I’m working on a sea monster that’s got a mouthful of big teeth. Kinda’ similar to what you might do for a shark, only the mouth curves upwards more like a big fish. The teeth will point in varying directions depending on where they are in the mouth. The sizes of the teeth will vary, but the position of the teeth is dependent on the shape of the mouth.
What I’d like to be able to do is setup something like dupliverts where vertices of a mesh (the mouth mesh) define where all the teeth will be. That makes it easy to position the teeth. Just plain dupliverts would work great if all the teeth were the same size pointing in the same direction, but they don’t. I still want to be able to adjust each tooth’s size and orientation individually.
Any suggestions? Have I explained the problem sufficiently?
Well, yes, one by one works and that’s what I was using. It just seemed like there might be a better way. I know this only helps in the initial positioning, but it still helps.
I think what Crouch proposes will do the trick. However, just to add some other details (correct me if I’m wrong):
Keep in mind that when you do this, all the new objects will have the same mesh as your original duplicate object, as if they were created with the Duplicate-Link (Alt-DKEY) command. You need to select each object in turn and make it single-user by clicking on the number to the right of the ME: data block in the F9, Link and Materials panel. Seems like this must be done on a per object basis. Selecting all the objects and selecting single-user doesn’t seem to do it.
Not completely true.
Once you’ve selected all your meshes there’s normally one a brighter pink than the others. This means that only that one will be made a single user. To prevent this from happening add a completely different object to your selection (the camera for example). Now this object will be a brighter pink. Now remove that object from the selection (SHIFT + RMB) and you will have:
a selection of meshes in which none of them is brighter than the others.
Now you can press U-key and choose what you need.