How to Export & Import Redshift Proxies in Houdini

Redshift proxies are one of the simplest ways to keep a heavy Houdini scene fast and your .hip saves small. This guide covers when to reach for a proxy and the practical export/import workflow.

Why use Redshift proxies

A Redshift proxy (.rs) is a pre-baked, render-ready cache of geometry. Instead of carrying millions of polygons live in your scene, you point Redshift at the proxy at render time.

• Faster viewport — heavy assets become a lightweight bounding box.
• Smaller scene files — geometry lives on disk, not in the .hip.
• Reusable — drop the same proxy into many shots.

The basic workflow

1. Isolate the geometry you want to cache (a SOP, an instance source, a kitbash piece).
2. Export it to a .rs proxy file.
3. Re-import the proxy and swap it in for the live geometry at render time.
4. Toggle back to the original mesh whenever you need to edit it.

The friction is usually in steps 3–4: keeping a clean toggle between editable geometry and render proxy, and handling sequences, motion blur, OCIO colour and material overrides.

Doing it in one click

We built the Redshift Proxy Export/Import Utility HDA to remove that friction — one node to export, import and switch, with sequence export, motion blur and material override handled for you. There's a full free usage tutorial walking through it on a real scene.

Tips

• Cache after the look is roughly locked — re-exporting on every tweak wastes time.
• Keep proxies versioned (asset_v003.rs) so a shot never silently changes.
• Proxies are great for set dressing and instanced detail; keep hero, deforming geo live until you're sure.

Once proxies are part of your workflow, scenes that used to crawl stay interactive — and your renders don't change at all.