Hello,

Is there a way to display instances in viewport or should I make some helper objects and somehow connect them to my instances to manipulate them?
I have also another question: Is it common to use instances whenever there is an identical geometry, or only for extremely large amounts of the copies needed?
In XSI i heavily rely on instances and create them whenever possible eg. chairs around the table (even if there are only 2 of them), candles on the candelabrum…everything.
But I can treat them as normal objects and manipulate them in viewport (without snapping possibility).
I try to apprentice render the usual interior, imported 230 K of polys and my houdini almost went dead. Everything is very slow and rendering with irradiance takes ages(dual MP2400 &geforce Ti 4600) . I decided to simplyfy the scene as much as I can and give it a second try.
If you can help me with where I can find some info about instances and optimize mantra I'd be grateful.

Peter

Hey Peliosis,

You can only view point instances in POPs natively. However, I put up an HDA on the Exchange called CopyInstances that will do it in Houdini SOP-land for you.

It's most common to use “point instances” when you have several identical objects, but you can also use “object instances” for simple cases like chairs and such. Look in the Render tab of any Geometry object - you can make it an instance of another object. These instances do show up in Houdini's viewport though.

Thanks a lot,

That's just what I liked to know
Different transformations and shaders, great.
Thanks in advance for your HDA.
Are both instance types the same only differently managed?
I mean, are they both “real” instances not loaded to memory?
I heard houdini is well known of it's “TRUE” instances.

Peter