Happy Digital

HD Instance 2

HD Instance 2 grants you the power of instances.


HD Instance 2 gives even the smallest studio the power to bring hugely detailed scenes to life. It's a complete volumetric rendering system that mimics the appearance of LightWave objects, with the super-special added bonus feature of instancing. It works with all camera types, and supports node-based surfacing, ray-traced shadows, reflections, refractions, radiosity, and more.

HD Instance 2 removes the RAM barrier.


With its advanced memory management, you can finally add as many clones as you want. You can place instances using nulls, or using the geometry of another object. You can cover the surface of any object with unlimited instances. Millions? You got it. Billions? No problem. Trillions? It renders!

HD Instance 2 brings ease of use to a new level.


Controls for placement, rotation, scaling, and animation of instances, including randomized animation offsets, are at your fingertips. You can go back and adjust your settings at any time. Nothing is baked in. We also made it faster than previous versions. Three to five TIMES faster.

This plug-in is a disruptive miracle.


HD Instance 2 will change the way you work. Finally you can get that shot with two entire armies engaged in an all-out battle. Create a forest that covers an entire island paradise. Fill an entire city with pedestrians and dense traffic. There is no limitation to the kind of objects you can instance. Add photo-realism by instancing the finest details, or flesh out the most epic vision of your wildest fantasy world! You'll never look back. It's a whole new world from this day forward!

HD Instance 2 was last updated for LightWave 3D version 10.


Interviews

Videos


Press


This astouning video by XVIVO studio is produced for Harvard University\'s biology education program. The inner life of the cell has won spot lights in 2006 Telly awards, the 2006 Siggraph Electronic Theatre, ABC news, and others. Click the icon to see the video on Harvard University's website.

HD Instance was used by Pixel Magic studio to create crowds of soldiers in "battle scene No. 4" in the blockbuster movie 300. Click the icon to see the Newtek\'s interview with Pixel Magic about the movie 300.

The Plug-In Post: Reviving Dinosaurs-and Ancient Earth-for Animal Armageddon

Studio Monthly March, 2009

'"The tool lets you populate your scene and render millions of cloned LightWave objects without sapping your RAM. "This has been the most valuable pro software plug-in we've ever used," he says. "It has allowed us to make these incredible environments with rendering times that are just very manageable. ...Between the three of them, with HD Instance, they've been able to create these virtual environments at a level of detail in LightWave that we had never been able to do before. Depending on the CPU power you've got, you can actually make the trees blow in the wind or whatever you want. I honestly can say that it's what made this show, on it's tight schedule, possible."'

Article by Beth Marchant, interview with Radical 3D studio.

Real World Production Series, Crowds in Lightwave 3D

HDRI magazine Issue 18, 2007

"But as far as crowd creation with choreographed motion is concerned, Lightwave 3D is the king of the hill with the powerful yet easy to use HD Instance plugin."

Tutorial by Gregory "T.Rex" Glezakos

Cellular Visions: The Inner Life of a Cell

Studio Daily July 20, 2006

"'...involving global motions through displacements, that I can't do any other way.' Liebler discovered what he now refers to as a 'magic plug-in for instancing,' Happy Digital's HD Instance" "I can fill up a scene with thousands of things that I couldn't render any other way. A lot of the shots in the Harvard project are single-pass render shots, where there's lots of stuff going on in the foreground and the background at once. We got it all in there because of instancing."

Article by Beth Marchant interview with XVIVO studio.

Call Of The Wild

Computer Graphics World Volume: 28 Issue: 6 (June 2005)

'"Some people look at my numbers and say this project was impossible to do for only $5000. And yes, they're correct, if you are looking at doing it by using traditional means," Albee contends.' 'Albee created this seemingly complex forest by generating over two billion instanced polygons from a single modeled stalk of bamboo using Happy Digital's HD Instance renderer.'

Article by Karen Moltenbrey interview with Timothy Albee

The complete plug-in survival kit: LightWave MOST WANTED

3D World magazine Issue 48, February 2004

"...delightfully quick solution" "save hours of render time...". "The plug-in uses volumetric effects to produce multiple iinstances of the original object, thereby not only using less memory but permitting the use of filters and effects that need only be applied once to the original object."

Review by Simon Cornish

The Fine Art Of Reflected Light Artwork

KeyFrame magazine Issue 33, July 2003

"With the built-in tools within LightWave, and exception external plug-ins such as Worley Labs' Sasquatch, Happy Digital's HD Instance,..., a LightWave artist can easily slip into the field of Fine Art."

Feature by Timothy Albee

Plugged in

KeyFrame magazine Issue 31, March 2003

"What this plug-in allows the LightWave animator to do is to create a real "instance" of geometry at render time. That is to say, you only have to have one object loaded, and at the time of render, you can populate your entire scene with literally thousands of copies without the penalty of having millions of polygons. These instances can be static or full animations. They can also have different orientations and scale. So with one highly detailed tree, you can have a forest. One marching soldier can become an entire army."

Review by Jack "Deuce" Bennett

KeyFrame magazine Issue 31, March 2003

"HD Instance is a great way to fill a forest with trees, a tree with leaves, a landscape with rocks, a quadrant with ships, a chest with gold, or a dragon with scales. Whatever you've got more than a few handfulls of 'em, I'd say that HD Instance is a tool you'll want to have in your bag-o'-tricks."

Review by Timothy Albee

More Tutorials


Grass - by Graham Fyffe

Learn how to create soft, rolling fields of grass using HD Instance!

View the tutorial.

Grass - by Jeroen Huijben, www.Nymus3D.com

Download the LightWave scene files and watch the short movie of grass using HD Instance.

Scene file available on Lightwave forum.

Valentines - by Graham Fyffe

Make a personalized valentie using HD Instance! Just in time for Valentine's Day 2006!

View the tutorial.

Loads of Robots - by Shaun Lee Bishop

How to create a shed load of robots running over hilly terrain using HD Instance!

View the tutorial.