Duplicating Reference and keeping the transforms

[alex]

Hi everyone,

 I created about 100 people in my scene, they are being read from 2 reference files. I scattered them around and now need another batch of same people, in the same location. Is there anyway I can duplicate the reference properly? 

Alex

[blkwmnanimator]

You would probably be better of "instancing" the models since referencing is always going to bring your objects to 0,0,0.

[cornelh · Accepted solution]

@alex

So the difficulty I see is that you want your current objects that live in a referenced scene, yet you have modified their transforms in the file they are being referenced into..  Thus the original file have no notion of those new positions and transforms.  The only possible way (don't recommend in the least) is to then reference that scene (the one with the references) into a new scene..

Refs. with moves.. into new scene.. referenced twice.. This works with most things, yet you are looking for trouble is any of these objects are rigged with overly custom rigs and blendshapes, Also some shaders will break as they can't transfer.  There is more about references and shading in our documentation. I think using instances, and or creating a new saved set?  of that already saved file (import objects from reference) and create a new reference and change the name and use name-space options.

I wish you the best of luck.  

[alex · Accepted solution]

Yeah...I didn't want to go into instancing, and reference referencing, due to Maya's awesome behavior when it comes to all that 😉

I just ended up duplicating the ref and placing manually, didn't take too much time actually.

Sometimes the long way is the shortest way!