Hi;
Is there a way to deal with objects en-masse in Blender? What if you have like 300 objects with the same modifiers and you want to adjust a common attribute in all of them? Or change 500 empty objects’ shape to sphere or adjust their size?
Thanx.
AJ
You mean like the spreadsheet attribute editor in Maya? No. Blender does not have this feature. It can handle some “en masse” functions but it’s more of a primitive grouping thing. Blender does not have the same hoard of history that Maya has either.
So, I am lead to understand that it is not possible to deal with attributes on a mass basis… Not good, cuz that chore crosses one’s way all the time in 3D… Mmm… I’m disappointed a tad 
I think you’ll find that spreadsheet unnecessary when you consider Blender’s concept of multi-user data.
Check out this video tutorial:
http://showmedo.com/videos/video?name=blenderMoyes-040-capture-datablocks&fromSeriesID=31
Thanx for the input but data block allocation has unfortunately nothing to do with run-time shared attribute manipulation. If you have like 500 nulls you already have in your scene that had been created without links that you want to scale 2 times bigger or wanna change from an axis shape to sphere shape or what if you have to un-check all the ‘radio’ buttons only on 500 different materials? Unfortunately data blocks are merely the individualization or consolidation of transform and/or shape connections. They have nothing to do with the batch adjustment of attributes… The buttons view has to either permit batch Object or Edit Data attribute editing or there has to be a spreadsheet integrated into Blender in the future releases… One enormously vital feature missing in one of the best 3D software has to be addressed…
He’ll think he already understands about blender datablocks because they look similar to the way the hypershader handles textures in Maya (nodal) or even moreso, the Maya Hypergraph editor which is also very similar. My reference to “grouping” earlier was actually hinting at blender datablocks, without expanding beyond what would necessarily be listened to.
I have a diploma in Maya, although I also like to use Blender. I sensed the original question was kind of trollbait, so I gave a very short answer. The use of “spreadsheet” in the title gave it away.
To explain what Blender has over Maya is (imo) the wrong direction. People who have background in one 3D app desperately need to let go of that app when learning their next one. Preknowledge is almost always a hindrance to learning another, often until they start learning their third or fourth application and can then finally make some unbiased decisions based on their collective knowledge.
I would have as hard a time convincing a Maya user that blender’s sculpt mode, the UV editor and even a few of the base modeling options are simply vastly superior to Maya’s (yes Maya 2008 even) as I would have trying to convince a Blender user that Maya has something very impressive in their true-formula based expression editor which Blender lacks (python drivers don’t cut it. Sorry.), Paint-FX and various other built in particle & rigging tweaks.
:mad: Hrmph. Probably I sound crabby. 
Let me explain it a better way…
…please, if it’s Blender you want to learn, look around this forum and galleries for examples of choice work. Start asking questions like “how did they do that?”. Begin to think from a Blender perspective. Yes there will be many “can do better” Maya moments, though you’ll also stumble across a few things (eventually) where you’ll be thinking “I wonder whether I can do this new Blender trick I just learned in Maya?” There are many advantages that Blender has… not all of them will be useful to you, but those that are…
:p:yes: <== Blender and Maya are really friends.
My topic could have have been anything ranging from “Batch Attribute Manipulation” to “Multi-Editing”… Please don’t get stuck on referenced terminology, for my question was centered on trying to find out how to do batch attribute manipulation in Blender, not to compare it to some other package (As you may have noticed I didn’t make any references to Maya in my initial post or the latter)… Batch editing of anything in any 3D package is a universal concept and I’m simply dismayed at seeing that it was overlooked in a splendid application such as Blender…
Yes. I agree it would be a nice plus for Blender to have this… particularly a spreadsheet based one so that the bulk changes could be implemented. My other dire want for Blender would be the expression editor that Maya has… so so so handy for drivers etc in animation.
Preknowledge is almost always a hindrance to learning another, often until they start learning their third or fourth application and can then finally make some unbiased decisions based on their collective knowledge.
Yes, its ALMOST a hindrance. In this case, I think pre-knowledge would help out Blender’s developement. Perhaps
The buttons view has to either permit batch Object or Edit Data attribute editing or there has to be a spreadsheet integrated into Blender in the future releases… One enormously vital feature missing in one of the best 3D software has to be addressed…
Good point. Multi-user data has its major limitations, and its simply not the same thing as batch editing. I assumed you just wanted to edit the components of whatever you needed, not the display types of Nulls. But the display type of a Null is really another parametre that really should be adjustable.
