Vray Proxy with Material

[SunGlare]

I've modeled and rendered 6 different buildings, they all are part of one apartment site.

 

They was never planning doing whole thing at once so I never prepared those buildings as a Low Memory mesh.

 

But now they changed their minds.

 

Site has 18 buildings.

 

I was experimenting with Vray proxy, but it cant keep materials, it all becomes one mesh.

 

I was trying with Xref objects but they load ages, and act like cloned . Doesn't improve work flow.

 

What to do?

 

How to save materials with Vray Proxy?

 

 

Thank You.

[carlangas]

Hi Tom,

 

You have to assign a multy/sub object material to your model. Model the whole building as one mesh and export as a proxy, then just import your proxy and apply this same multy material to it.

[manta]

In other words, attach all the parts of the building and one material will be created for you (all the materials in one material) use the eyedropper in the material editor to get this multi sub material, export your single object as a proxy mesh, bring it back in, and apply the material to it, the material will know exactly where to go for each part of the building, and that's it...

[SunGlare]

Dear William,

 

Thank You for reply, but described procedure its too obvious for You, and its a little mystery for me.

 

My models are mostly autocad based, and filelinked. All the materials are separated by layers in autocad, then as the appear in 3dmax as objects derived from layers.

 

Then I break linkage, binding model. Now its editable mesh, hundreds of it.

They all grouped per layer, and have materials, uvw applied to each.

 

Now I understand from Your post that it is some automated process, merging all those meshes together, and it creates mtID for each automatically, and it creates material with according number of slots.

Is it true?

How to do it?

 

How it affects materials wit mtID already in use?

(eq.: my roof utilizes 4 mtId)

 

How it take care of several uvw mapping?

Deos it creates uv channels for each sub mtrl?

 

 

Thank You.

Have a great weekend!

 

 

 

 

Ps.

Right now I approached my scene with semi solution, it doesn't save ram but its manageable.

 

I've created 18 max files for each bldg (there is only 6 types of bldg).

 

Each bldg, has different location on the lot, and lot itself is a separate max file.

 

I merge all of them with Xref Scene.

 

I cannot edit location of bld thats why i need to save location of the bldgs in each max file,

It doesn't save ram, but it loads fast.

 

Only problem I have, i that I have only 2Gb of ram, and with those models system is crashing to fast. there is no room for fancy light features

[manta]

Well try one building at a time, once you've got that one building in hundreds of parts, go to the editable mesh dialog, there should be a button called attach and another button called attach list, use the attach list, it will bring up everything in the scene, all the parts of the building, just select everything in the list and attach, I hope this doesn't crash max, if it does you'll have to do like 10 parts at a time, now you should have one object,

 

go to the material editor, and select an unused slot, use the eyedropper on your building, this should now give you the multisub material for the whole building, I don't think there is any limit on how many materials are in the multi, then export as a proxy, reimport it, it will come in as one color, apply the multi material to it, and it should look exactly like the original, hope that helps...

[Tim Saunders]

Let us know how it goes. I never knew about this quick way to create the mso material. That would be a HUGE time saver.

[SunGlare]

I had to put it on the shelf for a while. Because we have some urgent things to finish, but I going to test this method regardless as soon as I find time.

 

I'm suspecting problems with UV maps, and multi materials already in use.

 

Thank You Again.

[manta]

There shouldn't be any mapping problems, as long as the object has been properly mapped, I did this little test, the object on the left is my original object, properly mapped with bitmaps, then attached, then I extracted the multi map with the eyedropper, exported my proxy, brought it back in, and applyed my material, and thats the proxy object on the right, exactly like the original...hope that helps...

[SunGlare]

Hello,

 

This is great time saver.

 

Thank William for pursuing the subject. I did try the vray proxy on some simple boxes, and it worked! no problems with uv mapping neither.

 

But when I sat down to first building, and attached all the children.. this is what happened.

 

 

Now, is this point of no way out?

 

And after that I tried the same building without 1288 gable and edge roof tiles.

And it worked!

But I dont have those small details on the roof that makes it look real. i guess I need to remodel them.

When I Attached them in separate mesh, it crashed again.

 

 

I was looking forward long shoots just above gable, and coming down to street, but now..hmm.

 

 

Why Max is not using page file?

 

Thank You For Response.

[SunGlare]

I found the problem with the roof tiles.

 

Tiles are autocad blocks, each tile = one block.

Why? because when I change size/shape of one all of them are changed.

 

Whats the problem with block, being attached?

 

Well, I dont know why, but autocad's block exists in the 3d max space as a dual object. One is Block, as some kind of group, an one is the mesh of it. and both of them can be selected separately, means you can turn of mesh, but be able to select empty block of it. Crazy? Just wait.

 

When You're attaching meshes, they are still meshes BUT, in the same time the are objects within block!

So what?

When You update the block, all of the blocks of the same name are being updated!

 

1block = 1mesh (atach one per time)

1block = 2mesh

.. ..

1block = 1280 meshes times 1280 locations of all the blocks.

 

Solution?

Well I try tomorrow.

 

Thanks.

[manta]

Did you try doing them 10 at a time ?

That's what I ussually do when there are just too many objects to attach at once...

[SunGlare]

I did not make myself clear,

point is Max would probably handle the 1200 items, the're lopoly, but they tend to multiply them self as they are being attached!

 

It's because Max thinks that new mesh just been added/created within, let say block named [TILE], after that we have 4 tiles wihin 2 blocks [TILE], after a while its raise poly numbers "through roof"

When You have ten tiles, after attach its 100 single tile meshes, within 10 blocks(10 each)

 

Thats whats kills my memory.

 

I need to get rid of the blocks from the roof tiles,

and I'm saved.

 

How? Have no clue.

 

They have embeded meshes, that I need, and blocks are invisible for "Convert to" tool.

 

 

Tomorrow I'll find a way.

 

Thank You Again for Eyedropper Method.

[SunGlare]

Hello,

Ok. I have a problem here.

 

• I cant get rid of blocks from my 3d scene.
  
• I cant explode them in Autocad, because after filelink updates the scene, it appends the new block ID numbers to old objects, and whole scene gets messed.
  
• I cant delete blocks from scene, because mesh is deleted with it.
  
• If I delete blocks one by one; pictures below shows what happen.

How to delete/modify Autocad blocks within Max?

 

Thank You.

[whori]

Hello,

I had this problem too... and still dont know what to do...byt i didnt used file link.. it helped a bit. i was able to attach everything to one object... 20 objects at time.. it helped..

[nelpiper]

The way I do: let's suppose you have a chair which seat is fabric and legs are shiny metal. Select the whole chair and colapse it to one single mesh. Now go to your mesh and select the element subobject mode. Select the seat and give it a material ID, then select the legs and give them another material ID. Create a multi-subobject material with 2 sub-materials with the fabric and the shiny metal. Apply the material to the colapsed chair. Now it doesn't matter whether you have the original mesh or a vrayproxy. The material is still there. So you you create the vrayproxy and want to change the material later on, you just have to use the eyedropper to get the material and that's you. Good luck.