I'm pretty sure some of you probably think this is a pretty stupid question, but I have to ask anyway. I know that the EDIT menu's Duplicate selection is NOT the same thing as instancing, but could someone please tell me what the difference is? For instance, I used duplicate to create this particular scene using Michael 3,and some outfit he had on. I duplicated him up to ten times, along with everything he was wearing and the weapons, and there was still V3 in the scene, several vehicles, a city landscape, and several other props and figures  that can't be seen. To the best of my knowledge, the computer didn't seem too sluggish at all. So what am I missing with Instancing?

I think  that duplicate  create the same figure, and the figure it is in the scene, the poly count in the scene, while instancing it is a render process, so the 3d models are not really in the scene.

Duplicate makes a copy of an item, while instancing is kind of like a ghost of that item. The copy can be posed and changed independently from the original, while the instance is pretty much an image of the original, so anything done to the original will also be done to the instance of it. An instance doesn't take up any more resources than its parent (at least not to a noticeable degree) while a copy does because it's another physical object in the world space.

Hope that helps to clarify.

**Some programs do allow changes to be made to instances while the original remains unchanged.

Duplicate makes a copy of an item, while instancing is kind of like a ghost of that item. The copy can be posed and changed independently from the original, while the instance is pretty much an image of the original, so anything done to the original will also be done to the instance of it. An instance doesn't take up any more resources than its parent (at least not to a noticeable degree) while a copy does because it's another physical object in the world space.

Hope that helps to clarify.

**Some programs do allow changes to be made to instances while the original remains unchanged.

It does help some, Shane. I know several people have called for instancing in Poser, but I'm kind of torn. There are times when instancing sounds like a good feature to have, like creating a crowd from a distance.

Instancing is nice for forests.
Load a single tree, and instancing can get you a forest without a lot of extra memory load.

Yes, environments like forests, grass, etc., are great for instancing, as those things can take up a ton of resources very quickly. 

LOD would also be a great feature to see in Poser. (Level of detail). The further away from the camera an object is, the less geometry it has, to the point where it just becomes a single flat plane in the shape of whatever it represents at its furthest distance. Video games do this a lot. 

Instancing is pointing to the same obj, texture etc in memory for the scene. In some instancing implementations they use a semi-instancing scheme so you can have different colors for example. If you want a group of troopers , all identical including the pose use instancing.

Sounds like instancing would be the way to go to fill up a stadium, but could you change things like clothing colors or skin colors on the figures?

Thanks for this post. I just learned something new. Now I'm off to tinker in Poser

To change colors/textures you would assign unique IDs to each instance and then use those to select from different textures/colors. For more variety, you could also create a small number of variations with different clothing/pose/prop etc and then instance the variations. Finally you can instance animated models with randomly offset time and optional AI behavior so that you can create eg a walking crowd or a battlefield.

Not aware that Poser has instances, below is based on those applications I've come across.

Instance - one master object which can be inserted into the scene many times. An insert being a transform consisting of  x,y,z position and 3D rotation. So 10 instances is one mesh plus 10 transforms.

Duplicate - copy of the a mesh each with its own insert. 10 duplicates in a scene mean 10 mesh objects plus 10 x postion/rotation values for each.

Instances are much more memory efficient than duplicates. Also if its a 3D modeller app, changing the master object effects all instances.

Not aware that Poser has instances, below is based on those applications I've come across.

Instance - one master object which can be inserted into the scene many times. An insert being a transform consisting of  x,y,z position and 3D rotation. So 10 instances is one mesh plus 10 transforms.

Duplicate - copy of the a mesh each with its own insert. 10 duplicates in a scene mean 10 mesh objects plus 10 x postion/rotation values for each.

Instances are much more memory efficient than duplicates. Also if its a 3D modeller app, changing the master object effects all instances.

As far as I know, Poser does NOT have instancing. It is a feature that I have heard people ask for however. My question was simply to try and figure out the difference between instancing and merely creating a duplicate of the figure.

No, Poser lacks instancing. Vue has it, though. With an instancing system, you only have the actual geometry of one item resident in memory. All the other instances are created at runtime, loading from the same single bit of geometry. The instancing table keeps track of just where a unique instance of an item is, and if it is created to allow it, changes in shading and basic orientation. An all out instancing system also keeps track of lighting angles and shadow angles (talking top end, here). I've has scenes created in Vue Infinite that were around 100 megs in actual resources, but the runtime load was in excess of 3 billion polygons. With duplicates, you have each items geometry that has to stay loaded until the scene is unloaded from system memory. In instancing, you have only one, and you are essentially shifting its location as the render progresses. Most instancing systems tend to simplify things like raytrace, as fully tracing an instanced environment could make the time gobbling renders done now seem fast.

What most want is baby Vue in Poser; the poser environment's need for instancing would only come into play for creating outside environments or crowds, and a useable system would push the cost up...probably significantly. Take a look at what you can do in Vue's system. Want an army? Create a marching loop with one figure, import and save it, then instance it. The limit is your free ram (Philippe Bouyer did an instancing animation using the Dystopia Drone Trooper, which hardly qualifies as polygon light).

