[m-Que]

Sorry, maybe it's a dumb question, but I'm a bit confused with instances:

Let's say I have a group of 2 objects called 'GROUP' which consists of 2 objects: A and B.
I select both objects and create instances of them.
Now, I go to 'Instances mode', switch 'objects list' to 'instances list', right-click and select 'show->all'. But I just keep seeing only instances of selected object, I can't see the list of ALL instances in the scene.
Then, if I select both A and B objects and switch to 'instances' list there's ONLY instance of one of the object (A).
Also, in 'instances mode' I can't select instances in viewport by simple clicking on them like the objects - isn't that the point of 'instance mode' ?
What am I missing

About the groups: can one create instance of a group? If no, can I make an instance of an object with multimaterial?

Thanks.

[brodie_geers]

Well there are probably only 2 people who have dared to try and figure out how instances in Studio. I happen to be one of them, as I'm a SketchUp user and am forced into this situation for high poly objects like trees and cars.

The short answer is that if you have ANY other option, stay away from instances in Studio. But as you're asking the question I'd venture to guess that you don't have another option.

Basically what I've noticed is, sadly, your issues are basically just the way it seems to work. Only instances of the object you have selected will show up on screen (I do think that by selecting multiple objects it should show you the instances for each of those together though. You may try adjusting the viewing % in Preferences?). I also vaguely remember being able to work with instances in instance mode in v1.7. In v2 that doesn't seem to be working. My work around for now is that I'll place an object, create and instance, move the object, create an instance, etc. Of course if you mess up, you're screwed. I think the only way to get rid of an instance is to delete the root geometry and start over.

I think the latter issue is a bug which should be reported. However, even beyond that, working with instances in Studio is pretty messy and not very intuitive.

aw, yes. And as you say you can only instance individual geometry, not groups. I do think you can instance geometry with multimaterials though.

-Brodie

[Mihai]

Can be a little confusing to work with instances in Studio, but here are the current options:

The instance selection mode is for selecting an instance and manipulating it. What you can't do is manipulate instances at the same time from two or more different objects.

When setting the display mode to show all, it will display all instances of all objects in the viewport, but again you have to have the object selected of the instance you want to move.

The instances panel will only list the instances that belong to the currently selected object.

Make sure display proxy is not set to a low value as in this case even with Show All, some instances won't appear in the viewport. Display proxy can be useful in cases where you have a lot of instances and the display mode is set to Shaded/Wired....to help speed up viewport display.

Display mode will affect the display of all instances in the scene.

You can create instances of multi material objects. This would be a better way to work with trees for example, instead of having separate geometry for trunk and leaves. So you can instance and move it as one instance instead of having to move instances of trunk/leaves separately.

Hope that makes it less mysterious Maybe in the future it will be possible to simply select instances in the viewport no matter what the current selected object is, that would make it less confusing I think.

[fv]

instancing is an improtant part of the workflow for archviz, trees, cars, vegetation, series of houses etc. Without it models are almost impossible to edit or will become huge. Replicators in Modo are even better. It would make Studio much better for archviz if instances are easier to work with. It should be high on the list.
Tx Francois

[m-Que]

Thanks a lot, Mihai!
You have answered all of my questions!
Working with instances is now WAAAY easier when I know how things work.
Just one more thing: is there some way to highlight selected instance; the way like when object is selected in viewport? When there are lots of instances around close to each other it's pretty hard to know what exactly is selected.

[Mihai]

No, they don't get highlighted....but you can tell from the transform handles if you're in Instance selection mode which instance is selected.