Merge and Place Assets as Proxy in 3ds Max

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In addition to the “Merge and Place” functionality, the “Merge and Place as Proxy” workflow lets you create and merge proxies of the objects in the asset you’re dragging into your scene. To do so:

Select a single or multiple assets in Connecter, drag the selection in the viewport of your 3ds Max scene, and release the left mouse button.
Choose the “Merge and Place as Proxy” option in the integration contextual menu, which will appear. Take special care when you set the “Asset name”, "Object name” and “Create a separate proxy for each object” options. You can find more details on them below.
On the first drop you will be presented with the “Proxy Settings” dialog that will allow you to choose the desired settings for your specific workflows. Select your settings and click the “Proceed” button.
Complete the operation using the same interactions as in the “Merge and Place” workflow.

Merge and place as proxy_1.gif

Merge and Place as Proxy.

The integration creates new proxies based on the settings in the “Proxy Settings” dialog. By default, the integration will automatically detect the active renderer in your scene and create proxies for this renderer.

If the default behavior doesn’t suit your needs you can use the “Proxy type” setting to configure a specific renderer. If the “Auto-apply material” setting is selected, the integration will also save the material of the proxy (if it has one) in a .mat file with the name of the proxy and a suffix specific for each renderer in the same folder. The suffixes of the material file name are: “_vr” for V-Ray and “_co” for Corona. Arnold proxies don’t have materials.

If the “Use existing proxies” option is selected, the integration, based on the “Proxy naming pattern” setting and the “Create a separate proxy for each object” setting, will first do a search for existing proxy files before creating new ones.

This way you can reuse your proxy files, saving disk space and making the management of the proxy files easier. If one or more proxy files are found they will be loaded in the scene. If the “Auto-apply material” option is also selected the integration will search for one or more .mat files that contain the materials for the proxies based on the .mat file naming pattern described above.

Asset Name and Object Name Options

The “Asset name”, “Object name” and “Create a separate proxy for each object” settings are very important and affect the behavior of both the “Merge as Place as Proxy” and “Replace Object <-> Proxy” functionalities.

Asset Name

If the “Asset name” option is enabled and the “Object name” isn’t enabled, the integration will create a proxy for the whole asset using the name of the asset as the name of the proxy file. If the asset contains multiple objects the proxy will be created from all of these objects. The “Create a separate proxy for each object” cannot be used in combination with only the “Asset name” option.

If you want to replace the proxy using the “Replace Object <-> Proxy” functionality, the integration will take all of the objects from the asset and will replace the proxy with these objects. This will happen because the proxy itself is not associated with a specific object in the asset, it’s associated with the whole asset.

Merge and place as proxy_2.gif

Merge and Place as Proxy for an asset with multiple objects.

Object Name

If the “Object name” option is enabled, the “Asset name” isn’t enabled, and the “Create a separate proxy for each object” isn’t enabled, the integration works in a similar way as when only the “Asset name” option is enabled. The difference is that it’ll use the name of the object as the name of the proxy file. If the asset has multiple objects, it’ll use the name of the first object.

If both the “Object name” and the “Create a separate proxy for each object” options are enabled, the integration will create a separate proxy file for each object using the object name as the file name. In this case, if you use the “Replace Object <-> Proxy” on one or more of these proxies, the integration will replace the proxy with the object from the source assets that was used to create the proxy. This will happen because each proxy is associated with a specific object from the source asset, the one that was used to create the proxy.

Merge and place as proxy_3.gif

Merge and Place as Proxy – Object name.

Proxy Settings

As mentioned earlier, the settings in the “Proxy Settings” dialog determine how the integration creates new proxies, searches for existing proxies and replaces proxies when the “Replace Object <-> Proxy” command is selected.

Click on the “Open Connecter Preferences” option in the right-click contextual menu in the viewport or the "Connecter Preferences" option in the “Connecter” menu in the top toolbar of 3ds Max and then click the “Proxy Settings” button to open the “Proxy Settings” dialog.

Here’s more about each setting, and how some of the settings combine with each other.

Auto-Apply Material

When enabled, the integration:

Will save the materials of the proxies as .mat files when creating new proxies so they can be used in future “Merge and Place as Proxy” operations.
Search for .mat files containing the material of the proxies when loading existing proxies if the “Use existing proxies” option is selected.

Use Existing Proxies

If enabled, when performing “Merge and Place as Proxy”, the integration will search for existing proxy files in the asset’s folder and subfolders or the configured custom folder before creating new ones. The proxy files are matched by using the “Proxy naming pattern” and the “Create a separate proxy for each object” settings.

Overwrite Existing Proxies

When this option is selected, any already existing proxies get replaced with the new ones from the current operation. When the option isn;t selected, and there is a “same names” conflict between the existing and the new files being created, the naming rules in the “Files numbering” section in Connecter Preferences > Global Settings are automatically applied.

Replace Instances

If enabled, the “Replace Object <-> Proxy” operation will also replace the instances of the selected objects or proxies. If disabled, only the selected objects or proxies will be replaced.

Proxy Type

By default the integration detects the active renderer in the current 3ds Max scene and automatically creates a proxy for that renderer. You can also select your preferred proxy type from the dropdown. The currently supported proxy types are:

V-Ray proxy
Corona proxy
Arnold proxy

Proxy Location

This option lets you choose where the proxy files will be saved. The “Same folder as the merged asset” option is selected by default. Choose the “In a specific folder” option to browse other folders. This option is also used when searching for existing proxies if the “Use existing proxies” option is enabled.

Proxy Naming Pattern

This section lets you decide how the proxy files are named. You can choose several options that will combine with each other if multiple options are selected. The “Asset name” option allows you to use the name of the asset as the name of the proxy.

The “Object name” option allows you to use the name of each object as the name of the proxy. If the two options are selected, the proxy will be named by combining the name of the asset with the name of the object. You can also add a specific prefix or suffix to the proxy name.

If your assets have more than one object, you can use the “Create a separate proxy for each object” in combination with the “Object name” options to export each object in a separate proxy file (see further below for more details).

Proxy naming pattern.

Create a Separate Proxy for Each Object

When this option is selected, a separate proxy file is created for each object or group in each merged asset. For example, suppose you drag a .max asset containing two objects from Connecter and the “Create a separate proxy from each object” option is selected. In that case, the integration will create two separate proxy files for each object and add two proxies to the scene, one for each object.

Proxy Type Options

In this section you can configure how the proxies are created. Click on the “V-Ray Proxy Settings” and “Corona Proxy Settings” buttons to open the dialogs for each proxy type. These settings are the same as the ones you see when you use the “.vrmesh exporter” and the “Corona Proxy Exporter”.

Due to some of the specifics of 3ds Max, the settings for Arnold proxies can’t be configured in advance, so a dialog with these settings will be shown when the integration is creating the proxies.

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