option to size Octane Proxy to AC object Tweet

[Dingbat]

often i use the basic AC tree item and assign a render time OCtane Proxy

is it possible to link the Octane size to the AC size?

e.g. if AC tree is 11m high and 10m diameter Octane should match this. right now i need to go into the Octane Proxy settings and change the scale, which is already inefficient and added to that if the original size is not known it's trial and error to get the size right

thanks

[face_off]

I agree this would be great, but would be quite difficult to implement. The plugin would need to process all the vertices in the ORBX proxy in order to determine the bounding box (ie. size) of the proxy. So I don't think it could be implemented in a practical fashion, sorry.

Thanks

Paul

[Dingbat]

OK i understand why it's not possible, and have started a thread on the General Discussion forum to ask if the bounding box dims could be saved with the proxy at the moment of creation

in the meantime though, i think the workflow for proxies in AC is a bit clunky

1. right now, to assign a proxy to an AC object, with the object selected i need to click into the materials tab, then click the 'not a proxy' button, then assign the proxy

2. if i now select another object to assign a proxy, the proxy dialogue disappears so i have to click 'not a proxy' again to reopen the window

3. if i need to check which proxy is assigned to a particular object, i need to select the object, go to the materials tab, click the 'is a proxy' button, then scroll to the bottom of the proxy file name to check

4. as discussed above, if i want to change the size of the proxy i need to use the scale controls here but the proxy size is not linked to the AC object size. if i want to change the size of multiple proxies there's a lot of clicking in and out of windows to do, so you can imagine if i have a scene with lots of different trees and plants it's very time consuming and trial and error to get things looking right

so my suggestions:

1. have a dedicated 'Proxy' tab - if an object with a proxy assigned is selected, show the name of the proxy where it can be seen as soon as the object is selected (just the file name, separate to the existing file location box)

2. if i now select another AC object, the proxy window should remain open so i can quickly assign another proxy to the selected item

3. as there is no way currently to determine the size of the bounding box of the proxy, could we not input this ourselves? that way one inputted, the size of the proxy could then be controlled simply by resizing the AC object saving a lot of time and removing the trial and error of getting the size right

even this final point on its own would make a big difference

[face_off]

OK i understand why it's not possible, and have started a thread on the General Discussion forum to ask if the bounding box dims could be saved with the proxy at the moment of creation

in the meantime though, i think the workflow for proxies in AC is a bit clunky

1. right now, to assign a proxy to an AC object, with the object selected i need to click into the materials tab, then click the 'not a proxy' button, then assign the proxy

2. if i now select another object to assign a proxy, the proxy dialogue disappears so i have to click 'not a proxy' again to reopen the window

3. if i need to check which proxy is assigned to a particular object, i need to select the object, go to the materials tab, click the 'is a proxy' button, then scroll to the bottom of the proxy file name to check

4. as discussed above, if i want to change the size of the proxy i need to use the scale controls here but the proxy size is not linked to the AC object size. if i want to change the size of multiple proxies there's a lot of clicking in and out of windows to do, so you can imagine if i have a scene with lots of different trees and plants it's very time consuming and trial and error to get things looking right

so my suggestions:

1. have a dedicated 'Proxy' tab - if an object with a proxy assigned is selected, show the name of the proxy where it can be seen as soon as the object is selected (just the file name, separate to the existing file location box)

2. if i now select another AC object, the proxy window should remain open so i can quickly assign another proxy to the selected item

3. as there is no way currently to determine the size of the bounding box of the proxy, could we not input this ourselves? that way one inputted, the size of the proxy could then be controlled simply by resizing the AC object saving a lot of time and removing the trial and error of getting the size right

even this final point on its own would make a big difference

Thanks for the feedback. I will take a closer look at this when doing the next release of the plugin.

Paul

[yllar]

Great discussion. I was experimenting exactly the same approach and thinking also about the proxy sizes referencing the AC parent/placement object size. Makes sense. I know Maxwell Render Archicad proxy object reads the geometry in and then has a percentage to simplify the 3D viewport geometry represantation (there's a choice between bounding box, vertices or polygons) but that did get slow even with quite small percentages. A bit different approach, as it doesn't use existing Archicad objects but it's own AC library object as parent. Octane approach is actually great to also produce architectural drawings and BIM models in all one go. The size match would be a bonus.

But there's a big but. I ran into my RAM limits (this happens only during reload and comes back down) with already 20 trees (1 million polygons each), so I would not recommend using this method (separate Proxies), if you have more than few proxy trees. It uses times more memory, VRAM and is times slower reloading the Octane scene, compared to exporting Archicad base geometry to some other program (Unreal, Blender are free for example) to place objects there and import back ORBX to AC where 1 proxy is placed in project 0.
I did a quick test. In my case with the same tree with 1 million polygons the reload takes:
1) 50 tree proxy parents in Archicad uses all my 64 GM RAM and goes into page file so maybe that's why it's also slower, 54 seconds. VRAM used 24 GB (RTX 3090 max capacity, but doesn't go into Out of Core).
2) 50 trees placed (Cloner with same ORBX proxy tree, Render Instances must be checked) in Cinema 4D and 1 proxy brought back to Archicad reloads scene in 5 seconds, RAM usage 11 GB, VRAM used 7 GB.
3) 50 trees with Scatter inside Archicad takes 4 seconds, but unfortunately that's not a solution incase of regular design arrangements. RAM usage 11 GB (no change during reload) and VRAM used 7 GB.

Is there any other way to make arranged Proxy use so efficient as with Scatter/1 Proxy (implementing Render Instances)?

I also agree, that Proxies placed under Materials tab is not most intuitive.

[Dingbat]

Octane approach is actually great to also produce architectural drawings and BIM models in all one go

But there's a big but. I ran into my RAM limits (this happens only during reload and comes back down) with already 20 trees (1 million polygons each), so I would not recommend using this method (separate Proxies)

my work varies and includes full design projects and visualisation only projects

with design projects i don't do photoreal as it takes way too long to add all the required details and it also sets me up for problems because if the completed project doesn't match the renders clients have an excuse to complain

so i have my own style that blends AC sketch line renders and a quick Octane pass and i find that even with basic AC objects the results are a perfect mix of NPR and realistic, and it doesn't take much more work to set up (proxy set up, and a bit more work to render separate passes and then combine them). working this way i don't need high poly trees, so i've not run into the memory issues you have highlighted

the key benefit of working this way as you rightly pointed out is that you can produce architectural drawings and BIM model in one, whereas if you do the vegetation in Blender, Max (or in my case MODO) you then have to match those plants with low poly versions (or symbols only) in AC

when i do visualisation only OTOH i only use AC if there's a house to model, then i export to MODO and do the rest there (using the Octane plugin)

[face_off]

Hi. A quick note to say that I will be doing the Octane 2022.1.1 release of the ArchiCAD plugin this Friday I hope and it does not include any changes to the proxy system. I have put a Feature Request in to OTOY to add the ability for a plugin to query the bounding box dimensions of the proxy ORBX/OCS file from the Octane SDK which they are looking at. If/when that gets added to the SDK, I will look at implementing it in the ArchiCAD plugin, which should address some of the issues here. I will also look at the separate tab idea at that time.

Thanks

Paul

[Dingbat]

i appreciate the work you do Paul but i must say this is a bit disappointing

from what i've seen over the past couple of years from Otoy i won't be holding my breath waiting for them to even see the request, let alone implement it

would it not be possible to add only the option to manually size the proxy?

we 'only' need 3 boxes to specify height/width/depth and the rest could stay the same...

even this small change would save so much time