how can i use another skp file that doesnt have to be in the current file as a skatter object? where do the grass presets take their geometry from? thanks.
Also does it have benefits in terms of memory usage using vray proxies over skatters system (if external skps can be used and don’t have to be in the viewport themselves).
Thanks
Very good question. I have some high poly flowers that I would like to scatter. If I have a couple of variations on that flower and all components are inside the SU file, the size is already 80mb without even building anything… Vray proxies could be the answer then I think.
So here’s a quick test with 6 different vray proxies used in Skatter. They work great and keep my file size small 
the process of converting all objects to proxies is so tedious though. maybe thomas can shed some light here.
You can scatter components that are not in the file. You have to import them.
The Skatter library uses proxies for Vray and Thea.
Are you planning to create a method of using external skp without Thea, Vray, or Enscape? Your plugin would be valuable for this capability alone. There is no other way I know of to truly do externally referenced skp files.
Well there’s a good reason why there isn’t a true Xref plugin : it is not possible in SketchUp.
This is the same reason why each render engine has to implement its own proxy system.
Skatter is not a render engine, it only passes the scattering data to the render engines.
The fact that there are proxies for Vray/Thea/Maxwell/Enscape in the Library is because the components contain metadata that link to them. It is not related to Skatter itself.
Thanks for the explanation… hopefully that clears up the subject for others as well.