proxy files

[hdarren]

@capitanred

So the idea came up to cache a percentage of the original PRT-file out as a proxy. then this proxy PRT-File gets loaded for working in the viewport for fast loading and display. And before rendering a script replaces all the proxy files with the original High particle count ones for the final render.
Now, this works fine, but still needs to be setup by script, ran every time before and after render, to swap bewteen proxy and highRes files.

The PRT Loader supports loading multiple sequences of files in one object. It also supports tagging each sequence as visible in the viewport, at render time, or both. Typically people will add a proxy sequence tagged to only load in viewport and the render sequence to only load at render time. You can check out the details here: http://www.thinkboxsoftware.com/krak-prt-loader/#Viewport_and_Render_Controls.

@capitanred

Another thing we saw is that Max becoems very slow loading the same cache into different PRT-Laoders. Even after all the caches has been loaded, moving the prt’s in teh viewport is slow. Referencing or Instancing the PRT’s speeds it up a lot.
Not so when rendering though. The memory usage is exactly the same aswell.

The PRT Loaders don’t do anything fancy with instancing. If the same sequence is present in multiple loaders, the sequence will be fetched from source multiple times. It might end up caching it for the viewport if you use actual node instances but it will not do this at render time.

If you want to see the performance improvements of instancing, I recommend you use the PRT Cloner modifier. Please refer to the documentation here: http://www.thinkboxsoftware.com/krak-prt-cloner-modifier/ and here: http://www.thinkboxsoftware.com/kraka-using-prt-cloner-mod

[hdarren]

@capitanred

still, there is no way to cache out a proxy and fullsize PRT file in one go exept sending to two machines.

I’ll add this to the wishlist.

@capitanred

the final rendertime is longer than rendering the PRT Loaders itself

Not what I expected. I think this might be caused by dropping the viewport cache before rendering and needing to reload it from source afterwards, while the instanced PRT Loaders have special (read: annoying) viewport behavior that allows them to keep the cache. Nevertheless more caching controls are a common request and are on the wishlist.