Hello,
I have several trees that I need to scatter through my scene. The meshes are too high-res for me to be able to load them all at once in my Maya scene. How can I get them loaded at render time like 3ds max does with mental ray ?
Cheers.
Horvatth Szabolcs
[ Editor ]
If you use Maya 2009 or above (Or mr 3.6+) you can use the so called 'render proxy' feature of Maya. (I suppose its the one you refer to in 3DSMax)
- To export the geometry use File menu / 'Export all' or 'Export selection' and select the 'Render proxy' option of the 'Export selection output' optionMenu.
- To render, simply select a shape node and under the Mental Ray frame set the Render proxy attribute to the previously exported mi file. This way the shape won't be exported and will read the pre-exported geometry when the bounding box of the object is hit by a ray. This feature uses mental ray's assembly mechanism that is similar to the RenderMan delayedReadArchive, but as far as I remember it can't be nested. And it automatically uses the BSP2 raytrace acceleration mode to create flushable assemblies.
With earlier Maya versions you can try the mip_binaryproxy shader but I don't have any experience with this one. Some information after a google search: http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-607924.html
For even earlier dinosaur versions use can use the mi_api_object_file method from a geometry shader but that can only read one object from an mi file, and it does not work inside maya, just standalone mental ray. Its a great feature though, quite versatile.
Cheers, Szabolcs
