[choo-chee]

hi again... I wonder, is it possible to instance objects with mxm's? if I try to place 3-4 trees maya starts to move so sloooowwww.... now I know there should be a solution to this but I'm not sure how to do it.

[Mihnea Balta]

Use the Maxwell instancer node. Select the tree and click the button with the two spheres on the Maxwell shelf. That will create a Maxwell instance, which is drawn in the viewport as a point cloud, so it's a lot less taxing on the video card (you can control the amount of points using the Display LOD slider in the AE of the instance node). You can then duplicate this instance normally, with Ctrl+D.

The nodes will be exported as Maxwell instances, so a few limitations apply: you cannot have displacement or emitters in the materials assigned to them and you cannot use motion blur.

[choo-chee]

is it correct for 1.7 ?

[Mihnea Balta]

No, instancers have been introduced in the 2.0 plug-in. With 1.7 there's no solution for this (there's no solution for mental ray or Maya software either).