I like this idea better than crowd clones :) But at least it answers your suspicion, not only is it possible but there are likely multiple viable solutions.
On Thursday, July 5, 2012, Mathieu Leclaire wrote: > If it's just textures, why don't you simply convert your textures as an > image sequence (image.01.exr, image.02.exr, etc...), load it as a image > sequence in your 1 material and use Self.ShapeInstanceTime to determine > which texture gets assigned to which particle? > > -Mathieu > > Leo Quensel wrote: > >> Hey guys, >> >> I think this is not possible with ICE in the current state, but as we >> are now able to assign materials to polygon meshes via ICE, why not >> implement >> the same for particles and/or instances? >> >> In my case I have a big simulation containing thousands of planes with a >> different texture for each one. >> At the moment I have a hundred textures and therefore a hundred polygon >> planes in my scene which I randomly instance. >> The perfect idea would be to have just one plane to be instanced and >> dynamically assign a material via ICE per instance. >> I know I can pull a value to the rendertree and perform some texture >> switching based on that, but with a hundred different materials this >> becomes too big. >> I need a hundred materials that way or another, but it would greatly help >> in reducing the object count in the scene. >> >> A side note: >> I have to repeat this as often as possible: >> The viewport does not display instances as instances properly. >> Set the particle shape to rectangle: Perfect speed even with thousands of >> particles >> Instance a single-polygon grid instead: Massive performance drop >> >> Cheers, >> Leo >> >> >> >> > > >
