# What’s the outlook on \`meshscatter\` supporting an array of markers?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-s-the-outlook-on-meshscatter-supporting-an-array-of-markers/60505>\
**Category:** Visualization\
**Tags:** makie\
**Created:** [May 4, 2021, 8:18am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-s-the-outlook-on-meshscatter-supporting-an-array-of-markers/60505 "2021-05-04T08:18:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![mschauer](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/mschauer/32/13946_2.png) [@mschauer](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/mschauer)\
**Post date:** [May 4, 2021, 8:18am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-s-the-outlook-on-meshscatter-supporting-an-array-of-markers/60505/1 "2021-05-04T08:18:41Z")

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The question is mostly if the underlying engine in GLMakie allows this and it is just not exposed or if there are other reasons why this is not available.

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**Author:** ![sdanisch](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/sdanisch/32/1406_2.png) [@sdanisch](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/sdanisch)\
**Post date:** [May 4, 2021, 9:05am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-s-the-outlook-on-meshscatter-supporting-an-array-of-markers/60505/2 "2021-05-04T09:05:56Z")

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Meshscatter uses instancing, so the markers need to be the same to get a speed up out of it…  
I guess, from an API standpoint, it may still be desirable to allow different markers…  
We should likely implement it as a single big mesh with something like:  
`big_mesh = merge(marker_meshes...)`

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**Author:** ![ffreyer](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/ffreyer/32/21569_2.png) [@ffreyer](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/ffreyer)\
**Post date:** [May 4, 2021, 11:55am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/what-s-the-outlook-on-meshscatter-supporting-an-array-of-markers/60505/3 "2021-05-04T11:55:16Z")

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> `big_mesh = merge(marker_meshes...)`

Could that work with per-element scales, rotations and positions? Also wouldn’t that result in unnecessarily large meshes when someone has some combination of two meshes as markers? (I.e. `markers = rand([m1, m2], 1000)`)

I would say we rather want something that splits one `meshscatter` with multiple markers into multiple `meshscatter` calls with unique markers.