Maya instances vs Softimage instances question.

[bravmm]

Hi,

In Softimage I can, like in Maya, instance a model (group) into multiple versions of itself in the scene. This way heavy geo will not add to the scene size, and renders much quicker.

But in Softimage I can still tweak/change/add to the original group, and these changes will reflect in the instances.
This seems not the case in Maya, in whatever way I set up the instance.

e.g. a group contains a cube and sphere, and is instanced inside the scene 10 times. I now have a bunch of cubes and spheres in the scene.
Now I add a torus to the original group, but this is not reflected in the instances as they still show only the cube and sphere.

Is it not possible to add geometry to a group that is already instances, and see this extra geo inside the instances?
Do I need to start using reference files in Maya to be able to do this?

cheers!

rob

[haggi]

You can do it. Be aware that always the node below your selection is instanced. You can see it quite good if you use the hypergraph window. Here you can see to which nodes the instances are connected.

e.g. if you have a sphere and group it. And you instance the group, then the node below - the sphere - will be instanced directly, not the group itself. Now if you simply group the whole thing again and instance the root node, then the node below, your first group will be instanced and in the hypergraph you can see only one connection is going from the group node to the instance. Now you can add whatever you want to your original group and it will appear in all instances.

[bravmm]

Ah, I see.

Thanks for that, never thought of looking at the node editor to see what’s going on under the hood so to speak.

This workflow also seems to work with MASH, but you have to ‘refresh’ the group before added geo shows up.

Thanks for the quick reply, much appreciated!!

rob

[victor]

e.g. if you have a sphere and group it. And you instance the group, then the node below - the sphere - will be instanced directly, not the group itself. Now if you simply group the whole thing again and instance the root node, then the node below, your first group will be instanced and in the hypergraph you can see only one connection is going from the group node to the instance. Now you can add whatever you want to your original group and it will appear in all instances.

Thank you. This helped me understand something I’ve wondered about for many years. On a sort of related topic, if I assign a material to either an object or some faces of an object in one of those instanced groups, it does not apply to the other instances. I think I get that this is just how shading groups work (that they still treat instances as separate objects based on the scene heirarchy?), but is there a way to apply material changes to all instances?