Mash Maya2017 cant instance lights in standins?

[Anonymous]

I created an arnold standin with some basic geo and 1 arnold area light.

Now I want to instance this with MASH.
All the geo gets nicely distributed but only the first instance has the arnold area light.
All the other ones only have geo.

Anyone knows a fix for this?

[Stephen.Blair]

What version of MtoA are you using?

MtoA 3.0 supports light instances (actually MtoA converts light instances to real lights at render time, because Arnold doesn't support light instances)

[Anonymous]

I'm running MtoA 3.0.0.1.

If I just create a standin the light instance works perfectly.

But when I distribute it via MASH , the lights dissapear

[Anonymous]

Maybe this will help as well:

To use standins in MASH i use a cube as a procedural which is linked to a standin.
Is it possible that arnold does not recognise lights as a procedural standin?

[brian_Foley]

I had a project using lights in a mash network a few months ago. I was able to get mesh lights to work but not area lights. Here is what I wound up doing instead that is pretty simple once you become familiar with the Mash breakout node.

Here I have some Geo with a light saved as ass file.

Like you did, create a cube as a procedural linked to a standin and duplicate it so you have as much as your mash network or more.

In this example I have a mash Network of 10. It doesn't matter what the initial shape is since it will be hidden later so keep it light. Add a breakout node in your mash network and add your cubes. Links to tutorial below.

Connect the cubes to the mash network.

and then hide the Repromesh.

You can edit the mash network once its linked.

Hope this helps.

Breakout Node Tut to lock procedural to mash network.

https://vimeo.com/206203767

[jonghankim]

Hi, 

Did you solve this problem?

I have same issue in 2022. 

If you have any solutions for this, please share with me.

Thanks,

Jonghan