clubber2k Posted July 12, 2009 Share Posted July 12, 2009 (edited) Hi there all. I've been reading here for a while but this time I desiccated to signup and ask my biggest question so far. I have searched this topic before and I summed what I have tried and learned (and didn't help) at the end: What is the best way, to add complex and detailed objects like trees, cars, cloths racks etc (furniture), with they're correct materials and scale while keeping in mind that you might need to archive and move your files to another computer later on (without losing bitmaps or other of the objects detail) to your model and without killing your memory or getting max to crash on render? since it is my first post I'll add that I am an architecture student and I have been working with max (and VARY) for about 2 years. I have always had trouble importing and merging different objects and creating complex sense but on this project (a super size shopping center) things are getting so complicated I really don't know what to do. My current work flow: when I work I create my main project on my laptop (which is me on the road) then archive it and transfer it to my desktop where I render it (and sometimes to another computer) during this process I add different objects such as cars trees people cloth racks, I have tried xreffing them merging them but every approach had a down fall and now my model is so complex It crashes constantly on render (even after seating the memory page file and disabling the vrayframebuffer) I though I would write all my techniques on adding objects because I must be doing something wrong: XREF: seems like the safes way but you can't touch the file directly. you can only change the original file or even its location. if you want multiple xref of the same type in different orientation then you can't - or you need to create multiple version of the original file. NOT GOOD. MERGE: best result. all object are brought in with materials and are clonable and scale-able, problem is they are complex models, and after a few max or render starts to crash, NOT GOOD. VRAYPROXY: looked like a good lead at start but I could get the workflow on why sometimes I loose all the detail and materials of the objects and sometimes I don't. if the object is to complex proxy export crashes as well. so far I used to attach all the objects in the original file then merge it in to my file, the proxy it to a single vraymesh file. but then I lose all the materials assigned to it, NOT GOOD. from what I have noticed vrayproxy is the most renown technique but I can't get it right. two things happen allot: I get errors on the export or import stage the object is imported but missplaced on the other edge of the screen (no matter where it was when I exported it) some times its invisible on screen I need to move axis on the knowing that its there(selecting it using H). So, how do you do it? lets say you have a big project that might take a while without any objects but you also need 20 trees 20 cars 50 tables and chairs and a bunch of people (and maybe a few variant of them)? thoes who have surrvied till now, Thanks for you assistance my work is at a halt:eek: if there is indeed a simple best way to do it, please elaborate so I can put this dredfull issue behind:) Yuval. Edited July 12, 2009 by clubber2k remember more issues about vrayproxy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NBraz Posted July 12, 2009 Share Posted July 12, 2009 I'm interested in seeing the responses also. Mostly i work with vrayproxies and model and texture my models (some of them) in individual files that i merge to the 'main file' later on. I also use and abuse layers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clubber2k Posted July 12, 2009 Author Share Posted July 12, 2009 I'm interested in seeing the responses also. Mostly i work with vrayproxies and model and texture my models (some of them) in individual files that i merge to the 'main file' later on. I also use and abuse layers. That is the best way I found to get things done. but right now I still have so many object and PROXYS that still makes poor mr max crash. I have seen so many renders full of livly objects that there has to be another way. anyway, I'm glad to see some intreset maybe a friendly expert will come along Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted July 13, 2009 Share Posted July 13, 2009 If you are having to many crashes from adding objects, perhaps you should look at upgrading your hardware. 64bit with 8gb is fairly standard for this line of work. You really need a min. of 4gb, but I wouldn't go lower than 6gb of ram. I think Win7 32 allows you to access more ram, but you might as well just go 64. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clubber2k Posted July 13, 2009 Author Share Posted July 13, 2009 If you are having to many crashes from adding objects, perhaps you should look at upgrading your hardware. 64bit with 8gb is fairly standard for this line of work. You really need a min. of 4gb, but I wouldn't go lower than 6gb of ram. I think Win7 32 allows you to access more ram, but you might as well just go 64. I see you are a moderator but isn't upgrading my equipment only compensating for bad work habbit? People rendered complex sense with 100's of objects and vray proxys well before the 2gb ram was breached with 64bit or dual cores were ever brought. how did you create a busy mall scence with buildings coffe shops on balconys cars on the roads and some people & trees along side when you only had one core and 2gb of ram (lets say 2 years ago?) I have seen this done on great renders years ago when I started, so it can't be only a matter of hardware, right? I would say that is my definitive question. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattclinch Posted July 13, 2009 Share Posted July 13, 2009 render different parts of the scene seperately and then composite in post? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted July 13, 2009 Share Posted July 13, 2009 model per shot rather than put the WHOLE MODEL in every shot? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clubber2k Posted July 13, 2009 Author Share Posted July 13, 2009 (edited) different direction maybe? I want to get a deep perspective. I cant have things disappears in the distance. besides, I'm an architect. I don't model senses for movies, I design a building as a whole first. after it is finished I start to render it in higher quality and detail. at that point it is hard to remove parts of the model. another thing, it is quite a load to have multiple parts of your project for every view some views have things in common and it is only logical to work on them together. I think we are getting side-tracked... can you please describe your workflow with multiple objects? I'm not buggering about the crashes, I want to know what is the correct manner to work with multiple objects - (without missing those crucial steps that result in materials not showing up) how to correctly import already created (finished) detailed (with mat) objects from previous work in to a new project without losing any data and while keeping both the option to move/scale/rotate (perhaps not in depth edit..) them and archive my model with them to move to a different computer (again without loss) to render. all that, in the best computer hardware friendly & time efficient way. Thanks in advance! Yuval. Edited July 13, 2009 by clubber2k elaborated a little bit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted July 13, 2009 Share Posted July 13, 2009 (edited) opps sorry i misunderstood your question Edited July 13, 2009 by nicnic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted July 13, 2009 Share Posted July 13, 2009 I see you are a moderator but isn't upgrading my equipment only compensating for bad work habbit? People rendered complex sense with 100's of objects and vray proxys well before the 2gb ram was breached with 64bit or dual cores were ever brought. how did you create a busy mall scence with buildings coffe shops on balconys cars on the roads and some people & trees along side when you only had one core and 2gb of ram (lets say 2 years ago?) I have seen this done on great renders years ago when I started, so it can't be only a matter of hardware, right? I would say that is my definitive question. Yes, this has been done for some time, but often it took several passes, and work arounds. One of the best investments you will make is to move to 64bit, being able to access that little extra RAM makes a great deal of difference. In general, you will need to learn how to assemble a scene so that you are rendering it all in subset passes, and putting them together in Photoshop. Say you have a nice car with full detail and reflections next to a stone wall with displacement. You need to render the car in one pass, and render the stone wall in a second pass, and assemble them in Photoshop. ...oh, and forget about 3d foliage. Maybe a few low re trees for shadow casting, but the rest will be done in Photoshop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Alexander Posted July 13, 2009 Share Posted July 13, 2009 I don't model senses for movies, The movie techniques are what allows many to do very complex scenes, as in what you are trying to do. Hardware capabilities determine how large of a scene you can handle straight up. Once you meet the limit then what? ..and you-we all hit the barriers all the time. -Reduce the poly count-detial in the far away meshes, use smaller image maps ect. - No magic solutions imho, sorry -Thinking VFX-Movie techniques may give the resulst you desire with your hardware, however these are new techniques to you most likely and understood that may be an extreme effort. You are in architecture, archviz at the extremes uses all those movie techniques... unfortunate but all the tricks, work flows and techniques outside of BIGGER BETTER HARDWARE are a bit non-architecture specific. My thoughts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic H Posted July 13, 2009 Share Posted July 13, 2009 ^ thats basically what I had written but edited out. This is the trap all architects fall into - you are making images not fully accurate blah blah models. The sooner you lose that method of working teh better. i think you will find most studios will model for views if doing stills or shots if doing films. there is always a point where you model up to then generally break into individual files, making sure to allow for sharing of assets between scenes later on. Makes it much easier to manage, we rarely have problems with object counts / complex scenes and we have modest hardware (64bit / 6-8gb/standard quadro cards/4-8 core workstations) Also be sure to attach your objects together into as few as possible. i.e all glass windows are one object, all window frames are one object. