• Version 2.1.0 Details
  • Basic support for GLBs with instanced meshes / linked duplicates

Version 2.1.0 Details

List of all changes

Basic support for GLBs with instanced meshes / linked duplicates

The viewer can now load 3d models which contain instanced meshes (also known as linked duplicates).

See Babylon.js Docs and InstancedMesh class for more details.

Whilst those instanced meshes can noticeable improve performance in some situations they also come with some inherent limitations. One of them is that instanced meshes only allow a small subset of their properties from being manipulated at runtime. E.g. whilst you can change their visibility & position, you cannot change their materials in any way (colors, metalness etc.).

Whether a property is read only or not can be found out by looking at the Babylon.js docs of the InstancedMesh class. E.g. InstancedMesh.material only shows a getter, whilst AbstractMesh.material shows a getter & a setter which means that the former is read only:

The viewer will inform you via an exception in the command line when you try to manipulate read only properties of the instanced mesh via the viewer API (commitParameters etc.).