Instances are a great way to save memory when rendering. For example, you could have 1 real object and 10,000 instances of it, Maxwell Render™ will consume the same amount of memory at render time as if it was rendering only 1 real object. Instances are very suitable for creating vegetation, bricks, furniture or any other geometry that is repeated a lot in your scene. Not all the plug-ins support instances - please check your plug-in documentation.
One Buddha model instanced many times. The real Buddha model contains more than 300 000 polygons.
Instances and materials
Instances inherit by default the material of the original model but each instance can also have its own material.
Working with instances in Maxwell Studio vs plug-ins
Each 3D application has its own way of creating and manipulating instances, please see the documentation for your plug-in. For Maxwell Studio please see the Working with objects and instances in Studio page.
Two important limitations in regards to instances were removed since Maxwell 2.6:
- instances can now have a displacement material
- instances can now be affected by motion blur