Instanced Modifiers
Coming from 3d Max this is an absolute nobrainer for me: Modifiers need to be instanceable .
Especially if you do use parametric modelling. The same way I instance objects, Modifier definitely need to have the ability to be shared.
Simple case: You model something lowpoly and you are not sure how many subdivs you finally want to use. If you do have multiple objects, it's a pain to select them all and change the subdiv value individually.
In Max you can share Modifiers across different objects, too. Superhandy!
10 Comments
I think this is something that will be resolved with the "everything nodes" project.
The copy modifiers (ctrl+L) technique doesn't solve the issue if you are using at least shrinkwrap or a lattice modifier. You should instance the wrapper obj and the lattice as well and put them in the instanced object position. This slows down things a lot while modeling and is merely a workaround. I was a max user as well and I agree the instanced objects should show the same verte positions and deformations provided by the modifiers but the Subd modifier, which could live only on one instance.
It's possible to link modifiers with ctrl-l, although this is more of a copy modifiers from selected to active thing. It's also really easy to change the properties with a few lines of Python:
for ob in bpy.context.selected_objects: for m in ob.modifiers: if (m.name == "name"): #or whatever test you want to do m.property = desiredValue* @Josephbburg * The code looks jacked up for whatever reason, but it's a good template for what you want to do, just select the objects, copy and paste into teh console.
I tend to keep a text box open with several of these kinds of scripts while i work.
Thanks for the replys. Sorry for the duplicate.
For me this is so selfunderstood in Max - besides all the marvelous ideas in Blender - this has been a big surprise to not find anything like this.
I like this idea, but do you know of the magical hidden secret of the alt key that allows you to change the same value along multiple modifiers in different objects right? It saves me most of the troubles where real instanced modifiers would help.
* @Frederico Martins * Hi Frederico. No, sorry still learning a lot. Can you point me in the right direction, tutorial etc. ?
* @Designmercerary at xoio * here is a example blog.gregzaal.com/2016/01/06/cif-18-alt-click/
Duplicate of this proposal .
* @Jason van Gumster * True. Thanks for pointing out.