Affect the same properties of mulitple objects through the UI
Hi all,
I'm coming from a Maya background, so there are a few things I'm missing in my Blender experience which slow me down when animating.
For me a big limitation of Blender at the moment is the ability to affect or add properties to multiple objects, for instance, trying to change the value of the "same" custom property on multiple objects is not possible. I know you can copy transforms and other data between objects, but not things like custom properties.
For example, if you have a "blink" control on one eye, you would need to keyframe that control on each object separately. It's quite inefficient.
This inability to affect multiple objects through the UI trickles down to adding properties to keying sets. Whilst keying sets are super useful, it seems silly to go to each bone/control and add the same properties to the keying set.
My suggestion would be if you had a context menu that is initiated with a modifier key (shift, alt or ctrl) + right-click, then you could choose to key properties of all selected objects.
Apologies if the features already exist, but if it does, it's not very intuitive at the moment.
Kind regards, Ed
7 Comments
For what it's worth, using the Alt key does actually, in some cases, apply the new value for all selected objects. For instance, with multiple objects selected, if you Alt+click on any Transform value box, it will let you set that value for all those objects. Same goes for modifiers, as long as modifiers have the same name. I have no idea if it somehow works for keyframes too (doubt it).
More troublesome is that this is not communicated in any way in the UI: alt+click>enter value and click>alt+enter value does different things, for instance, and the UI doesn't tell you if the action applied to multiple objects indeed, so I find myself having to check all objects one by one if the batch action really worked, all the time. I really do hope this will get attention some time.
* @Faruk Ahmet * Great! Learnt something new, thanks :) Alt+click and alt+enter do the same thing. It does work with keyframes if you have Auto Keying on. However, custom properties aren't affected by this either way.
Found this addon that allows you to copy custom properties between objects and armatures, but not ideal for every situation. blenderartists.org/t/addon-copy-custom-properties/591562
Would be great if you could affect the custom properites of all selected items relative to their current value too.
* @etufo2 *
They don't. Suppose you have two objects; first one (active object) is at LocX=5, and second one at LocX=10. Select both of them. The Transform panel (in the N-menu) will show only the active object's values. Now:
* @Faruk Ahmet * Oh, I see. Tried it out now. Works well. If that worked for custom properties, that would be great. Thanks for tips. I just tried holding alt+LMB drag on the values, it moves them relative as well!!!
This would be very useful. Also, the ability to this (or some of this) from the outliner would be excellent.
How does this differ from <kbd>I</kbd>→Available?
* @Jason van Gumster * Yes, this does allow you to set new keyframes on properties with existing keyframes, but it doesn't allow you to change the value of those properties without selecting each individual object first.