why do my ifd files get so big?

[pclaes]

Hi,

I have a scene which has the following main objects into it:

1) a geometry object that is brought in from disk every frame. (it is a bit heavy at around 25mb per bgeo file).

2) a bunch of points that are very light, but at rendertime fairly low resolution geometry is instanced to these points. (There are about 3000 points).

3) a bunch of textures camera projected onto cards or fairly simple geometry.

The hip file itself contains other things such as chop networks to drive the cameras and some cops.

When I render out my ifd files they are around 25mb per frame.

Every ifd takes about 2.5minutes to render to disk because I am using instancepoint() in a point("/instance_pts",instancepoint(),"id",0) to randomize the rotations for the instances at obj level.

I was wondering why the ifd files are so big? Or is it normal for this kind of scene? Does it include the bgeo's I am importing inside the ifd? I thought it would just link up everything (paths etc), but perhaps the instances are adding a lot to the filesize?

thanks for any advice!

[Jason]

Yup this is expected if you're not using "Mantra: Delayed Load" procedural shader since it will include your geometry in the IFD unless you instruct it not to.

[pclaes]

thank you!

I will look into this.

When I write the geometry to disk and bring it back in with the delayed load shader, will the instancepoint() randomization for the rotations still take place?

I am guessing the delayed load shop deals with the sop point information and the instancepoint() deals with obj level manipulations, so it should still work. Is this assumption correct?

Yup this is expected if you're not using "Mantra: Delayed Load" procedural shader since it will include your geometry in the IFD unless you instruct it not to.

Is there another way besides the delayed load procedural shader? - you say: it will include your geometry in the IFD unless you instruct it not to. -> How do I instruct it not to?

edit:

I have been trying the delayed load, but it seems to slow down the render quite a bit. As soon as the buckets hit the instance objects, my processors don't do much anymore and the render doesn't really continue. I have been trying to adjust the bucket size of my render, so there is less geometry to be read for a single bucket, but no luck.

Edited May 3, 2008 by pclaes