Multiple references versus reference then instance?

[Steve Davy]

Can anyone tell me whether it's more efficient in terms of memory useage and scene weight to create multiple references of an object/character, or to create one reference then create instances of that in-scene?

There are pros and cons of both methods in other ways, but is there any difference in terms of memory?

I've never been clear whether Maya loads identical references into memory once only, or one time for each copy.

---

Hotmail® has ever-growing storage! Don’t worry about storage limits. Check it out.

[stephe...@gmail.com]

Here's what I've gathered
Multi ref using namespaces the ref is loaded once then reused. So load time is faster

Instances are slow in scene and in render unless rendering with mental ray. We did a test a while back and with instances the scene was no faster rendering with soft and if anything it took longer and the file size grew.

The biggest render and ram saver has been proxy mi geo. We just did ajob where I instanced single poly planes that had proxy assigned and it sped up considerably

Hth

-=s

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

---

From: Steve Davy
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:06:49 -0700
To: Maya Group<maya...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [maya_he3d] Multiple references versus reference then instance?

[Kiernan]

rendering instances in mental ray was fixed in 2009 I think, or even 2008 in one of the extensions.

BSP2 + Instances and scanline off/raytracing on in Maya 2010 works great.

KM

[Ryan]

I remember seeing a documented bug with BSP2 and shadows. I tried it on a recent project (where I was using mi proxies too) and couldn't get shadows to render at all. 

R

- sent from mobile

[Sylvain Berger]

When using mi proxy it is always best to force the primary rays to raytrace... and we also experienced ahsdow problems with BSP 2, but i think this have been fixed in the recent mental ray update... Maya 2010 should have the fix the for that since it uses the latest mental ray version

--
"A pit would not be complete without a Freeman coming out of it."
The Vortigaunt