Can modifiers be assigned to any collection or group now ?
Iâd love to be able to assign a modifier across a whole collection.
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As part of Blender 2.8, the idea is to eventually have a nice built-in way to do overrides per collection. This would allow you to change the strength of all lamps inside a certain collection, for example.
Iâm not sure how this would work for applying modifiers to an entire collection -it may not be supported.
For that kind of thing, it would be nice if we had the concept of true groups - multiple objects that act as if they were one object, so that you can transform it, modify it, select it as if it was one thing, but it being comprised of multiple objects. This would be similar to something like node groups, but for objects in the 3D View.
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I really want proper groups. How hard would it be to implement? I was always curious about why Blender didnât have anything like it.
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No particular reason afaik. It was just never added. You can do most things without it, and Collection instances can act as a kind of group, although itâs clumsy if you then want to edit the contents, and you cannot add things like modifiers to them.
Nothing better than normal groups!
If we could edit origin of a collection it could do the work, but itâs not possible and empties are far from the best solution neither.
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It could work like this:
Group objects under a null or another object, then apply modifier to that first object.
Display the modifier on every grouped object as an linked/instanced modifier, but use the input per object as override (for that specific object).
Having one modifier for a large number of objects so you only need to apply changes once for all objects is the way to go. It cuts down time considerably, especially if you have to deal with a hundred objects.
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Groups in blender could be just emptiesâŚ
You create an empty object, drag and drop your stuff inside of it in the outliner, and whatever you do to that empty (tranformations/apply modifiers etc) should affect whatâs inside of it as a whole. Simple
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What does that even mean. âGroup objects under a nullâ? You mean parenting?
No, thatâs not how I think it should be done.
It should be more like node groups I think. You would select multiple objects, then go to Object â Group Objects. Now those multiple objects act as if they were one object for selection and other things. If you want to edit each object separately, youâd have to go to Object â Edit Group. You could also break them apart by selecting Object â Break Apart Group.
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I got by with instancing and parenting to empties for so long, until I started using Max and now thatâs the one thing about it I like.
My thought exactly. Thatâs the best and more visual way of doing groups⌠
Yeah sorry, working in too many different softwareâs atm.
But that would make it an extra step everytime i would want to edit and work with the models.
I think the functionality is needed while still in the modelling process.
Nodes would be perfect, but i think thatâs something for everything nodes.
No, not using nodes. I meant like node groups. The same way they can make many nodes act as if it was one node, object groups could make several objects act as if it was one object. Thatâs the benefit. Not using parenting or empties or anything like that, which doesnât give you the main benefits.
The main benefits would be easier selection, less messy scene setups, fewer mistakes if you canât accidentally mode objects apart that are meant to stick together.
You can already do parenting. Itâs not the same thing and does not afford the same benefits.
This is how intuitive grouping works:
Cheers.
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Blender does not work like C4D though. The way they deal with relationships in the Outliner is very different.
Blender already has that to some degree - group instances. The group instance is treated as a single object and has all the benefits one would expect. The drawback is that you need to have broken down duplicate of it in some different layer or hidden.
I think what we need is kind of extended functionality of Blenderâs current group system, where you can choose to treat newly created group as a single object. You could also choose if newly created groups are treated as a single object or as multiple objects (the current way).
What I am really worried about is if weâd end up with two different grouping system with two different names. The current one, and another one that is completely disconnected. That would be quite bad situation. So I am in favor of extending current group system in Blender with the ability of treating groups as single object (while preserving all the benefits current system has).
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With some tweaks the existing parenting system could be added to, in order to do it. I think this is more or less what Romanji and ThinkingPolygons were getting at.
Add a new object type, something like âgroup originâ, which is essentially an empty, except it can have modifiers.
when you make a group and pick âmergeâ, one of these gets made, placed at probably the cursor, and anything at the top of the parent chain (i.e. that has no parent, or whose parent is not in the new group) gets its parent set to the new âgroup originâ object.
Then just have the âgroup originâ object keep a copy of its modifiers on the modifier stacks of its children. Some modifiers might need an extra button, such as if you wanted to support array with relative spacing using the size of the group as a whole, rather than each individual object. But on the whole, youâd get what youâre after - and you can use stuff like constant offset and object origins (on modifiers like screw) to do that.
The main thing that wouldnât work is stuff like physics and particle systems, if you were to expect it to treat all the objectsâ meshes as one - but thatâd require some system that merges objdata dynamically and non-destructively which is probably a tall order. You might be able to write a modifier to do it, but thereâs no telling how fast or slow itâd be
Maybe the first click on any of the group objects selects the âgroup originâ, which also highlights the group, but the second selects the object inside the group. Or maybe the âgroup originâ has an edit mode that works like pose mode in that it sticks, and lets you select other things, and while its in edit mode you can select the grouped objects.
That would use the existing collections system and parenting heirarchy to achieve the results it sounds like are asked for, for the most part. The main thing is getting an object to copy & update its modifiers to its children (and thusly keeping track of which modifiers on an object came from a parent), and some exrta selection logic.
Itâs possible you could do this without groups or even a new object, but rather just an object setting for grouping any objectsâ children together (select the empty that everything is a child of, click a little checkbox that says âgroup childrenâ or something and viola. You can still have a menu option that automatically creates an empty, sets it as parent, and ticks this option, too), but then empties donât have modifiers so that might be weird. Ideally if empties can be made to house modifiers though that is optimal and again is what I think Romanji and ThinkingPolygons were trying to suggest.
You can even separate the options, separate settings for âcopy modifiers to childrenâ and âgroup childrenâ
just rambling ideas.
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I am all for object groups, as far as i know there is an addon which does exactly this.
But i fail to see why objects that share an modifier need to be glued together of treated as if they where one objects.
Thatâs not what i need.
Example:
Lets say i model an robot and in the modelling process it is made up of a hundred pieces.
I want to mirror all of them to the other side since its symmetrical. But i still want to move and edit all the pieces. I donât care for an object group at this point, i just donât want to use a hundred mirror modifiers. Thatâs it.
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Iâm really curious what you guy mean when you say, âProper groupsâ?
Iâve use most 3D programs and most of them have some kind of mechanism for grouping. Maxâs groups are really weird and no one that I know uses them (I work in a Max/Maya studio and no one is actually allowed to use them). Modoâs always seem like an extra step and more of an extra organizational feature outside of the hierarchy.
Then thereâs Maya. In Maya when you group something, all you are really doing under the hood is creating a transform node at 0,0,0 and parenting the item to it. So, itâs strictly a hierarchy mechanism. In my mind this is the most useful but also the most useless. I mean, I can just do that by hand if I need to, 
This kind of grouping is what I usually do in all 3D programs. Organize by hierarchy.
Modo actually has that same feature but some time ago they introduced the new âGroupsâ. They are, for all intents and purposes, the same thing as collections. In fact, Modoâs groups are even used for the exact same things. But, in Modo they hide this by renaming them based on the operation. So, render layers are just groups but you donât know this because they just call them render layers.
And really, if you are looking for groups, you should probably be using collections⌠If collections are missing some feature that you can get with other programs, then I suggest that you make a proposal to add those features.
âŚUnless of course, Iâm missing something.
If you can convince the devs to implement this, Iâll hug you. Iâve been asking for this since 2003, but thereâs always some strange and convoluted reason why it canât be done.
That said, Collection instances arenât that far off from this. All we need is
a) the capability to edit the collectionâs origin,
b) the ability to âcloseâ the original set of objects to protect it from accidental edits, and
c) the ability to edit a Collection instance in place.
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