks for the reply. I did know about the the *.vrscene functionality. But I always thought it was used for bringing in Vray models with Shaders from 3DsMax to Maya.
I never really thought about using it for exporting objects with shaders in Maya and then re-importing them, to get away from the clutter of shaders and nodes.

Thanks alot

Hé by the way, maybe you guys also know this. In Maya you have the possibility to use GPU caches by activating the plugin. You can then Export a piece of geometry as and alembic file.
I would like to then combine the gpu-cache with the *.abc file connected, for viewport display. Then at rendertime it should use the VRayScene node.

With Arnold you can than just both put aiStandIn + the GPU Cache under one transform node. This way you show the gpu cache in the viewport and use the standin at rendertime. And Maya stays really fast
and responsive in bigger sets. What would be the best way to combine the power of GPU caches with vrscene nodes?

because for a VRayScene node to render, it needs to be connected to a Mesh node. ((VRayScene) Out Mesh --> (Mesh) In Mesh).
But the GPUCache node doesn't have an In Mesh channel/Attribute.


Thanks again