HD Instance Frequently Asked Questions

Q - What is new in HD Instance 2?
A - HD Instance 2 has animation offsets, surface coverage modes, and lets you instance instances. HD Instance 1.8 does not have these features.

Q - What platforms does HD Instance support?
A - HD Instance supports 32-bit LightWave on Win32 and Macintosh, and 64-bit LightWave on Win64.

Q - Does one license for HD Instance 2.X include all the platforms?
A - Yes, HD Instance 2.X includes builds for Win32, Win64, and Mac.

Q - How does the upgrade work?
A - Each HD Instance 1.8 license is eligible for one upgrade. For example, Tom has purchased one HD Instance 1.8 Win32 and one HD Instance 1.8 Mac, so Tom can upgrade two licenses to HD Instance 2. He pays the upgrade price for each upgrade, and ends up with two HD Instance 2 licenses including 2 dongle keys for Windows and 2 dongle keys for Mac.

Q - How fast does HD Instance render?
A - As of version 1.8, HD Instance renders nearly as fast as native LightWave.

Q - Can I use HD Instance with multithreading / multiprocessor systems?
A - Yes! HD Instance works with multithreading.

Q - Can I use HD Instance with Screamernet?
A - Yes! You can use HD Instance on as many Screamernet nodes as you want using a single licence.

Q - Is HD Instance attached to my dongle?
A - HD Instance 2 is attached to your dongles using a key file that holds all your keys. On machines with no key, you can still load and save scenes having HD Instance in them, but you can't see the instances. Screamernet nodes do not require keys.

Q - Does HD Instance support node based surfaces in LightWave 9?
A - Yes!

Q - Do the instances work with transparency, refraction, reflection and shadows?
A - Yes! The instances show up in all types of ray-tracing, including shadows, reflection and refraction.

Q - Does HD Instance render correctly behind / in front of HyperVoxels?
A - Yes!

Q - Does HD Instance work with LightWave's motion blur and depth of field?
A - Yes, with one exception: if the instances are moving, photo-realistic motion blur renders in passes like classic motion blur.

Q - Does HD Instance add to the alpha channel?
A - Yes, but not all alpha override types are supported.

Q - Does HD Instance render correctly in volumetric lights and can they break the beam?
A - Yes!

Q - Does HD Instance require the scene to be rendered in one segment?
A - No way! HD Instance is a proper volumetric plug-in.

Q - Do the instances work properly with all types of radiosity?
A - Yes!

Q - Do the instances work properly with caustics?
A - Not really. The instances can neither receive nor generate caustics.

Q - Do the instances work with fog?
A - Yes, though the appearance may be slightly different than native LightWave objects.

Q - Do the instances render identically to a physically cloned object in LightWave?
A - Almost exactly. If you're worried about it, check out the videos and images in the galleries!

Q - What are the major differences between instances and regular LightWave objects?
First, instances will not show up in shadow-mapped shadows, but they do work with all raytraced shadows. Second, instances cannot use the glow effect or render edges. Third, instances cannot use surface shaders, but you can use nodes, so it's usually not an issue. There are some other very minor differences listed in the documentation.

Q - Does HD Instance work with X-Dof (Evasion 3D)?
A - Yes!

Q - Does HD Instance work with Shadow Designer (Evasion 3D)?
A - Unfortunately no. The instances cannot cast or receive Shadow Designer shadows.

Q - Does HD Instance work with Sasquatch (Worley Labs)?
A - Mostly. HD Instance works with Sas-lite and Sasquatch, with the exception that Sas shadows will not show up on the instances, since they are generated by a shader, and of course instances cannot have Sas hair applied to them.

Q - Does HD Instance work with F-Prime (Worley Labs)?
A - Unfortunately no. This may change depending what happens in future versions of LightWave and F-Prime.

Q - Can HD Instance animation offset feature use MDD files?
A -Yes, there is a work around way. You can load the MDD file onto a mesh in LightWave, and then use the HD Instance Motion File Exporter to export an HD Instance motion (HDM) file. The reason HD Instance 2 does not use MDD directly is because MDD file does not store the vertex normals.