Hey blenderartists,
Anyone knows, why blender not simply treats those meshes that have no more vertices as empties?? As it is now, empties are not convertible to empty geometry. But why is it not the same? It would simplify many things and improve compatibility with other SW, e.g. 3DS Max or Maya.
The reasons are:
- Propping: You get a COLLADA .dae file with prop points from another software. (because in blender you have to use empties for prop points to stop making them appear in the geometry list of the COLLADA file at export.)
- Now you have to convert the geometry to empties without using the local coordinates, et alia. How do you achieve that? Okay parenting and copy paste could work, but doesn’t work always.
- Would be easier if one simply could remove all vertices and then automatically have an empty. Essentially that’s how’d define an empty: geometry with no vertices, nothing in there.
So why does blender make its life harder and invents another form of empty, that is not equal to a common sense empty (geometry with all vertices deleted)?
Happy for any input.
For the COLLADA specific that I’d wish to introduce an option that’d allow: (perhaps it’s even the default desired behaviour?)
- On Import: nodes in COLLADA that are parented to bones should be retranslated into a geometry without vertices (no empty). Currently it’s neither of both: Empties parented to bones and not occurring in the geometry list at the end of the .dae file seem not to show in the blender scene at all.
- On Export: geometry with zero vertices parented to bones should not show in the geometry list, but only in the bone hierarchy.
Here you find example files:
What I was given. (with animation)
dude.blend that I converted it to. (essentially this file contains the old prop points of the above file too.)
COLLADA exported from the latter blend-file:
- Only two geometry highest level nodes (tights and armature) as it should be. (using blender empties != geometry without vertices): GitHub CoM -> dude.dae -> Line 1151
- Whereas when using geometry without vertices as prop points results in double entries, i.e. it’s occurring in the geometry library too, see “r_hand” prop point cube which has no vertices on Line 54.
That the empties don’t occur in the geometry list, but geometry without vertices (so essentially empty) does. It should not. 
For the import then the empties parented to bones could be readded as a empty geometry structure. OR why not simply treating empty geometry as empty and dropping blender empties?