BBB trees frozen ? how did they do that?

Hi,
Again, looking through the BBB files, I noticed the trees (notably birch_002) cannot be moved.

Furthermore, they do not render until I instance them with particles.

Interesting behavior, if I could only figure out how it was done.

All help is appreciated.

kind regards,

wzzl

I haven’t checked the files but the outliner offers certain restriction features. You can make an object not selectable for instance.

Yah I know,
but that’s not it.

If you select the object and press [n] to bring up the ‘Transform Properties’ popup, you can press the little lock icon in front of the ‘Loc’ properties to lock the object’s ability to be moved on one or more axis.

hmm, should have read your post more carefully. Not sure for the case of particles.

I think if an object is library linked (referenced in a file and not appended), then you cannot move that object…

BBB uses a lot of library linking as part of the pipeline.

I know about the linking,
that’s why I opened a new file, appended the birch_002 group, exploded the leaves dupliframes into separate leaves, joined those, added the low-res canopy and bascally reorganised the group, removing all parent-child relationships.

Turns out I cannot move the elements.
Outliner properties are selectable, transform properties are open.

[update]
Oddest thing.
I appended the objects of aforementioned file, now I can move them.
Probably something is still a bit iffy in the appending-linking setup.
When appending, the leaf material also gets lost.
Really, what is going on ?

grtz
wzzl