a bored blender artist

[FREE] Blender Instance Array Geometry Node Group

Added 2022-04-12 17:01:06 +0000 UTC

The entire .blend file (node groups, and example mesh)

This is a node group that allows you to create an array of objects, very similarly to how the normal array modifier works; however, the objects are instanced instead of being real mesh. This allows you to create impossibly large amounts of elements, since the mesh is all instanced, and is technically just a linked duplicate of the original mesh, and not completely new mesh. In the thumbnail, I instanced 50*50*50 (125,000) cubes for a total of 1 million vertices; however, since they are instanced cubes, the actual vertex count was still only 8! This helps with memory optimization.

This node group is free for usage; however, it would be appreciated if you could buy it for a few dollars if you are able to. If you improve the node group, please contact me so that I can integrate the changes into this group!

Unsupported operations:

Using a curve to guide the array (I will add this in the future).
Merge by distance (this is impossible, since the objects are instances and not real mesh).
Non-visible instance culling (I will add this in the future).

Enjoy!

InstanceArray.blend