Duplication issue

[Anonymous]

Ok, while I'm new to Maya, I'm pretty **** literate in all computer/ app things.  Or, at least, I thought I was until this issue...   it's so **** frustratingly silly.

I'm trying to duplicate.  That's it; just duplicate a polygon.  Not duplicate special... that I have down.  But for some reason, I'm hitting Cmd D (Ctrl D) on a **** tree (tree02), the Channel box says it's a new tree (tree03), but the second I try to move it... There's only the one tree I'm moving!  If I try to deselect and reselect the thing, it tells me I've selected the original object (tree02).

Now, I'm following the lynda.com tutorial here, watching him just hit 'dupe' then using move... the original one is staying in place, and the new one is moving around, so I figure either I'm not doing something wrong there.

I've tried to Copy/Paste with no luck either.....  (all I get is a message about a file being created from the student edition and therefore I'll always see that message when opening that file)

From what I've read up on dupe special, it allows either copy or instance, where (if I'm not mistaken) instance is really only a pointer to the original object and anything you do to one, you do to the other...  Kinda sounds like that's what's happening to me here with the simple Duplicate.

Any help??!!!

Maya 2016 Education edition

[damaggio]

Yes the duplicate special gives you more options but a simple duplication in Maya is Shift D /windows, will make one copy that you can move around...you can make as many as you want...any rotation, scale or movement will be repeated in each copy , unlike Control D.

An instance copy is exactly waht you wrote.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear....

Forget Duplicate Special.  I am not talking about that.  It works just fine.

Let's leave out the keyboard shortcuts; I feel they're clouding the issue.

The problem is whenever I duplicate an object: Edit > Duplicate. It says it creates a copy, but I can't move the copy.  There is no copy.  I go to move the copy, but all I move around is the original.  There's no copy that's left behind.  Like it's being moved as one unit.  I can't separate them.

[damaggio]

I would suggest either undoing your steps or close Maya and open an earlier file, then just do a simple copy Shift D and continue with your project.

[pshwayka]

Damaggio,

Can you describe the steps that would illustrate the difference between Duplicate (ctrl+D) and Duplicate with Transform (Shift+D)?

For the life of me, I can't get them to provide different results...

[damaggio]

Sure, create a cube then Shft D and move it , then shift D again it will continue moving  but if you do Control D and move it the copy created stays in the same place...the translation does not get applied.

[J450NP13]

<expletive> AWESOME

[pshwayka]

Ah ha! Thank you. I can go to my grave with one less mystery in my life.

[damaggio]

Honestly, that was the first time I ever used Control D...

[J450NP13]

I was wanting something like this...I never knew thats what it did....It will help me for sure...

[pshwayka]

Not to hijack this thread, but I accidently discovered another trick the other day. Instead of clicking on the little settings box next to menu items to access the settings, you can just shift+click the menu item itself.

[Anonymous]

I tried undoing in that project, which didn't work.
Creating a new project, however, worked fine. I have a feeling it's some weird bug/ corruption within the Lynda.com exercise files.
Thanks for the help!