Help! need to convert copies to instances...Urgent!

[georgep1]

Hi, I have a scene with an extremely large number of small objects that are exactly the same.  The problem is, when I go to render it in mental ray, it wont render because there is too much geometry.  I think that if the objects were instances instead of copies the scene would be a lot less heavy and would render...is this correct?  If so, what I want to do is delete all of the geometry nodes except one, and connect this node to all of the transform nodes.  Basically convert all my copies to instances.  However, I cant figure out how to attach a nurbs geometry node to multiple transform nodes...how do I do this??  Please help, this is urgent.

Thanks in advance.

[joojaa]

lot less heavy and would render...is this correct?

I doubt that would solve the issue, See the data gets slightly compressed in the format but the octree and tracer and so on would still need to explode the data.  Thing is its a remote chance it might be tha straw thats breaking the camels back but its not very likely to be.

If your using nurbs data then ist even harder since each instance gets separately tesselated anyway.

The real question is how much meemory do you have and are you running 64 bit sytems. And if you havent got say 8-16 gigs and a arent on a 64 bit sytem then what the hell did you expect your life would become?

Basically convert all my copies to instances.

Im a bit sektiptical as to wether this will help you or not, it certainly may IF you can defeer their loading by turning each object to a render proxy, and simplifying the raytrace environment. But thats not exactly the same thing.

[joojaa]

// Select any number of shapes to isntantiate, select the trasforms 
// to be cleared and instantiated into. Order irrelevant, then execute.
//
// WARNING: do not select the trasfrom of the nodes that you pull 
//          instances out of.
{
  $transfromsToConverToInstances=`ls -sl -transforms`;
  $shapes=`ls -sl -shapes`;
  if (size($shapes) == 0) error "No shape selected";
  for($transform in $transfromsToConverToInstances){
   delete `ls -dag -shapes $transform`;
   for ($shape in $shapes)
     parent -add -shape $shape $transform;
  }
}

[joojaa]

fixed a slight error.

[thnkr]

Converting copies to instances is not going to help with memory uise in mental ray. You need to use mental ray's render proxies.

[georgep1]

Thanks guys, i have never used render proxies before so I will look into it.  I have a 64 bit system with 8 gigs of ram, so i think i should be able to get this to work somehow.  Ill also try converting my nurbs to polys, its basically a bunch of chains with toruses as the links, and they are small so i dont think it would be a big deal if they were not perfectly smooth.  Thanks.