From the course: Modo 2019 Essential Training

Instances - MODO Tutorial

From the course: Modo 2019 Essential Training

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Instances

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- [Narrator] In this video, I'm going to explain the difference between duplicating and instancing meshes in Moto. So, I have this palm tree selected, and I'm going to right-click on it in the item list. And I'm going to go to the duplicate sub menu, and from here, I'm going to select duplicate. And that's created a copy of the mesh, which you can see here in the item list. So I'm going to hit the W key to activate the transform tool, and I'm just going to move this copy to the right, and then I hit Q to drop the tool. Then, I'll reselect the original palm, and once again, I'm going to right-click on it in the item list, and go to the duplicate sub menu. But this time, I'm going to select instance as my option. Now, note that the instance I've just created has a different colored icon in the item list, compared to the palm and the duplicate. And that's because the original palm and its duplicate are regular mesh items, but the instance is not. So, I hit the W key to activate the transform tool, and just move this instance off to the left, and then hit Q to drop the tool. And with the instance selected, if I enter into one of the component modes, and I try and select the polygon. So see, I'm not able to do this. However, if I select the duplicate and enter component mode, I can select any of its polygons and edit them, just like any other mesh item. So the instance is not a regular mesh item. It's actually a procedural copy of the original mesh. And one of the advantages this has is that is uses this memory, so if I needed to create a forest of these palms, then any number of instances could be created, and they would all only ever use the same amount of memory as a single copy of the original palm. But it also means that any changes I make to the original palm mesh, will also be propagated to all of the instances. Let me demonstrate this. With the original mesh selected, I'm going to enter into polygon mode, and then I'll switch to the deform tab. And I'll select the bend tool, and I'm going to bend the palm tree geometry. And you can see as I do that, the instance updates in real time. However, the duplicate is completely unaffected. And that's because the duplicate is a completely independent mesh item, which is no longer related to the original, whereas the instance is an exact copy of the original mesh. So, let me hit Q and drop that tool. So to recap, an instance is a procedural copy of the original mesh, which will always update if you make any changes to the geometry of the original, whereas a duplicate is a completely separate mesh item, which you can edit independently. So any changes I make to the duplicate, will only be applied to the duplicate and not to the original mesh.

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