move ground plane without moving linked instances

sriesch

I have instances painted on the ground (actually water) plane. Unfortunately, I now want to move the plane down, but that would move the instances down as well. Is there any way to move the plane down without affecting the instances?

Fishtales

Select all the instances; move them up; select the plane and move it down; re-select the instances and move them back down to where you want them.

Another way would be to select the plane; Ctrl/Shift/right click each instance and de-select them leaving only the plane selected and then move the plane.

Rashad Carter

I'd say Fishtales is on the right track.

When you exit the Instance Lab the resulting instances are in a group called Unnamed. Most likely you have already given this group another name. All you have to do is to edit the Attributes of the instance group. If you notice there are three tabs in the Attributes; General, Linking, and Animation. Click onto Linking and then select None. This is allows you to move the ground plane into the position you want it at which point you will go back to the instance group and re-link it to the ground plane.

Another option is to simply select the instance group, and then copy it's matrix. Go ahead and move the ground plane and indeed the instance group will follow. Once you have the ground plane in the position yo want it you then need to select the instance group and paste the matrix information it had previously.

sriesch

@Fishtales, When I select the plane, the instances are not selected with it with checkmarks, so I cannot deselect them to move just the plane.

@Rashad, when you say set the linking to none, do you mean change the "Object Parent Name" field? It appears to be greyed out and I can't seem to change it. Also I can't do a simple copy matrix / paste matrix because I actually have a bunch of different instance groups of a variety of things, not just one instance group.

I could just move the ground plane down and then manually move every instance up, and that's what I'll do if absolutely necessary; I was just hoping to find an easier way. The instances aren't actually lined up with the ground in any way, you just can't create instances of some things unless you instance them ON something, so I foolishly selected the ground plane as my random object to instance upon. In retrospect, a better choice would have been to maybe create a tiny cube and put it well behind the camera (and if the scene had reflective things, out of sight or invisible) and create the instances on that.

Fishtales

I'm not quite sure how you have done your instances but the image below has five (5) different grouped instances ;-

The big firs at the back are two (2)

The small evergreens are two (2)

The small firs are one (1)

I can move all of them independent of each other and from the ground plane. Each individual instance inside each group can also be moved independent from the others within the group.

You can see the groups in the second image as I have highlighted them in different colours. They are all instanced to the ground plane.

Dave Savage

Sean Riesch said:

@Fishtales, When I select the plane, the instances are not selected with it with checkmarks, so I cannot deselect them to move just the plane.

@Rashad, when you say set the linking to none, do you mean change the "Object Parent Name" field? It appears to be greyed out and I can't seem to change it. Also I can't do a simple copy matrix / paste matrix because I actually have a bunch of different instance groups of a variety of things, not just one instance group.

I could just move the ground plane down and then manually move every instance up, and that's what I'll do if absolutely necessary; I was just hoping to find an easier way. The instances aren't actually lined up with the ground in any way, you just can't create instances of some things unless you instance them ON something, so I foolishly selected the ground plane as my random object to instance upon. In retrospect, a better choice would have been to maybe create a tiny cube and put it well behind the camera (and if the scene had reflective things, out of sight or invisible) and create the instances on that.

Couldn't you simply make the ground plane invisible by hiding it in the attributes and then create a new ground plane to put where you wanted it?

Dave Savage

I've just answered my own question by trying it.... Yes you can. :)

It works with Smarties anyway.

sriesch

TheSavage64, that sounds like a great idea. Whenever my spot render finishes in the next day or two, I'll give that a try.