Proxies

Transmutr can export the model as a V-Ray Proxy, a Thea Proxy and an Enscape Proxy. In this way, SketchUp will only show a lightweight placeholder of the model and maintain good performance while the render engine will use the high-quality original model.

• For V-Ray, the full-geometry model is exported as a *.vrmesh file.

• For Thea, it is exported as a *.xml file along with one or several *.mesh.thea files in a subfolder. When launched from SketchUp with Thea v2.1 (and above) active, Transmutr will export Thea proxies as *.mod.thea files instead of *.xml files.

• For Enscape, the full-geometry model is exported as an additional *.skp file.

You can export V-Ray, Thea and Enscape proxies at the same time, and they will be linked to the same SketchUp file.

When you export as proxy, the generated *.skp file is supposed to be imported as a component into another model, you should not open it directly.

Placeholder

Placeholder is the geometry displayed in SketchUp:

Bounding Box

This is a simple box with the same size as the model. This is the lightest placeholder. The (wireframe) variant only generates edges, while the (faces) has opaque faces.

Face Skipping

This only keeps a few faces, to get an idea of the model's shape, while keeping the model lightweight. Change the Face count to set the number of faces kept in the placeholder representation.

Simplified Geometry

This uses the model simplified by the Mesh Simplification slider as the proxy. This is great if you want to display a rough approximation of the model, while keeping it much lighter than the original high-poly model.

Full Geometry

This directly uses the original model in the SketchUp file. The .vrmesh and the .skp will then have exactly the same geometry.

Billboard

This shows the model as a texture on a plane. This is a very lightweight display, while giving a great impression of what the proxy will actually look like at render-time. The (cross) variant will create two vertical planes, at 90° of each other. The (face-me) variant will generate a single plane that is always facing the camera (similar to the scale figures in SketchUp). **For now, you need to provide the image, but we plan to generate it automatically in the future.

SketchUp File

This lets you select a custom SketchUp file that will be used as geometry in the exported SketchUp file. This is useful if you need a specific placeholder model that you made manually.

Always face camera: when using the SketchUp File type, do not use a model with the "Always face camera" option set in SketchUp. Instead, use the option in Transmutr. Otherwise you will get unpredictable results with proxies (you might want to see a billboard in SketchUp following the camera, but you don't want the actual proxy mesh to always face the camera at render-time)