Export instances from geometry nodes the proper way

Support Modeling
1

I am trying to get instanced meshes exported from animated geometry nodes but I no matter what I do I can’t get it working.

1.Simply exporting alembic won’t export meshes just empty objects.

2.Realize instances creates single mesh, not a solution for large amount of instances.

3.Make instances real, will actually preserve instances but while it creates instances it also copies the geometry nodes modifier to ALL of the created new instances. This will crash with large amount of objects.

So make instances real seems it could work but I haven’t found a way of doing it without actually copying the Geometry nodes to all of the objects. Is there a way to generate instances without the modifier? Or another way of exporting geometry nodes?

2

Hi!

I know for a fact that this doesn’t always happen, but so far I haven’t been able to find out why.

What type of object are you using to emit instances?
Can you share a small example file?

3

mesh
mesh1111×520 61.4 KB

Subdivided mesh that is then deformed using animated noise.

Instances are just spheres. Problem is I have near 50K instances so “make instances real” will just wait and crash since they all would have the geo nodes modifier.

4

Interesting…
Based on the nodes in screenshot, I’ve assembled a nodetree and did a quick test.

Adding “Set Shade Smooth” and “Set Material” seems to cause the modifier to duplicate on all the instances.
Without these nodes it works as expected.

Maybe it’s because we’re “modifying” linked data through GN? :thinking:

2 Likes
5

Yeah I just tried that. But it also has to be a collection info because if it’s geometry info it would still copy all the modifiers, also I tried geometry to instances node but that doesn’t help.

I cannot imagine wanting copies of the modifier in any case. IMHO default behaviour should be not copying geonodes…

Anyways, plugging collection info directly to instance will work so I guess it is the best solution for this issue right now. Thanks

6

I suppose, the rule here for it to work correctly: make all the changes on the original data itself (materials and shading) before feeding it to GN mod :person_shrugging:
Good luck and have fun

1 Like