Using“proxy”assets with reduced complexity may help productions to reduce the amount of on-screen complexity in the viewport.
Multiverse provides a straightforward and automatic workflow to generate and use proxies, delivering faster loading, faster viewport drawing and allowing artists to work swiftly in Maya.
Asset Preparation
First of all,we need to have two basicUSD assets which were previously written out with different level of complexity for each. Below are two USD assets of a bed, one with high polygon count(for final render) and one with low polygon count(the proxy).
Read both of these assets into a Maya scene via the Read USD Asset shelf button:
Bed High Quality asset(render)
Bed Low Quality asset(proxy)
Before writing the final bed asset, let’s create thehierarchy containing the two versions of the asset.
Create the asset hierarchy
Select theBedHi node and from the Multiverse shelf click the mvSet icon and choose Add Render Purpose mvSet. This will create a special Multiverse set that sets the purpose of this asset for rendering only. Next, select BedProxy and using the same method Add Proxy Purpose mvSet for the proxy asset. We also see now that another set has been created to make sure that the purpose of BedProxy is only for proxy viewing.
Add Render Purpose mvSet
Add Proxy Purpose mvSet
If you inspect mvSet1_RENDER you should see that each assets have been assigned their designated purposes.
mvSet USD Purpose attribute
Now, we should be ready to write the final asset. Select the Bed and write the asset using Write USD Composition.
Write Composition for the Bed
Let’s read back the asset. Multiverse allows us to select the initial Draw Mode when reading the asset. Change it to Proxy and press Open.
Read Data by choosing initial Draw Mode for the viewport
Now we should be able to see the bed asset in proxy mode. Which is lighter and faster for the viewport.
Bed Proxy Mode
The proxy mode is only for viewport, when we render we should see it’s the high quality model of the bed that gets rendered.
Render Result
The example above is using mvUsdCompound as the input. We can also write it straight from Maya geometry as well.
Write Proxy from Maya Geo
The only thing we do here is to select BedProxy and BedHi as designated mvSet of Proxy and Render purpose. When we write the asset using +Write USD Asset it will contain the proxy and the render version of the asset.
This concludes the workflow for Proxy with Multiverse V6.
Asset Preparation