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View Full Version : Maya instances or MR instances for rendering?

victor
02-22-2007, 03:58 PM
I always assumed that Maya instances would automatically be considered instances by mental ray for purposes of scene translation and memory use when rendering.

I now have a literal forest full of trees that are relatively simple objects and are instances of each other, but when I go to render, it takes quite a while for the scene to be translated, and I assume it's probably affecting render time as well.

Would I have been better off using MR instances, and at this point is there any easy way to convert them all at once?
rygoody
02-23-2007, 10:53 PM
Mental Ray instances would translate considerably faster and render faster. But to use MR instances you have to use MR standalone.
... yes, Autodesk hates us.
bgawboy
02-24-2007, 03:30 AM
Aren't there three different ways to duplicate? I could have sworn one of those ways created a true mental ray instance, ie, a separate transform node for the same shape node.

The way to check is to export to mi to see what it does. Preferrably, on a smaller, test file. :)
bgawboy
03-11-2007, 05:41 PM
Just tried Duplicate Special in Maya 8.5, and it seems to make instances of the original object. So, it can be done within the UI.
MaNdRaK18
03-11-2007, 06:57 PM
Just tried Duplicate Special in Maya 8.5, and it seems to make instances of the original object. So, it can be done within the UI.

Yeah, but what's the guarantee that they get EXPORTED as mr instances?
I wonder, would it been possible to write say geo shader as a convenient way to bring geometry placeholder funcionality in mr for maya?
Ctrl.studio what would You say?
gga
03-11-2007, 10:25 PM
I always assumed that Maya instances would automatically be considered instances by mental ray for purposes of scene translation and memory use when rendering.

That's pretty much how it works, except on Maya4.5 where the feature was broken. Your slowdown probably comes from somewhere else.
If you think instancing is not being used for some reason, the only way for you to check it is spitting an .mi file. There should be only one object definition used in a lot of instance definitions for those instanced objects.
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03-11-2007, 10:25 PM
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