Clone nodes? For item insertion points, auto-filled...

JD_Mortal

Clones are usually in two flavors... Linked "matching" clones, or Unlinked, "unique" clones. The savings in the scene and in rendering, is variable, but the concept is the same.

Duplicate objects, "matching" or "unique", are spawned from nodes. (Nodes bound to other objects, or to the scene.) Reducing duplicate "same object", copies, saving memory.

What I would like, is the ability to create a "node", say... "Buttons", and have it auto-increment, blindly... And auto-fill with any object I load into that bound-item that has the "Buttons" node, populating all 40 of the nodes with the corresponding cloned button. Not loading 40 individual "objects" of the buttons. (For fast-moving drawing in the editor, the clones would all be exactly the same as the original loaded clone, then when motion stops, you re-draw and calculate the "cloned-variation", individually per location.)

Additionally, each clone can be deformed, uniquely or have one deformation change every item at once, if it is not Unique clones.

Things this is commonly used for...

- Trees, Bushes, Shrubs, Grass, Buttons, Spider-legs, Crab-legs, Walls, Destructible bricks, Barrels, Scraps of paper, Leaves, Other models in a crowd, Buildings... Endless list of items.

The trick is "How they are used", both in code, representing them in the scene-editing, and rendering. Additionally, when exporting and saving too.

Cloned items in the Tree would be indicated by a unique color dot near the parent-clone, even if it was a unique clone, as unique clones can still have global edits available, just not reverse global alterations. (Altering the unseen parent edits them all, editing an individual, unless it is not unique, alters just that one item. Normally rotations, scales and translations would be done at the "node" that the clone is bound to. So that would not rotate all clones.)

Richard Haseltine

Look at Rigid Follow Nodes.