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[Closed] Clones Nodes without adding new Object to Scene?

Hello,

I was working on an Array aspect of my tool, and I remembered/decided to try the built in Array tool that Max has.
However, I’m not sure what’s happening/how it works, but it looks like they are duping an Object, internally, and not as a real scene object… ?

Either that, or just hiding/not displaying the fact they are doing so.
But when I look at the Select from Scene Window, I do not see any new objects listed, but I see new objects in the Viewport.

Their tool also seems to work with Groups/Lights/Splines/Geometry etc, which is what I want to support.
So I am wondering if whatever method they are using, would be much faster for previewing, then doing a straight CloneNodes option?

Any ideas?

Thanks!

4 Replies

i’m pretty sure the cloned objects are real objects in the scene… they only don’t update scene list in scene manager.

hmmm. Interesting.

Yeah, I don’t know how else they would do it. Seems like it has to be something like that…?

If you are referring to the Preview of the Array tool, they are indeed real nodes.
Try print objects or objects.count while previewing.

Ah ok. Yeah, I figured it was some trick, to hide the objects in some ways.
Was mainly hoping to fix some issues with CloneNodes, if was another method.

Currently using CloneNodes, in order to preserve Groups/Heirarchy, it causes my SubObjectLevel to Exit, vs. Instance/Copy methods.
So then it slows down my tool by quite alot. Like maybe 3-4 seconds slower, from the Mod panel changes.

I think the clone operation itself is fast, just the exit/re-entry into the SO Level is slow.
But my tool is based on SO Selections, and I don’t want myself/the user to clone nodes, then have to keep manually going back into the SO level they were in.