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Author Topic: Railclone (roof tiles and guttering) and xrefs - large scenes  (Read 1516 times)

visualcraft

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Railclone (roof tiles and guttering) and xrefs - large scenes
« on: August 12, 2022, 10:31:22 AM »
Hi all

Just want to try and confirm something. We are using railclone to create roof tiles and guttering on a series of house models in 3dsmax.

When it comes to adding those houses to a full site scene where there can be many copies of various house types with various roof tiles, we have been collapsing the railclone to allow us to easily copy (instance) the house and mirror it if needed.

This seems a backward way of working as we are then losing the benefit of railclone and also makes the scene file a lot larger.

We are looking at using xref object and setting the railclone to free object.

Does any one know if this is the best method of managing a large scene that uses railclone for these elements. We have done a few tests and the scene file becomes unusable in terms of viewport speed once we start to instance the houses, especially if we have a few different types.

I am just trying to find best practice for handling large scene files where railclone is used in this way.

I have attached an image of a typical house model for reference

Also, for ref, pc spec...
Ryzen 3950x
64GB RAM
GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti

working from and saving to a synology NAS

many thanks in advance

Rio

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Re: Railclone (roof tiles and guttering) and xrefs - large scenes
« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2022, 12:25:55 PM »
You could export the house model to a proxy (one object), and use that in your render file.

Or maybe use Containers, but that involves having the reference geometry in each container, so you couldn't use common references across different house types.

I'd go the proxy route, used to do this quite a lot and it worked well. You need a 'master' multi-sub material with 1 ID for brick, 1 for tiles etc. etc, then just swap the finishes out for each combination of materials required, ensuring that 'propagate material to instances' is off.

No sure if you'd need to show the RC objects as mesh for the proxy conversion.


iToo

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Re: Railclone (roof tiles and guttering) and xrefs - large scenes
« Reply #2 on: August 12, 2022, 01:13:10 PM »
Some tips:

- Use Display->Proxy Cache mode, to bake the entire RC model. It locks the RailClone object, and avoids to rebuild everything with each scene change.
It's not necessary to export it to a file. Just use the Embedded mode, which is very efficient. If you need to edit RC, just disable Proxy Cache, edit and lock it again when done.

- For objects which are the same for several houses, use "Free Object" as you pointed out, but also be sure to create a Max instance, not a copy.
In this way, internally there is a single copy of the RailClone object. It takes less space and rebuilding is faster.

- Try with different Display modes (Mesh, Point-Cloud, Quick mesh) and compare. But in this case i would suggest Quick Mesh + Proxy Cache.

- The only benefit to use XRefs is to save space in the main scene, and to keep objects in separated files. But object processing is not faster.

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

visualcraft

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Re: Railclone (roof tiles and guttering) and xrefs - large scenes
« Reply #3 on: August 12, 2022, 01:31:49 PM »
@Rio

Many thanks for your reply. We have been trying proxy but when you proxy the RC model it randomly disappears. We have had to collapse the RC then proxy, but this then loses the rc material and makes the model large again.
Not yet looked into containers, perhaps I should just to rule it in or out.

thanks again

visualcraft

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Re: Railclone (roof tiles and guttering) and xrefs - large scenes
« Reply #4 on: August 12, 2022, 01:35:34 PM »
Some tips:

- Use Display->Proxy Cache mode, to bake the entire RC model. It locks the RailClone object, and avoids to rebuild everything with each scene change.
It's not necessary to export it to a file. Just use the Embedded mode, which is very efficient. If you need to edit RC, just disable Proxy Cache, edit and lock it again when done.

- For objects which are the same for several houses, use "Free Object" as you pointed out, but also be sure to create a Max instance, not a copy.
In this way, internally there is a single copy of the RailClone object. It takes less space and rebuilding is faster.

- Try with different Display modes (Mesh, Point-Cloud, Quick mesh) and compare. But in this case i would suggest Quick Mesh + Proxy Cache.

- The only benefit to use XRefs is to save space in the main scene, and to keep objects in separated files. But object processing is not faster.

Excellent! Thank you for the reply and for the suggestions. I will take a look at the embedded proxy cache mode again, had a look previously but I can't have got it right.

Is there a way to export to corona proxy once you have embedded the proxy cache, and is there an advantage to doing this from a viewport speed point of view?
thanks

iToo

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Re: Railclone (roof tiles and guttering) and xrefs - large scenes
« Reply #5 on: August 12, 2022, 03:18:14 PM »
No, it's not possible to convert from Proxy Cache to Corona proxy. Proxy Cache is not a mesh, but a specific format for RailClone, which preserves the segment instancing.

To create a proxy (Corona, V-Ray or other), you must set Display mode to 'Mesh' (to get the full mesh on viewport), and then export to proxy.
Obviously doing this you lost the possibility to edit the RailClone object, which is a very simple process with Proxy Cache.

Also it's difficult to compare between Proxies or Proxy Cache regarding performance (on viewport or render), because proxies internally just keep a copy of the full mesh.
Instead, Proxy Cache stores each one of the RailClone segments, which are instanced on render when possible (also on viewport using Quick Mesh mode). Both are very different mechanisms.

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

visualcraft

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Re: Railclone (roof tiles and guttering) and xrefs - large scenes
« Reply #6 on: August 12, 2022, 03:35:20 PM »
ok, that makes sense to not proxy a proxy cache.  :)

I have just tried to export to corona proxy, all railclones are set to free object and mesh in viewport display mode. All but one of the railclones has converted to a proxy ok, the one that didn't has just disappeared? Tried a couple of time and the same one that disappears. Could I be missing something? Although those tiles were copied from one of the ones that work and realigned to a different spline.

I have attached a couple of screenshots along with the corona proxy settings used

I guess I will have to see which works better for me in the long run, Cproxy or keeping the objects fully editable and use proxy cache in RC
thanks


visualcraft

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Re: Railclone (roof tiles and guttering) and xrefs - large scenes
« Reply #7 on: August 13, 2022, 11:09:37 AM »
Quick update,
I have set all the houses to use proxy cache for all railclone items. I have each property grouped to make it easier to handle in the top level scene.
Unless I am doing something wrong in the process, this method is super slow in the viewport making it very difficult to move copy(instance), etc the houses.

in this scene we have less than 15 houses, I have no idea how I would make this work on much larger scenes?

Paul Roberts

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Re: Railclone (roof tiles and guttering) and xrefs - large scenes
« Reply #8 on: August 15, 2022, 09:23:16 AM »
Hi - thanks for conducting these tests. Would you be able to send us one of your houses so we can test it here? Also the problematic RC object if that's be OK.

Please feel free to send them to helpdesk@itoosoft.com.

Best wishes,

Paul

Paul Roberts
iToo Software

visualcraft

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Re: Railclone (roof tiles and guttering) and xrefs - large scenes
« Reply #9 on: August 15, 2022, 09:25:55 AM »
Of course, no problem at all. I will send over soon and thanks for the offer to take a look.

iToo

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Re: Railclone (roof tiles and guttering) and xrefs - large scenes
« Reply #10 on: August 17, 2022, 12:36:10 PM »
Testing your scene, we could identify a performance bug when using Proxy Cache + Quick Mesh mode.
It was much slower than expected in RC 5.2, but was working fine in RC 5.1.

This issue is fixed in RailClone 5.2.7. I would suggest you test again your scene, using this update.

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

visualcraft

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Re: Railclone (roof tiles and guttering) and xrefs - large scenes
« Reply #11 on: August 17, 2022, 02:39:30 PM »
thats great, I will give it a go, thank you  :)