11-16-2022, 06:48 PM
Yea that's not really going to be a good solution....anything imported into a Shape operator is converted to a mesh so you lose instancing ability.
Closest solution I can think of would be to export your tree/grain sim as a VRay Proxy, then scatter the VRay Proxies using particles using the Export Particles operator. It has a MAXScript rollout that you can use to tune each proxy's animation offset to a particle custom float value, allowing you to offset the animation for each proxy. Of course, this solution requires VRay...but ultimately whatever solution you use is going to be renderer-dependent because this is a task that will definitely require instancing.
Closest solution I can think of would be to export your tree/grain sim as a VRay Proxy, then scatter the VRay Proxies using particles using the Export Particles operator. It has a MAXScript rollout that you can use to tune each proxy's animation offset to a particle custom float value, allowing you to offset the animation for each proxy. Of course, this solution requires VRay...but ultimately whatever solution you use is going to be renderer-dependent because this is a task that will definitely require instancing.