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clubber2k Posted July 13, 2009 Author Share Posted July 13, 2009 Really?? I'm starting to feel that all the great renders I always saw are photoshop make belive Anyway, Crazy Homeless, that is insightful ! where is the best place to read about using the different passes??? and are they still being taking into account with each other? lets say I have a detailed car next to a window and they are both on different passes, will the cars reflection still apeare on the window? I hope linking to cg is allowed: Lets take this image, this is definately all 3d, foliage and other objects. the model is very geometrically complex and might even be difficult to compose in PS later. how would you go on in making a model like this? another remark I'd like to add to thoes reading this because of memory crashes during render, I found that I can avoid some of the crashes by disabeing the VRAY frame buffer and setting a destenation file in the common tab (my preferd is tga for alpha channels), you lose some control but at least it gets the job done. I am not sure why Vray's frame buffer gets hangup so much.. I would still like to hear more from you guys! even on passes, I have seen the option before it looked un-self explantory (I learn as I go) so I didn't look into it. thanks twa, and nicnic - I didn't understand what you are tring to say "This is the trap all architects fall into - you are making images not fully accurate blah blah models. The sooner you lose that method of working teh better." some resent? and how do you split the model while making sure everything stays togther? archive&asset maneger or do you have a more alaborate teqnique. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arnold Sher Posted July 13, 2009 Share Posted July 13, 2009 Shalom Yuval, I've been following this post closely just to see various individuals approach to work flow. There is always more than way to skin a cat and different approaches has its own advantages and disadvantages. Now we've been in this game for many years and kind of worked it out what works for us...: 1. All textures (maps) always gets saved in one location on server accessed by everyone. That drive, we call it D on server is mapped and everyone in the office uses it. 2. The drive has many subdirectories such as: -projects -3d models -textures -image bank etc 3.All proxies for specific job get stored under projects, that way every time anyone accesses the file it opens fine. 4.Xrefed files go under the specific job in a XREF subdirectory so it is easy to find. 5. Working on large projects i.e. building a whole suburb we would work building by building and as we get approval by client that he is happy with we would xref it so the main file remains small. This is kind of a basic setup if you need me to go into more detail let me know... Hopefully this helps... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clubber2k Posted July 14, 2009 Author Share Posted July 14, 2009 Wow Arnold thanks for your input. It nice to know how the big guys do it If you put everything on a server accessed drive this means you can only work on in the office lan right? you can't take your work with you on a laptop or in any other way... Did you try? if you do I'm guessing things will get messy for sure, but I would still like to know if they sort back up when you save your file on your local server computer again? - meaning can a mess-up be cleaned? Xrefing is surly the logical way to go. but I noticed that you cant touch an xref. (thats a real shame, not even more it an inch!!)how do you keep things tight? do you work with a standart xyz corrdinents from a cad plan to make sure things stay in place or some other way? Do you uses passes when rendering ? I'm still looking for a good tut on passes and proxys, I noticed that even on the same file sometimes when exportying a file to a vrmesh and then importing it back, sometimes, textures get lost, I'm guessing that doesn't happen to you, where am I going wrong? after I export a proxy, does the original file still need to be in my 3ds user path? thats allot of data to keep at all time.. Thanks for you great words, I'm sure many others are reading, if you have a penny to share, jump in Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mertens3d Posted July 14, 2009 Share Posted July 14, 2009 !!!!!!!!! YOU"RE KIDDING RIGHT!!!!!!! I just wrote a long post....with a link in my sig. got In an effort to stamp out forum SPAM only members with 10 posts or more can post website links or email addresses. and my message was gone. Come on...that's crappy programming! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mertens3d Posted July 14, 2009 Share Posted July 14, 2009 ok...i'm not going to re-write everything i wrote. But one item you need to know about. You can change xrefs. You need to bind them to an object (dummy) via the xref manager first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mertens3d Posted July 14, 2009 Share Posted July 14, 2009 (edited) man....i am livid!!!!!!!!!! ------- edit oh well....maybe i should use this opportunity to post my workflow on my blog. I'll survive Edited July 14, 2009 by mertens3d Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clubber2k Posted July 14, 2009 Author Share Posted July 14, 2009 (edited) Don't be livid Gregory!! it happened to me too.. I always ctrl+A & ctrl+C on everything when I post more then a single liner... checked your blog still empty - nice work though! specially the animation (not vray right?) Thanks for the dummy tip - didn't know that(!), I wish I had two weeks ago this project would have looked different, It seems homeless guy even asked it here and didn't share a few post back I still cant post links so if anyone wonders - Just search the forum for a topic called "xref scene vs xref object" EDIT: I've tried using xref and getting