Render time point Instancing

[TomRaynor]

Heya,

I have a couple of questions about render time procedurals and instancing...

1.)

I have been looking into point instancing at render time recently. I have looked around and found a few ways to get the job done. What I am not sure is if they are all actually doing the same thing or if there are some ways that are better and faster than others.

These are a few methods I am aware of so far:

a.) Using an "/obj" level instance object combined with a delayed load procedural like in Peter Claes's attached hip file ("delayed_load_instancing_01.hip") at the bottom of this post http://www.peterclaes.be/blog/?p=34

b.) Using a point instance procedural as in my attached hip file.

c.) Using the new delayed load procedural vop.

Are there any other methods and are there any from the three above that are superior to others in anyone's opinion?

2.)

My second question is in regards to modifying (and also if possible, creating) geometry at render time.

What I would like to do is twofold.

One thing is to have for example a single spline in my viewport that renders as 100 splines at render time, but be able to control the properties of each spline (such as point position, colour etc.) in a CVEX operation at render time.

The other thing that I would like is to have for example a spline with only 10 points in the viewport but at rendertime to have maybe 100 points and to be able to control the positions of those render time points.

Thanks very much everyone!

pointInstanceProceduralTesting_v01.hip

[mawi]

One thing is to have for example a single spline in my viewport that renders as 100 splines at render time, but be able to control the properties of each spline (such as point position, colour etc.) in a CVEX operation at render time.

The fur procedural create the curves and "fur guide globals /output" in a CVEX is controlling them.

If you want to send attributes from your skin to each hair, use the skin CVEX.

If you want to interpolate attributes per point along the guides, use the guide CVEX.

Here is a fast file.

rendertime_curves.hip

[TomRaynor]

Thanks so much for this file mawi, I had considered using hairs but I had not got into looking at the implementation, setting it up from scratch rather than using the shelf tools.

Really great suggestion.

This is obviously great for splines, but is there any way you could deform the geometry to be instanced on a set of points procedurally using cvex before it actually gets instanced?

Thanks!