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Meshes are exported to a special .vrmesh file format. It contains all geometric information for a mesh---vertices and face topology as well as texture channels, face material IDs, smoothing groups, normals---in short, everything that is needed to render the mesh. In addition, the mesh is preprocessed and subdivided into chunks for easier access. The file also contains a simplified version of the mesh used for preview purposes in the viewports. More information about the .vrmesh file format is available in the V-Ray SDK documentation that comes with the V-Ray for Maya installation.
It is important to realize that the mesh is in a "ready to render" format. No further modifications to the mesh are expected. You can't apply modifiers to the mesh, or animate it in any way other than animating the position/orientation of the proxy object. There is no way to recover the original mesh from a .vrmesh file (this can be done in principle, but is currently not supported). Therefore, if you plan on doing modifications to the mesh, you should keep it in a Maya file (which may be different from the file that gets rendered in the end).
Alembic Support
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The VRayMesh node VRayProxy node can also load load and render Alembic files (.abc). The supported geometry types are polygonal meshes (without subdivision surfaces), spline curves and particles.
V-Ray will recognize velocity information for motion blur if it is stored either as standard Alembic velocity, or as a 3D vector array property called arbGeom.v, arbGeom.velocities or arbGeom.velocity. Additional Alembic color sets are imported as mapping channels with indices greater than 0 (i.e. 1, 2 etc). It's also possible to use such a color set for velocity. The VRayMeshVRayProxy has some additional parameters related to Alembic files.
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It is recommended to use Houdini's native alembic loader. |
Main
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File Name – The source .vrmesh file. Animated proxies can be stored either in one single file, or as a sequence of files with one file per frame.
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Expand Primitives – When enabled, primitives will be are expanded on a per-object basis.
Missing File – Specifies how V-Ray will handle handles a missing file:
Report Error – V-Ray reports an error.
No Geometry – V-Ray does not load any geometry and does not report an error.
Preview Type – Specifies how the mesh will be is displayed in the viewport.
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Preview Faces – Allows you to specify how many faces are going to be used to show a preview of the proxy in the viewport.
Scale – Specifies the size scaling factor.
Flip NormalsAxis – When enabled, transforms the proxy from Y-up to Z-up (and vice versa) coordinate system.
Flip Normals – When enabled, reverses – Reverses the direction of the normals.
Animation
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Playback Type – Specifies a playback mode. This option will be is ignored if you use a sequence of separate .vrmesh files.
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Start Offset – Offsets the beginning of the animation by the given number of frames. You can use positive as well as negative values here.Sequence Override – Allows you to manually specify which part of the animation to be played.
Playback Speed – A multiplier for the speed of the animation. Putting negative numbers here will make makes the animation play backwards. This option may not work very well for sequences of .vrmesh files.
Sequence Override – Allows you to manually specify which part of the animation to be played.
Sequence Start – Specifies the first frame of the animation.
Sequence Length – Specifies the length of the animation to be played.
Override Frame – Animated proxy override frame to render.
Advanced
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Recompute Compute Bounding Box – When enabled, the bounding box of the mesh will be recomputedis recomputed. When disabled, the bounding box specified in the file will be is used.
Compute Normals – When enabled, V-Ray generates and saves information about the normal of each vertex. This requires additional memory but speeds up the shading calculations during rendering.
Smooth Angle – When Compute Normals is enabled, specifies the angle amount below which normals will be smoothedare smoothed.
Smooth UV – When enabled, smooths UVs when rendering the mesh as a subdivision surface.
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-1 – No remapping.
0 – Remapped to channel 0.
1 – Remapped to channel 1.
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Hair Width Multiplier – This multiplier allows you to control the hair width during rendering.
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Point Cloud Mult – Determines the way point cloud levels are loaded. A value of 1.0 means that the level to load is determined exactly by the distance from the camera to the object. A value smaller than 1.0 means that the level will be of is of greater detail than required by distance. Values greater than 1.0 mean that the resolution of the level will be smaller is smaller than the one determined by distance. A value of 0.0 means that no point cloud level will be loaded is loaded and the original mesh will be rendered is rendered instead.
Alembic
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Animation Offset – When enabled, uses Alembic animation frame offset.
Instancing – Enables or disables the instancing of alembic duplicated objects.
Velocity Multiplier – Controls the length of the motion blur when rendering.
Subdivide All Meshes – When enabled, subdivides alembic PolyMesh and SubD objects. When disabled, subdivides only SubD objects.
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0 – Catmull-Clark subdivision.
1 – Loop subdivision.
Subdivision Level – Specifies the subdivision level.
Subdivide UVs – When enabled, subdivides mapping channels.
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None – UVs are always subdivided regardless of whether they are on a UV seam or not.
Internal – Only preserve UVs if they are on an internal UV seam.
All – Does not subdivide UVs on UV seams.
File Layers – Specifies a list of Alembic files for layering.