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Author Topic: Instance / mirroring of groups of objects, some Splines, Some Railclones  (Read 1697 times)

Adam86

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Hi all, i'm sure this question has been asked a few times in different forms however what I am interested in is the following:

I currently have for instance a house, this house has a spline to generate roof tiles (Railclone), splines that control guttering (Railclone), rail clone for curtains / blinds. This house is multiple objects and it's grouped as one house. if I have a housing development I want to be able to instance that house around multiple times, with the mesh instancing but not the splines or railclones. I understand how the railclone master style works so that isn't the problem however I was wondering if Itoo could create a bit of a script that if a railclone is using a spline in a group that when the instance / clone function is being used the splines and rail clones are just created as copys and any spline references are updated to use the copied splines.

Currently every time I copy a grouped house anywhere I have to manually relink the splines / railclones / forest, and when I mirror a group it's even more of a problem messing about with reversing the splines! I could just make a copy of the house but this isn't efficient as with most of our projects we look at 50-100 houses!
« Last Edit: March 29, 2018, 12:24:15 PM by Adam86 »

iToo

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Hi Adam,

I would suggest you use the "Free" mode of RailClone (you can find it in the Style rollup).
With this mode, RailClone uses the shape of the spline, but ignores its position. Using it, you can move freely the RC object or the spline.

In this way:

1) For each one of the RC objects, turn on Style->Geometry->Free object.
2) You will notice RC is moved out of its original position. That's normal because now the object is built at its pivot position, not at the spline.
3) Realign the RC object with the spline. For example using the Align tool (Alt+A) Pivot->Pivot.
4) Create the house group, EXCLUDING the RC splines.
5) Clone the house using the Instance option.
6) Now if you modify the RC spline, all RC objects will be updated but not moved from their position in the groups.

I hope that helps.
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

Adam86

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Thank you - I think I understand now! So you can have multiple RC's instanced and only one spline but they can be in different locations at the same time! brilliant, this does help a lot! thanks.

iToo

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That's correct.  I'm glad I could help out.
Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

Adam86

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I have seen a draw back to this however, for some reason my roof tiles will not work and it displays in-correctly. Also when I check the free mode a lot of the objects flipp out and move, is there not a way to fix this so they retain the current position of where they are?

Adam86

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I think there are one or two other threads with similar issues but I think the bottom line is that we are all trying to keep railclone connected from the start all the way to the end, it's great that it can create things procedurally and create a lot out of a few objects, however in my work flow for instance, there is no way for me to just have everything in one file, I need to keep multiple files then xref'd into a masterfile.

The problem being that sometimes it's not a simple case of moving the xref (attached to a dummy) to it's location, I sometimes need to mirror it, this causes big problems with any railclone object. the only way round it for me currently is to make a back up of the file and collapse all railclones to mesh(not ideal but it's what I am currently doing) or copy the file and make a mirrored version to xref instead, either way creates more memory usage than I really need surly there has to be a 'fix' that will prevent railclones from flipping out if they are a) xref'd and b) mirrored as an xref?

Similar thread - https://forum.itoosoft.com/railclone-pro-(*)/railclone-in-scene-xref-free-object-problems/