Scattering hierarchical objects

[frodo]

Hi just a question.
Imagine we have to scatter thousands of items. What is better for forrest pack? One big proxy or multiple small instanced proxies grouped together in forest pack.

Example 1 is one big proxy with size of 6GB
Example 2 is 3 proxies each 1GB, proxy B is instance 3x and proxy C 2x, everihting is grouped together.

Does forest pack retain those instances inside grouped objects or "bakes" it into one single mesh under the hood?
In my tests I didn't see much difference.
Thanks

p.s. excuse my drawing skills

[iToo]

Hi,

Theorically one big proxy is more efficient.
In example 2, Forest have to scatter each sub item keeping the hierarchy, and this requires more resources.

Anyway, since the scattering process is very efficient, with a few thousands of items probably you will not notice a significative difference.

[frodo]

Even in the RAM usage? If I use one big proxy for each FP item then its 16,63GB in 6 files but if I use hierarchical proxies its 2,35GB in 11 files. Vray memory tracking shows me 85GB(single) vs 60GB(hierachy) RAM usage which is not such big difference as I thought.

[frodo]

One more important thing may be that with single file proxy I have to scatter 2046 items and with hierarchical proxies 31786 items.

[iToo]

Even in the RAM usage? If I use one big proxy for each FP item then its 16,63GB in 6 files but if I use hierarchical proxies its 2,35GB in 11 files. Vray memory tracking shows me 85GB(single) vs 60GB(hierachy) RAM usage which is not such big difference as I thought.

That depends of how V-Ray handles the RAM for proxies, which is difficult to know.
Although Forest also requires more memory to handle items in example 2, probably it's not significative compared with the RAM used by V-Ray.

[frodo]

Ok thanks for clarification.