
Today, I want to talk with you all about instances, and the way they are exported from C4D.
I am curious to know the difference between exporting an instance and an instance with "render instance" option from C4D.
The difference inside C4D is obvious if we consult the project size, but what about the Indigo itself? Upon exporting the same scene to Indigo, once with "render instance" option enabled, and once without, and upon checking the console I see the difference in the number of instances exported. When disabled, the console displays the correct number, but when "render instance" is used, the number of instances exported in the console is always 0. As for the Indigo itself, the instances are exported correctly in both of the cases, meaning that there is always a single mesh used, to which the objects in the scene are referring to ( when "render instance" option is disabled there is one additional mesh for the orignial, but all of the instances are using the same, different mesh, which is a correct thing to do).
But, there is a small difference, which is crucial for me: the materials exported are different. When using "render instance" all of the objects have the same material, but when I switch the option off, the materials are exported correctly.
Now, what I want to do is to export instances from C4D with their different materials applied, BUT with "render instace" option on, because of my wish to save RAM memory from the C4D itself. Anyone got an idea how?
Add: an idea just came to my mind. It is obvious that there are two ways of exporting our instances. What if we had an option something like an instance tag which would control the way we export that instance object.This way our C4D project will use less RAM since we wouod have "render instace" checked, but with the tag telling the exporter to export this instance as if it was switched off, we would have the needed materials exported correctly. Since we alreday have two ways of exporting our instances, this tag would just mark the object and say: this object>this code for export. Is it doable? Fused?