I have several geometry objects in a node that I instance onto points for instance rendering.

It seems that in the object's render tabs Phantom and Matte have no effect. Is that a bug or is there a trick to this?

..and while I'm at it, instancing fur doesn't seem to work either, or does it?

Soothsayer
I have several geometry objects in a node that I instance onto points for instance rendering.

It seems that in the object's render tabs Phantom and Matte have no effect. Is that a bug or is there a trick to this?

You mean parameters on instanced objects? Works fine here (10.0.430). I could render instanced object as mattes, phantoms etc. Also an overwrite of properties on instance object works.

Yes, that's what I'm after. Weird, I can't get it to work on my scene…

Good to know it should work in principle.

How about fur? Say you add the shelf tool fur to the box. Does that show up?

Well I didn't get the fur to work, so I made my own from a particle system, and that works, but only if I don't read it from a file! Very strange! It seems there are some mysterious ways to how the instancing really works under the hood.

I simply can't get matte to work with my scene.

Is there another way to get around this? At the moment I an putting a black constant shader on the unwanted objects, but obviously that doesn't give me the right alpha mask with it.

You must set the alpha of Your matte material to zero