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Troubleshooting

Q-Proxies takes too long to generate the proxies

If you are trying to convert a lot of objects from your scene to proxies at once or you are dealing with extremely high-resolution meshes, the plugin may take a really long time to complete the task.

Fortunately, Q-Proxies can be configured to speed up the proxy creation in these cases. You can turn off the options ‘Convert copies to instances’ and ‘Grouped objs. as single proxy’. Then change the Mesh Type to ‘Convex hull’. (Instead of using a polygon reduction method, the convex hull method uses a built-in algorithm to produce a fast-to-compute proxy mesh).
Since version 1.20, a preset called “Fast proxies” was added to provide a quick way to set up all these options at once. Try it! 🙂

Q-Proxies does not support interactive render

This is not entirely true and in practice it’s definitely not as bad as it seems. Q-Proxies does not cause any issue with the interactive render. It’s just that it shows the low resolution meshes instead of the final objects.
The interactive render depends on the render engine you are using. They are all different. Since Q-Proxies is meant to be universal and compatible with any render engine, it does not provide specific support for that functionality.
However, this is not a major issue. You must remember that interactive render is just for preview purposes only. And so are the proxy meshes. They are a rough “preview” of the object. The production render shows the high resolution meshes as well as the final render version.

Some people are very used to working with the interactive render. However, not many years ago, interactive rendering functionality didn’t even exist. All renders were managed with the production render. So you can use the same technique. Simply save 2 different setups for the production render as render presets, one for very fast rendering (emulating the interactive render) and the other for final quality, so you can switch between them whenever you need.
Just note that this is not recommended if you have too many q-proxies objects in the scene, because it may take some time for the plugin to load all original objects back to the scene every time before rendering.

In summary, if you want to take advantage of Q-Proxies strengths like compatibility with all render engines and third-party proxies, editable .max files for proxy objects and the possibility of bringing original objects intact back to the scene, we suggest you to preview the proxies with their low-resolution meshes to work faster.

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Q-Proxies: Multiple Proxy Creation for Trees and Cars in No Time

In this tutorial, you will learn how to quickly create proxies for all the trees and cars in your exterior scene by using Q-Proxies Presets, to amazingly reduce the file size and speed up your renders.
(tutorial by Jamie Cardoso )

Product page: Q-Proxies

 
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Q-Proxies Tutorial: Creating Proxies for Animated Vegetation

Learn different techniques to generate proxy meshes for animated vegetation in 3dsMax, with Q-Proxies plugin.

This tutorial takes advantage of the great improvements and new features in Q-Proxies v1.05:

– New faster algorithm for generation of ‘convex hull’ and ‘vertex cloud’ proxy meshes.
– UI: ‘Presets’ list relocated at the top of ‘Main Parameters’ area for more intuitiveness
– Added one more preset: Animated Vegetation
– Now can generate static proxies for animated objects.
– New ability to process geometry from third-party plugins (e.g.: GrowFx)

Enjoy it!

Product page: Q-Proxies

 
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Q-Proxies: Complete Introductory Tutorial

A comprehensive introduction to Q-Proxies 3dsMax plugin, by Jamie Cardoso.

See the Q-Proxies Manual for detailed information about every tool in this plugin.

 
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Q-Proxies: Presets & Mesh Types

Q-Proxies comes with 8 useful Presets that help you quickly setup the main parameters for generating proxies, according to the type of objects you are working with. They cover the general categories of : rocks, vehicles, vegetation, sculptures and characters.

Before digging more into how the presets work and how to use them properly, it’s better to know which are the type of meshes this plugin can generate to use for proxy objects.

Proxy Mesh Types

The plugin gives you 5 different alternatives that you can use as a proxy mesh:

  • From Source (also Lowpoly): uses a copy of the original mesh. If you set Use Polygon Reduction on, then you will get a lowpoly version of the source object.
    (This works generally good for most cases, except for those objects that contains a lot of submeshes o tiny faces, like vegetation, wire fences, nest-like shapes, etc.)
  • Convex Hull: creates a mesh that wraps the original mesh, with a very low resolution. In the last version of the plugin, this mesh can also be concave.
    (Recommended for extremely highpoly meshes that don’t require a very accurate proxy representation in scene. Very useful for cars, rocks, vegetation and many others)
  • Box: creates a box mesh from the local bounding box of the object.
    (Useful for objects whose shape resembles a box and they don’t have a main role in the scene, like very distant buildings, packing boxes, containers, etc.)
  • Vertex Cloud: shows only the vertices of the original mesh. If you activate Polygon Reduction, you can control the amount of vertices shown.
    (Very useful for vegetation, wire fences, nest-like shapes, etc.)
  • Custom Mesh: lets you pick a custom mesh for your proxies.
    Make sure the object you pick has no transforms and its pivot is placed according to how it is set in the objects you are going to replace.

As you see, there’s a wide range of options to choose from, to cover all your needs. Some are very lowpoly and lightweight, but just give you a very raw representation of the original object’s shape. Others look very similar to their reference but having much more polygons or take more time to process.

The fastest methods are Box, Convex Hull and Vertex Cloud. Using From Source can take from a few seconds to several minutes, depending on the amount of faces and objects to process.
Generating animated proxies requires always more time than static proxies, and depends on the amount of faces, objects and animation lenght.
It is about you to pick the better option for what you need. And there are also the Presets to help you.

Presets

There are 8 default presets to make a quick setup for creating proxies. These presets were thought based on different categories of objects, but every option may be suitable for other type of objects too. They are just generalizations.

Although Q-Proxies can process many different kind of objects together at once, if you plan to create proxies for different type of objects at the same scene, it is advisable to work them separately, in steps. That way you will ensure to process every type of object in the most appropriate and efficient way.

Each preset configures the options that mainly define:
to treat an object as static or animated; to apply polygon reduction or not (and how much); to bake the object’s animation or not; to turn grouped objects into a single proxy or not; what type of proxy mesh is better to use.

These are the presets, with a little description of what they do:

  • Deafult: suitable for most cases. Uses original mesh with a moderate polygon reduction.
  • Rocks/Stones: makes a quite lowpoly version.
  • Vehicles – static: uses Convex Hull as mesh type and turns grouped objects into a single proxy.
  • Vehicles – animated: makes a lowpoly version, keeping all objects separated to handle animation.
  • Vegetation: uses Convex Hull mesh type for fast processing of millions of polygons.
  • Vegetation – animated: ideal for plants and trees being moved by the wind, or deforming objects/characters with a slight animation.
    It uses Vertex Cloud and Animation Baking with a step of 5 frames.
  • Sculptures/Statues: creates a lowpoly version, with enough vertices to preserve some detail. Also suitable for still characters.
  • Animated Characters: it bakes the character/vertex animation to a lowpoly version, attaching all character parts.
  • Fast Proxies: a quick setup for fast proxy generation, suitable for most cases. It uses Convex Hull mesh type.

The recommended procedure is to firstly choose the preset that better match the type of objects you want to replace, and then adjust the parameters if necessary.

Apart from using the default presets, you may want to create your own presets. For that porpose, there are the Load and Save options, which let you store preset files to disk and reuse them later.

That’s all for this tutorial. If you have any questions or consultations, just write us throught the Contact form. Take a look at the other tutorials and the plugin’s manual for further learning.

Cheers! 🙂

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