Alembic Instances?

[houou]

Hi there, 

I think, not so sure, Max got an update some time ago to work with alembic instances, is there a way that TyFlow uses this?
The ABC created with Tyflow when used for parametric modelling is quite heavy compared to the TyCache.
I gave a look to the ABC exporter options but the only thing that, maaaybe could affect could be "mode" single collapsed node / node per particle but was greyed out when ABC.

16MB vs 997MB

I would like to use that Alembic inside Houdini also if it matters for something.

Thank you.

[im.thatoneguy]

Following up on this. What's the best way to get instanced geometry out of Tyflow? Is it through the Alembic exporter or is it to generate Scene Objects and then use the built in 3ds Max Alembic exporter with "Preserve Instances"?

[tyFlow]

To be honest, I'm not really sure what the "preserve instances" option of Max's Alembic exporter is supposed to do - it certainly doesn't preserve instances in the traditional sense. If I export 1000 instanced teapots (64 segments each) with that option on (over a 100 frames range), I get a resulting filesize of 28mb, vs 30mb with it off. So it's still exporting 1000 meshes even though all meshes are instances of a single mesh.

I don't think Alembic supports true instancing, and there's no other way to get instances out of Max. The closest workaround would be to export your particles as an Alembic point cloud, then instance some mesh over the points in your other software, if it supports such a workflow.