...
You'll see an instance appear at each particle position.
XGen Archives
Nested Instancing
Especially when dealing with large data sets like Xgen instancing of many objects, we try and flatten the instances to allow users flexibility in overrides and improve speed. But there are times when this may consume too much memory. This is because flattened instances multiply when rendered, so 1,000 instances of 1,000 instances are 1,000,000 instances.
Nested instances are added so 1,000 instances of 1,000 becomes 2,000 in memory. However, options for instances like some variation and more are no longer available to the renderer. So we allows users to decide when to nest instancing in the transform nodes by tagging them.
Create XGen Description
XGen is a powerful tool that can be used to position instances of arbitrary geometry. First an XGen description needs to be created, which holds the collection of points where instances will be placed. Then, the archive can be created to instance at those points.
...
Select the shape upon which instances should be placed (eg. the ground plane). Then from the XGen toolbar, click on the leftmost icon with an X.
...