Particle instancer is calculated at rendertime regardless of visibility or render layer inclusion.

[smbell]

I've got a MASH particle instancer setup with quite a few trees, 146K of them. It takes around a minute to translate the geometry at the start of the render (during the V-Ray: Updating frame at time part), which is fine for the layer with the trees, but I have several other render layers and VRay is doing the same calculation at the start of every frame. This happens with the instancer hidden, the main MASH node disabled, and even if the instancer is not in a render layer. Disconnecting the Output points > Input points connection between the MASH node and the instancer restores the regular behavior. Not a major issue, but it's fairly annoying to have to have a seperate scene saved out every time I want to render something other than the trees.

I can provide a scene, but taking a subdivided sphere duplicating it with MASH using the instancer mode quite a few times should reproduce it. I haven't checked if the regular particle instancer without MASH does the same thing, but I would imagine it would.

[shaio]

Hi,
I'll check the MASH instancer and the particle instancer if it does the same. I'll get back to you with some more information as soon as make a few tests. Thanks for the feedback.

[shaio]

I've tried to reproduce it with a simple setup with duplicated spheres but with no success. Which Maya and V-Ray versions do you use? If possible please share the scene here or mail it to support@chaosgroup.com with a link to this thread. I'll take a look at it as soon as I receive it.