Can you rig a set of instances of an object?

Question

I have a cylinder that's instanced along a line with 5 vertices (vertex instances), so I have 5 copies of it. (Note that the cylinder becomes a child of the line because of how instancing works.) I created an armature with some bones, and parented the line to the armature (with Armature Deform > automatic weights), as I think you're supposed to do. But now when I enter pose mode and move the bones, the cylinder instances move around, but they don't rotate -- they stay in the original orientation. And they don't bend, as I'd expect them to. (They do have plenty of loop cuts.)

Is this because they're instances? Or is it because the rig is really just deforming the line, and the instances come along for the ride? Rigging multiple independent copies of a cylinder works OK.

So is there any way to do what I want: have a set of instances that are parented to an armature and deform the way they would if they were independent copies? (I need instances because my actual objects are very heavy.)

Running Blender 2.93 nightly from a few weeks ago.

In the image: Left: armature with instances. Right: regular armature.

Answer 1

Could be a tricky one. The picture on the right would Indicate that you may have instances from an instance instead of an instance from the original. All your instances must stem back to the original maybe and not be an instance from an instance from the original. Try ensuring all instances are immediately linked from the main source.

Don't instance from the original and then instance from the instance.

Instance from the original. Then instance another from the original Then another from the original.

I'm sure you get the point.

And if this don't fix your problem, I hope you find your answer. You may aswell just normal copy your work as that will not take much memory anyway.