Vue, Bryce Pro and DS have instancing. 

Daz studio does instancing. Very handy for large scenes with walls and floors which can be instances. I am getting much bigger scenes than I can manage in Poser.

Vue, Bryce Pro and DS have instancing. 

But I don't use Vue, Bryce or DS... and don't want to.

Here's the same scene, but notice now that I've added V4, and another M3 to the group. Computer is still not having any problems. I can even repose three or four of the duplicates, V3, V4 and M3 with no problems. I will give instancing the edge when it comes to crowds and environments, like forests, trees, plants, etc. but frankly, at this point, I can't honestly say it's much better than duplicating.

Here's the same scene, but notice now that I've added V4, and another M3 to the group. Computer is still not having any problems. I can even repose three or four of the duplicates, V3, V4 and M3 with no problems. I will give instancing the edge when it comes to crowds and environments, like forests, trees, plants, etc. but frankly, at this point, I can't honestly say it's much better than duplicating.

With Instancing, you have no overhead for the geometry. For instance, that scene has geometry equal to the number of individual figures x their verts, for example. That's a bunch of verts. However, with instancing, those verts aren't "real." Instead, they're just going to be mathematical equations derived from the original geometry. Now, with separate poses and such, there would be more overhead than that. And, if you somehow had different textures on them all, that would take up a big chunk of room and a bit more overhead so the program knew where to put them. But, it'd still be less than "copied" figures.

Instancing isn't good for close-up organic animated stuffs, but is most often used with things that are fairly static. For instance, you could, as was suggested, have a forest filled with thousands of trees. There may be actually only ten different sorts of trees represented by actual geometry, but with instancing, instead of millions of polys, you might have only a few thousand.

Imagine modeling a house, brick by brick... All those bricks would be a lot of geometry. With Instancing, you'd just have to model the one brick. For Poser, there's probably not a lot of use for Instancing. (Some, but not a bunch.) But, for something like Vue, which is often used for landscape shots, Instancing becomes a bit more important.

Here's the same scene, but notice now that I've added V4, and another M3 to the group. Computer is still not having any problems. I can even repose three or four of the duplicates, V3, V4 and M3 with no problems. I will give instancing the edge when it comes to crowds and environments, like forests, trees, plants, etc. but frankly, at this point, I can't honestly say it's much better than duplicating.

With Instancing, you have no overhead for the geometry. For instance, that scene has geometry equal to the number of individual figures x their verts, for example. That's a bunch of verts. However, with instancing, those verts aren't "real." Instead, they're just going to be mathematical equations derived from the original geometry. Now, with separate poses and such, there would be more overhead than that. And, if you somehow had different textures on them all, that would take up a big chunk of room and a bit more overhead so the program knew where to put them. But, it'd still be less than "copied" figures.

Instancing isn't good for close-up organic animated stuffs, but is most often used with things that are fairly static. For instance, you could, as was suggested, have a forest filled with thousands of trees. There may be actually only ten different sorts of trees represented by actual geometry, but with instancing, instead of millions of polys, you might have only a few thousand.

Imagine modeling a house, brick by brick... All those bricks would be a lot of geometry. With Instancing, you'd just have to model the one brick. For Poser, there's probably not a lot of use for Instancing. (Some, but not a bunch.) But, for something like Vue, which is often used for landscape shots, Instancing becomes a bit more important.

Which kinda makes my point. For a small crowd (10-12 figures), I think I'd probably go with duplicating. For a larger crowd or environments, instancing is definitely the better option. Of course, I can still go with the old Poser standby of rendering a scene and pasting it to the background.

Which kinda makes my point. For a small crowd (10-12 figures), I think I'd probably go with duplicating. For a larger crowd or environments, instancing is definitely the better option. Of course, I can still go with the old Poser standby of rendering a scene and pasting it to the background.

Absolutely. Instancing isn't "generally useful." It's something that's "specifically useful." In Poser, there's not a lot of standard things one would do that would gain much from instancing. Sure, there could be. But, most Poser people focus on detailed interior scenes, whenever they're doing something complex, and use backgrounds or separately rendered background scenes to lessen the load.

I think the closest thing Poser has, at least in capability, is something like the "Crowd Generator" product, offered here IIRC. There was something over at DAZ, IIRC, as well. I don't know how that works, but I imagine it's not true "instancing", since that requires cooperation from the renderer.

PS- Cool render. Is that Shukky's car she's getting into?

Poser DOES use instancing for .obj and textures.

It will only use one xxx.obj in a scene, even if you try to load from different folders

textures can only be in the cache once.

cr2 and pp2 files can not be instanced (new verb)

If you use embedded geometry in files it does not instance (another new verb )

Bill

PS- Cool render. Is that Shukky's car she's getting into?

That, and the van are Veepsters from Vanishing Point.

so if i made a vine and one leaf object,

and >.<  having trouble thinking this through ...

making a low memory leafy vine