topic Duplicate Reference with instance in Maya Forum

Duplicate Reference with instance

ncls_pln — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 13:06:27 GMT

Hi there!

I work regularly with gigantic indoor scenes and in this case it is a problem of chairs. Indeed, I have to duplicate several times the same chairs a good fifty times, so I use an external reference of a chair that I modeled. The problem, when I do "Duplicate" on the reference, several references are created (see screenshot), and I would like to have only one that groups them all. Indeed, if for example I have to change by a reference, I will have to modify line by line whereas I would simply have to change it on a single element. I do not know if I was clear? (especially with my bad english)

Thank you very much for your answer!

Re: Duplicate Reference with instance

mspeer — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 13:29:28 GMT

Hi!

Why not creating instances of this object (chair) in the scene?

Edit -> Duplicate Special ("Instance")

Re: Duplicate Reference with instance

ncls_pln — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 13:40:34 GMT

It works but I think it's not a reference anymore but it's now a geometry in the scene:

And when try I replace the orginal by an another:

Re: Duplicate Reference with instance

mspeer — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 14:06:22 GMT

Hi!

It's not a geometry in the scene, it's a reference.

If you edit the referenced object in the reference file all instances change too.

If you want to use "replace reference", then you either need to use the same name for the object in the reference file or you need to use Duplicate as done before and you have to live with all the references in your scene.

You can also use Modify -> Replace Objects or any other approach. Maybe References are not the best option for what you want to do.

Re: Duplicate Reference with instance

ncls_pln — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 14:24:26 GMT

Thank you very much!

You're alright, it's always reference objects. I simply checked by saving my file, duplicating with Instance, save and check the size of the file: it's same!

I'll learn Replace Objects Tools, maybe it can help me later.

Re: Duplicate Reference with instance

ncls_pln — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 12:56:41 GMT

Edit: not the solution 😞
After reopen the project, the duplicated objects's shaders are missing and the geometry take the layer's color... I must reassign shaders object by object... And 4 shaders per object.

Re: Duplicate Reference with instance

mspeer — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 13:33:21 GMT

Hi!

I tested several variations here and all of them work.

This seems to be a scene-specific problem.

Please try this again with 2 test scenes (one simply scene with a polygon object and one shader as reference and the other to import to)

Please care with re-naming in the reference file and object editing in the master scene after you referenced a scene.

Re: Duplicate Reference with instance

gamalreham245 — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 20:00:47 GMT

Hello,

you need to put your reference in a group then duplicate that group. Your geometry will all be references.