the hang of it but found it still not useful for objects since you can't duplicate them. after I xref it, bind it to a dummy, I can use it only once, If I clone it, I only get a cloned dummy. Is there a way to clone an xref? we need some speed too that could make it much more powerfull. I have to say I'm starting to get somewhere with this so please keep'em coming. Thanks! p.s. does anyone know what are the major differences between vrayproxy and xref scenes when it comes to work load during work and render difficulty's -not regarding editing capabilities which are superior in xref for sure.. does an xref in a scene make it substantially heavy? if not, then whey use proxys at all? Yuval More on render crashes: found an interesting free scripts, splits the render into multipule parts its like making a network render on a single computer cant link so search google for "Super Render V3.0" Edited July 14, 2009 by clubber2k Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KIT Posted July 14, 2009 Share Posted July 14, 2009 Some tips on reducing memory usage by Neil Blevins: http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/reducing_memory/reducing_memory.htm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mertens3d Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 (edited) Don't be livid Gregory!! it happened to me too.. I always ctrl+A & ctrl+C on everything when I post more then a single liner... yeah.....hindsight and all that . The blog still new....but will be adding to it soon. Thanks for the compliment on my work. There are several animations so i'm not sure which one you are referring to. A couple use vray, most do not. Most of the stills do use it. EDIT: I've tried using xref and getting the hang of it but found it still not useful for objects since you can't duplicate them. after I xref it, bind it to a dummy, I can use it only once, If I clone it, I only get a cloned dummy. Is there a way to clone an xref? we need some speed too that could make it much more powerfull. i don't think there is. You might be able to do something like this with a script. hmmm....you actually got me curious about that approach. ...gregory Edited July 15, 2009 by mertens3d Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mertens3d Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 yeah....it looks like it would be possible. there's .parent which can be used to bind an parent and xrefs.addNewXRefFile which could be used to add a new or copied xref. As far as creating an interface that would list the existing xrefs, that i know is doable 'cause i've done that. Qualifier: there's always some wrench that autodesk throws out to make it a little more difficult...but it looks doable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clubber2k Posted July 15, 2009 Author Share Posted July 15, 2009 I'm glad I got you curiouse because I'm very cuourise as well Not into scripting with max, how are you going to use such an option? binding to a new object? Lets say I have and xref in the scene manage and its bind to a dummy.. now I want 3 of them.. so... ? p.s. I don't want to sound damanding because I'm starting to learn allot from this topic, but I would also like to know about a Q I asked a page ago: what are the major differences between vrayproxy and xref scenes when it comes to work load during work and render difficulty's -not regarding editing capabilities which are superior in xref for sure.. does an xref in a scene make it substantially heavy? if not, then whey use proxys at all? searched the net but It was mostly technical detail... how about a hands on approach answer? Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 Proxies load on demand, as needed, and can load and unload form memory. Xref's load fully when file is opened, and do not unload. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mertens3d Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 I can't speak to how a proxie will affect scene vs a xref. But, I would think that if they are both rendering...then it will be similar. After all...they both have to render. As to the script. I just tried this and it works. ----------- -- get the selected dummy sel_parent = selection[1] --get all the xrefs in the scene xref_max_index = xrefs.getXRefFileCount() -- loop through each one and look at it's parent for i = 1 to xref_max_index do ( this_xref = xrefs.getXrefFile i -- get the parent for this xref this_xref_parent = this_xref.parent --check if it's the same object as the one we selected if (this_xref_parent != undefined) and (this_xref_parent == sel_parent) then ( -- we have a match - so let's copy it new_xref = xrefs.addNewXRefFile this_xref.filename -- make a new dummy new_dummy = dummy() -- bind the xref to the dummy new_xref.parent = new_dummy ) ) ---------- I love maxscript! To run 1) in max open the maxscript editor "Max Script -> New Script" 2) copy and paste the code into the editor 3) bind a dummy to a xref 4) select that dummy 5) in the maxscript editor run the script "tools --> Evaluate all" 6) the routine will make a new xref that is the same as the selected one. Then it will create a dummy and bind it to the new xref. ...there is no real error checking....no warrenties...no money back....your own risk...buyer beware....carpe diem....long live cesar...etc. as to the work flow...check out my blog. I've written about our file structure. It may help you. i'll try to see if i can post a link after submitting this. ctrl+a, ctrl+c Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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