Extra Ideas for Instances

Doc_1189058

This is the first time I've thought of a function that I'd really like to see in DAZ, lord knows if it's been suggested before.

I'd love to see Instances having the ability to begin from a different point in the target's animation timeline.

Let's use running ninjas as an example; Say you've got your OG ninja with his running animation on the timeline, and you slap a bunch of instances on him to create the illusion of lots of ninjas running; it would enhance the effect if each instance was maybe drawing from different points in the OG's timeline. - Say, OG begins at his frame 0, but one instance is beginning at 100, another at 200 and so on. Anything to break the uniformed appearence as much as possible. This could be achieved with a simple "Begin instance animation from ___" input in an instance's Parameters section.

A 'mirror' toggle would be also be very handy, too! That alone would double the varience among a group of instances, perhaps with an X, Y & Z choice for mirroring. Setting scales to -100% can sometimes do this, but only in very limited circumstances. Sometimes inverting an instance makes it look like a spilled trifle.

Additionally, and I know this one is trickier than the others; being able to give instances alternate clothes would be fantastic. Maybe if you make an instance that doesn't draw from the clothes of the target, then perhaps when applying new clothes to the instance, Daz could check what the target of the instance is in order to make it fit properly.

Would love to know if any of this is possible as it all uses existing information. But what do I know, I'm no programmer!

- Doc

Richard Haseltine

That wouldn't save on render resoruces as it is the current state of the geometry that gets sent over, the fact that it is an instance of an earlier/later shape would not matter.

FirstBastion

When it comes to animation, that kind of variations are done easier isolating and rendering in different takes, and the using compositing and layers in the editing program to assemble it together,  rather than rendering it all simulataneously.

Instances has its uses, but I'm not sure animated characters is a best use.

richardandtracy

I have written a script to create an array of instances and found it worked with clothed characters as well as objects. After a while I forgot myself and changed the pose of the root character. The machine then spent the next 5 minutes updating the pose of every instance one by one. It's just a bit slow...

Regards,

Richard.

 

 

Doc_1189058

Richard Haseltine said:

That wouldn't save on render resoruces as it is the current state of the geometry that gets sent over, the fact that it is an instance of an earlier/later shape would not matter.

I was more thinking of it as an animation resource as opposed to resource management.