substituting objects

[MJL Imaging]

Anyone familiar with substituting objects? is this advantageous? to explain,...can I develop particular pieces of a model and then, in a master model, substitute them in using a gizmo? I'm asking cause i heard/read something about this but never looked into it. Does it save time memory? Any ideas or comments? Thanks

[Woody79]

do you mean X-ref? this process allows people to work on different parts, then the main model can be updated. Good for large projects, but the xref items cant be edited in the main model, like included and excluded form lights etc, which can be a pain.

the other substite objects, is a process done at render time. Mental ray can do this, you use a proxy then only render the real model at render time.

im not to certain how it works, but it would only speed up view port and opening, but rendertimes would be the same, as it still constructs the placeholder geometry

http://www.uni-duesseldorf.de/URZ/hardware/parallel/local/xsi/XSI_html/files/mental_ray/manual/ray-4_Geometry_Shaders.html