Since I have yet to bump up against any threshold or limitation in this sense, I can't confirm Terragen functions this way at all, but I'm assuming that when an object is loaded into Terragen (.obj, .tgo, etc.), that it is then loaded into the RAM as well, textures and all? In this sense, if you load the same object twice, is it loaded into the RAM twice, as well? This exludes populations, of course, which obviously would only load an object once. Can someone confirm this for me? I'm working on some fairly large-scale scenes where I may be loading several highly textured objects and this will help me plan it out some.
It's a little tricky to judge as the RAM usage oscillates quite a lot, but going by RAM usage when the CPU returns to idle after importing, the model and textures are loaded a second time (as you'd expect). If it's the same model duplicated a number of times and moved around you can at least save some RAM on the textures. Import the model twice. In the second copy, go into the internal network and delete each of the surface shaders and then link the object parts to the shaders in the first model. You can then duplicate this and move it around to suit. The images map to the UV of the current object.
Awsome, Ben, thanks! That's the answer I was looking for. I had hoped it was possible to reference the same object similarly, but this is the next best thing.
Yes, that works like a dream. I once had a few hundred houses to put up, and imported the common textures (default shaders and such) once on the main node view, with an appropriate and easy to find name (added an A in front so it's on top of the list) , then after loading each house, linked to that from inside. It's quite some work though.
Brilliant...as an inveterate model user I find this to be a wonderful technique. Gonna try this next time as I often load an object for instance a table and 4 chairs and 3 of the 4 chairs will be C&P versions...save some on high res textures that way for sure. Thanks Ben....