Hi, I am sculpting a hand right now and to make the fingers I created Instances of the index finger. After scaling them a bit i now want to apply scale but blender prompts me ‘to create new object-data users and apply transformation’ and upon agreeing it no longer transfers the changes i make to the other fingers. Is there any way to apply scale and keep these instances? If anyone has anything, thank you!
Hi @skrolli and welcome, instancing means that you use SHARED mesh data across objects. You can scale instanced objects as that change is stored and calculated on objectlevel, but if you’d apply this scale to the shared meshdata all objects that use that mesh data would then use that changed mehsdata after it has been written back, thats why blender makes a copy of the meshdata before applying and then its no longer shared data.
So no, thats simply not possible. So keep the scale of your different objects if you want it to be shared.
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Hi, Thank you for your answer, so my take away is that all scaling should be done before instancing? And if needed at the very end when you no longer need the mesh to be instanced?
Your takeaway is that if you instance something it exists just ONE time in memory for all your instances. And you scale instances INDIVIDUALLY on object level and TOGETHER in edit mode.
And it you dont want it to be instanced any longer then you can eg use
Object → Relation → Make single user → Object + Data
(Single user simply means NOT shared)
or in your case maybe join them directly into a single mesh
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Thank you, I believe I get it. sorry for now sounding contradictory but just to make sure, what do you mean by scaling instances together in edit mode?
I just meant that if you enter edit mode on an instance you edit the shared mesh data,
so you can scale them together by simply selecting all vertices and changing scale.