Clone Modifier

hey ho,

is anyone aware of a way to clone modifiers, so that i change e.g. the subd levels on one object and all other objects with the same modifier (not the same object) follow?

cheers christian

damn … i hope they add a real instance functionality for modifiers soon :slight_smile:
but thanks for the link ^^

a guy in the mentioned thread by 0BackBONE0 said: “I tried instancing modifiers at the code level and it does not work, produces an error. It is simply not built into the architecture of Blender itself.”

does that mean it is not possible to implement such feature in an upcoming version of blender?

There’s always a way… Keep in mind that modifiers can share some stuff: Displacement modifiers can share a texture to drive displacement; Lattice Modifiers share a lattice, etc – so it isn’t unheard of to have modifiers working in sync with each other, even without using drivers.

That said, drivers aren’t that bad of a solution for the otherwise-non-syncable stuff, though you do need to set it up for each instance of your modifier if you’ve already built everything.

If you just want to change subdiv modifiers there’s Simplify in the scene panel where you can set a maximum number of subdivisions, split by viewport and render.

Here’s a quick video on how I do it with drivers. (ADHD + Break Time = Short Video Tutorial):

this is awesome ben!
many thanks for the tutorial, it helps a lot :slight_smile:
an addon/script would be sweet which auto-updates dependencies and copies over the drivers from the modifiers as well.
until cloning modifiers will be possible i will definitely use this ^^

Hi
One more way comes to my mind - if you select objects sharing the same modifier, for example Subdivision Surface, and change the number of subdivisions while holding Alt, all selected objects will be updated. Alt key works this way in other situations too, eg. when you want to change the Draw Type of more than one object. Quite handy.
Cheers
Szymon

What a great tip! Thanks szymonkubicki!

yes, really great tip!! what a timesaver, thanks :slight_smile: