Instance Objects in Maya

BenjiCS

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone had any good, streamlined, workflows on how to keep Instance objects organized in Maya. I'm finding it hard to know what's what and how they work. Any thoughts would be helpful.

Here's the project I'm working on with it...lots of bolts. This is for a high poly character, not game:



PS: I'm not sure what the etiquette is for posting images here, so I apologize in advance.

CheeseOnToast

Simplest way would be to add all the instances to a group node called "bolts" or whatever. Make heavy use of the outliner if you don't already. Just as a caveat, I seem to remember that instances aren't recognised by Maya's transfer maps so you'll probably want to convert them to non-instanced geometry before baking normal maps etc. Modify > de-instance geomrtry is the command I think.

As for posting images, post 'em if you got 'em. Ideally host them yourself using something like dropbox or imagr so we don't have to click through thumbnails.

BenjiCS

Thank! Hopefully this one works.