Vray instancer limitations?

[noxy]

I am trying to get particle attributes transferred to a shader using Vray's Per-particle attribute export.
I can easily pass the rgbPP to color, or use a userVectorPP to pass a color to an instancer's shader.

The main issue is that I'm unable to use a userScalarPP attribute to drive channels like frame extension. It would be great to use a single shader driven by a particleSamplerInfo node instead of 300+ objects with their own unique shaders.

I also can't use a layered texture, the shader just breaks. Fortunately, it's possible to use a VRay Blend Mtl to accomplish almost the same thing.

Is there any published guide to this sort of thing? A list of limitations? I've found very little documentation so far.

Thanks.

[svetlozar.draganov]

There is no published list with limitation for V-Ray Instanced for the moment except that Rendering of objects instanced with the particle instancer in V-Ray RT is not supported.
Is there are a chance to send us a sample scene along quick explanation of how everything is set up and what exactly doesn't work.
We will investigate it and if there is a bug or if something is not supported yet we'll add a bug or feature request about it into our system.

[vlado]

You should be able to use the spriteNumPP output to cycle through frames for animation.

Best regards,
Vlado

[noxy]

Hi Vlado and Svetlozar,
I'm curious how that would work since there's no spriteNumPP output from the Per-particle attribute export.
Perhaps there's something I've connected incorrectly. I'm connecting the userScalar1PP directly to the frameExtension attribute of the file texture.
I would love to know if I'm making a mistake somewhere.
Thanks.

[svetlozar.draganov]

Here is a version with SpriteNumPP expression which unfortunately doesn't work with the Instancer but in case you do not need a custom geometry this trick would do the job.
We will try to make that possible with the Instancer as well.
http://ftp.chaosgroup.com/support/sc...nstancer_03.mb

[noxy]

Thanks for the help, but sprites didn't really work for our production. We had to find a different solution.
I didn't think sprites worked with Vray, at least they don't in the scene you posted. Am I missing something.