You can use Ctrl-C to copy certain attributes from the Active selected object (last selected) to all other selected objects. This will let you copy Modifiers from one object to many. I do not believe this will let you copy actual Mesh data. However, I believe I have seen other mention Python scripts that can read mesh data from a spreadsheet or text file into Blender. So you might want to ask in the Python forum if anyone has such a script available.
you should be able to link the mesh data even if they were originally not linked, which should then allow you to edit one and affect all.
then just save to get rid of the unused data.
Not the same thing. Maya is very thorough in displaying all the properties of an object in the “Attribute Editor”, a panel on the right side of the screen with all properties like size, linked data etc etc. It also includes a huge “undo” history which needs to be deleted constantly in order to to keep your scene running at a sane speed. Blender has an N-key properties window but this only contains a bare minimum of data (Blender users would say it’s more efficient, Maya users would say it’s not thorough enough)
The attribute spreadsheet is a way of showing all the properties of all the objects at the same time. It’s VERY powerful if you ever need to copy / paste cells of data selectively and quickly. You get all the pluses of a real spread sheet including sort by order, very fast selective pasting and even the ability to make formula functions so one variable could be calculated based on on selected properties of others.
This is something Maya is VERY good at. Blender has python drivers allowing single reference in IPO but these are very limited. Maya expressions are much more powerful. Yes, you could probably chain a few separate properties to different hidden shapes, which would link together to give a comlex result, but this is nowhere near Maya’s ability to, say, colour(nose on figure)=gradient(from red to blue) depending on (how high he’s holding his hand, multiplied by the angle of his wrist minus 90 degrees). Okay I’m being silly, there are real-world uses for this kind of stuff. I had my characters eyeballs shrink slightly in order to prevent them popping through the blendshaped eyelids after lattice transforms made them move slightly differently.
…and that’s just the expression editor. Having the spreadsheet allows masses of such functions etc across any objects.
The downside is Maya is very CPU heavy (especially when the history is constantly taken into account as most hardened Maya users know) and many people would never have a use for such things. For someone who is used to this tool in their workflow, it tends to become one of those frequently used “basics” of 3D.
The thing is that I was soo immensely impressed to what extent Blender has been developed and how it has matured to be such an awesome piece of software over the years, I became obsessed with wanting to work with it in a matter of two weeks… Please do not get me wrong, for what I aim to do is to investigate if I can switch over to working with it fully, never to fish out weaknesses, there’s simply nothing to gain from doing that… Yet, I am at the point where I want to find out if the tools have evolved to a sufficient point where, in the middle of a production, the lack of some vital functions will not make me run into a concrete wall, especially with a deadline involved, on top of which is the one I wanted to find out by bringing it up in this thread which is the batch editing of parameters of objects.
Being well aware that Blender is open-source and the that it is the culmination of idealistic efforts of contributors from all over the globe and the Blender Foundation primarily, I do not want to over step my bounds by requesting features and such. But since everyone who was kind enough to input their opinions in this thread have agreed to the necessity of this particular functionality, how would it be possible to officially submit this idea to the development team of Blender? I couldn’t find any such section in the Blender.org website.
Thank you all again for your kind replies and helpful comments;
AJ
I think because you have a background that other Blenders don’t have, you could be very useful in bug identification. I also used Blender in conjunction with Maya, and this led me to discover certain faults (e.g. bug#8382) which, once shown to the dev crew were fixed overnight. :eyebrowlift:
…anyway, the place to report bugs would be http://projects.blender.org/tracker/?atid=125&group_id=9&func=browse
Because so many people have far out ideas on what they think Blender should be able to do, you might come up with something where Blender has observable shortcomings, rather than try to describe a new feature from bottom-up.
Between Blender and Maya, I’d encourage you to use each to their strengths. Good luck.
hey AJ,
I don’t think your stepping out of any bounds at all - you’ve made a good, informed point.
You can get an account at the blender wiki, and propose here:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Requests/UserInterfaceFeatures
+1 for Attribute Spreadsheet Editor on Blender 2.8
one way would be to make a small script working on selected objects
and then change some specific parameters
happy bl
Attribute Spreadsheet Editor added on Blender 2.9.3 !!!
How can edit globally metadata values ?
