Instancing in indigo

plot-paris · 15 Jul 2008, 13:03

this image may not look very interesting. the only purpose was to test out polygon limits of indigo.

well, I am tempted to believe there are no limits

one of these forms has more than 55.000 polygons. in this scene I had almost 24.000 instances (low-res proxies in SketchUp, automatically replaced with the original by indigo).

that means, that indigo had to handle more than 1.3 Billion! polygons(1.300.000.000)

only 60 MB of ram were used by indigo for this very small image (exponentially more, when increasing the file size)...

chango70 · 15 Jul 2008, 13:08

Would this work with Vray?

ilay7k · 15 Jul 2008, 13:11

no...only plans

plot-paris · 15 Jul 2008, 13:52

as far as I know, v-ray doesn't support instancing at present.

the most amazing tool about indigo in this case is not only that it allowes instancing, but that you can use a low-poly component as proxy in SketchUp, that are replaced with a high polygon component, when exported to indigo. otherwise you would have no chance to handle such a huge scene in SU...

I am not aware of any other render-engine, that does that.

Frederik · 15 Jul 2008, 14:10

@plot-paris said:

as far as I know, v-ray doesn't support instancing at present.

Correct...

@plot-paris said:

I am not aware of any other render-engine, that does that.

This is not correct...
It's not that I want to hi-jack your thread, but I need to correct you since Kerkythea also supports instancing and you can use proxies in SU and replace these with instanced objects in KT...

Please check out this thread, which is a small step-by-step tutorial I've posted at the KT Forum...

Jon · 15 Jul 2008, 14:32

@frederik said:

Kerkythea also supports instancing and you can use proxies in SU and replace these with instanced objects in KT...

In fact, Alex once did a test in KT involving a few billion polygons more than that.
These are great tests, plot. Keep it up.
PS. I though Vue6 could export proxy objects
Does anyone know for sure?

solo · 15 Jul 2008, 14:49

Vue 6 has instancing too.

okay...too slow you just mentioned it.

plot-paris · 15 Jul 2008, 14:55

ah, good to know, that there are biased renderers that support instancing as well. I just have to find the time to learn them

but please, post your tests here as well! I want to see loads and loads of instances

solo · 15 Jul 2008, 15:00

I use Vue quite a lot these days for site overview renders, however I have not yet had the need for instancing, but that is about to change as I need to do an animation of a fly over in the near future that involves a very wooded area and I will need to familiarize myself with this feature soon. as soon As I figure it all out I will post an example and maybe a few screen grabs as to how it works.
If anyone out there is familiar with it and can assist my learning curve I would appreciate that ... Chipp I am looking at you.

chango70 · 15 Jul 2008, 15:01

Does anyone know which one of the other instancing renderer is fasster? Has anyone test the them before?

solo · 15 Jul 2008, 17:29

Okay!

That was very easy to figure out actually.
I used the Instancing brush in Vue 6 xstream to paint the SCF logo on a very uneven surface, it was extremely quick and smooth and rendered in 11 minutes.
I am impressed at the ease and simplicity of instancing with Vue.

acatalyst · 15 Jul 2008, 18:19

301 Moved Permanently

(www.vray.info)

solo · 15 Jul 2008, 19:03

20 000 trees, 208 million polygons, render time 7m24s

Frederik · 15 Jul 2008, 20:02

Dang, Pete... You're smoking hot...
But that terraine would be impossible to orbit in SU...
I know zip about Vue, but how is your workflow..?? Do you import models from SU to Vue and take it from there, or...?!?

@Adam - can't see the video... Guess YouTube needs to get it through their verification system or something, so I will check it later...

This is obviously a new plug-in/script you're working on - or.??

AdamB · 15 Jul 2008, 20:04

Realtime instancing is the only way to go..

And a very short vid too is here

(Should just say that on my old laptop it runs at silky smooth 30Hz comfortably - its the vid capture/youtube compression that drops the framerate)

Adam

solo · 15 Jul 2008, 20:16

Frederik,

I can model a component in SU and import straight into Vue6 xstream (it imports .skp) or I can use the tree/plant maker within the app, or use xfrog, onyx or tree generator trees and instance them. I can either duplicate, spread and smart drop them or I can paint them onto a terrain with the airbrush tool.
I can choose the scaling, assorted sizing, rotating and twisting too. I have collision control if I need it or allow overlapping, I have the fascillity to decrease the quality with distance leaving only the ones in the foreground in full detail.

Pretty cool.

plot-paris · 16 Jul 2008, 08:07

@solo said:

20 000 trees, 208 million polygons, render time 7m24s

this is really impressive solo! in that short time!

I should definitely have a look at vue!

more please!!!

PRSS · 16 Jul 2008, 08:12

Amazing!

With best regards
PRSS

pav_3j · 16 Jul 2008, 08:44

@plot-paris said:

thanks for the idea, Whaat. I messed arround with tree proxies and was soon at 10 000 instances. took an awfully long time to export

I pushed the use of proxies a bit further and wanted to find out, if nested proxies are possible (proxies within proxies)

well, obviously they are - what a wonderful tool! so you can create immensly detailed and complicated models and still be able to work fluently in SU? Great!

I then created some simple buildings (based on the same component), assembled these to building blocks and created a nice city area.
unfortunately my pc (Core2Duo @ 3.0 Ghz, 2 Gb Ram) can't cope with it anymore.

indigo, as well as the skindigo exporter seem to break down, if it gets too complicated (I wouldn't have expected differently).
now I would very much like to know, if the possible complexity depends on the power of the machine or on indigo itself.
I did a short test of a reduced city model (1/20 of it's original size). still took a long time to export...

it would be great if one of you guys with the incredibly powerful monster computers (like Coen) had a try. thus we knew, if it solely depends on the machine - and I have to save a lot of money to buy a new one

here is the file (the whole city with 1920 buildings is only 200 kb):
[attachment=0:1mn8qr50]city.skp[/attachment:1mn8qr50]

thanks,

Jakob

this is exceptional, any chance you could do a quick tut on this, inc. how you get it to instance in indigo, as i'm having mega trouble doing it, and also with finding out how to do it!

loving your work

pav

kwistenbiebel · 16 Jul 2008, 09:44

@pav_3j said:

this is exceptional, any chance you could do a quick tut on this, inc. how you get it to instance in indigo, as i'm having mega trouble doing it, and also with finding out how to do it!

It's quite easy.
I will take the example of a tree component.

Just make 2 components:

the high poly component named e.g 'tree'
the dummy component ( a box or a surface )named 'tree_dummy'

Copy around the dummy tree component as much as you like.
Hit render. You will see that the dummies will be rendered as full trees.