Non destructive joining/grouping addon

Coding Released Scripts and Themes
1

Hi,
I made an addon which lets you join objects non destructively, you won’t be able to enter edit mode, but you can apply modifiers and duplicate objects (linked duplicates follow object positions, full duplicates still link object data, but positions, modifiers… are not linked). Here is a video:

Repo link: https://bitbucket.org/aivanis/smart-join/downloads

EDIT:
When smart join object is expanded you can add or remove objects from it by parenting them to bounding box.

2 Likes
2

Thanks, very useful for organising big scenes.

3

I agree very useful tool… Big Thank you.

4

Thanks a lot @aivanis for sharing your job!
Great Idea!

5

You are welcome.

6

fantastic! what a great idea :slight_smile: works great!!!

7

Glad you liked it :slight_smile:

8

Great work Andrej! Good concept and implementation. I tested it and the only problems i noticed are when i do the ‘origin to geometry’ to the sj. It’s bounding box and afterward behavior get’s a little bit confused…

9

Thanks. Yes, I know about that, also apply rotation, position, scale. I don’t know if there is a good way to detect change of the origin with the API, I can’t know if object is really moved or origin is repositioned. If somebody has an idea I’ll include it. For now you need to expand the join, select bounding box -> shift G -> children and then move them.

10

Ah, spectacular! Thank you for making this!

11

would renaming affect it in any way? noticed it adds “_sj” a the end of the name.

12

You can rename both mesh and object if you want ‘_sj’ doesn’t matter.

@hype
Thanks!

13

As a matter of fact, after the initial glitch, the addon repairs it’s behaviour if you colapse and expand the join again. You are right, it is difficult to know wether there was a change in the origin in the meantime. I am not sure how to solve this, perhaps to scan the situation before each expansion. That is if you somehow recorded the state of the join during previous colapse…

14

I just pushed new version to repo, there is Apply Smart Join option in Relationships tab, to convert a smart join mesh to editable mesh.

15

New update: better memory management

16

New update, you can allow edit mode in preferences, but expanding the join will revert any changes.

17

the addon is fantastic, thanks a lot!. one thing is annoying yet. When the smartJoin object is selected and it is in preview render mode the image flickers. Is it possible to avoid it?

18

the addon is fantastic, thanks a lot!. one thing is annoying yet. When the smartJoin object is selected and it is in preview render mode the image flickers. Is it possible to avoid it?

19

Thanks, dezet. I fixed the flickering, but forgot to upload it, download again it should work now.

20

Also if you want expended object rendered correctly you need to hide bounding box or it will be rendered twice (or just collapse it).