Instancing Trees, or any Object?

[Atom]

Hi All,

I have a circle that I have scattered a few points on. I also have a tree as an object, one level up. Inside the circle I bring in the tree via an Object Merge and copy it to the points. This works, however, this is not "instancing" is it?

Is there an Instance Merge node I could drop in? Can I still use Copy with instancing?

How do I leverage instancing? I also read that there is instancing for Mantra as well. Does that mean there are two kinds of instancing? One at the scene/viewport level and one at the Mantra level?

Edited October 20, 2015 by Atom

[davpe]

yes, using copy SOP is instancing. you can also use "Instance" object and specify a standalone geometry as an instance. technically it is the same thing as using packed geometry with copy SOP, but on object level rather than SOP level. performance should be very similar (as far as I tested it). 

[mestela]

Yep, just to be explicit, as long as you pack the geo (Copy sop->stamp tab->'pack geometry before copy' toggle, or manually before the copy), you get the performance benefits of instancing.

[SreckoM]

But worth to note that there are few things that works better/easier using standard Instancing. So just use Instance SOP, than inside scatter point and in object level select node you want to Instance.

[Doudini]

But worth to note that there are few things that works better/easier using standard Instancing. So just use Instance SOP, than inside scatter point and in object level select node you want to Instance.

 

This is the way to do it.

I just wanted to add this additional info:

 

Here are some attributes that work with instances, so you can randomize scale and orientation for example:

 

orient  - float4 (quaternion)

pscale  - float

scale   - float3

N       - vector

up      - vector

v       - vector

rot     - float4 (quaternion)

trans   - vector