At work we use a convex hull generator to produce low-res meshes. I have a script that does it by polygon island and gets a pretty good approximation of the volume and shape of things while staying quite low-res.
With Arnold to make a standin you give it a special property on a mesh, which makes it ignore its geo and replace it with the *.ass content in render. This works/looks great on the convex hull volumes. On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Paul Griswold < [email protected]> wrote: > Thanks Alan! Yep, this is all solid, non-deforming stuff (CAD data). I > have rigged it all with nulls the way you mention. The problem I'm having > is just updating when I scrub the timeline. Even if the object has zero > animation, simply scrubbing the timeline causes Softimage to freeze for > several seconds. > > I'm actually testing Redshift for this one. They've got a stand-in, but > it's very alpha IMHO. You either get a box or a full representation of the > geometry. There's nothing in-between, yet. VRay's implementation looks > somewhat nifty - I think they give you a bunch of points in the shape of > your object. > > It sounds like the fastest solution would be to decimate the geometry and > use it as a stand-in. > > I just wasn't sure why there's such a huge difference in performance > between local and reference. It's really significant. > > Thanks! > > Paul > > ᐧ > > > On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 1:05 PM, Alan Fregtman <[email protected]>wrote: > >> >> Is it as simple as building low res stand-ins and offloading? >> >> Pretty much... yeah. >> >> Is it a solid, (mostly if not completely) non-deforming thing like a >> vehicle? If that's the case, you may wanna consider making a null hierarchy >> where each null contains a selection of meshes that "move as one". >> >> For example, a regular solid car's rig might be: car body, left/right >> front/back wheel rotation and left/right front/back wheel brakes, so 9 >> nulls. Animating those 9 nulls will be way lighter than dealing with >> hundreds or thousands of parts deforming or individually constrained to >> whatever, plus it's less data for the Delta property to keep track of. By >> the way, I like to call these nulls "segment nulls". >> >> If you're dealing with mentalray or Arnold, both have the standins >> concept that works quite well, especially in Arnold. (Maybe XSI Vray does >> it too, not sure.) >> >> You'll want a standin per "segment" and if you name your standins the >> same as your segment nulls in a separate resolution, then it's very easy to >> animate a very light rig that is high-res compatible. Also makes it a piece >> of cake to republish update geo and shading by simply reexporting the >> standin files. >> >> At work we had stupid mesh density in Pacific Rim's control pod "stilts" >> and this *segmented workflow *of standin nulls constrained to a rig >> worked out great. ;) >> >> >> On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 11:09 AM, Paul Griswold < >> [email protected]> wrote: >> >>> I don't work a lot with reference models, but I am now. The mesh is >>> dense and has a lot of parts to deal with. When the mesh is local, >>> Softimage handles it fine. But when it's reference, just moving through >>> the timeline takes 8-10 seconds per frame. Even in Bounding Box mode, >>> Softimage grinds to a halt. >>> >>> Can anyone point me to any FAQs or guidelines on working with heavy >>> reference models? >>> >>> Is it as simple as building low res stand-ins and offloading? >>> >>> Thanks & Merry Christmas! >>> >>> -Paul >>> >>> ᐧ >>> >> >> >
