Outliner and grouping question.

# 1 15-10-2012 , 11:37 PM

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When I open the outliner and try to group all four and name them do I combine the mesh first so I get all four at once? I need each tire and rim and then a group of all four. Or, do I select all four and then group them? But then I get all four seperate tires in my outliner..lol. I'm highly confused here..lol.

1 group of all four
and each indvidual tire and rim in my outliner is what I'm trying to do. I load my four tires and name each one in the outliner then do I combine mesh four a group of all four or just select all of them and name them?

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# 2 16-10-2012 , 12:03 AM

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Yeah, that's confusing. Here's what I would do. Don't combine meshes.

Make a group with one tire and one rim. Call it wheel. Duplicate the wheel group three times for a total of four groups (four wheels). Group the four wheels together and call it wheels. So you have one node at the top, four below it, and two each below those four. That should give you a clean hierarchy.

-stwert

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# 3 16-10-2012 , 01:10 AM

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Obviously I'm missing something. I did what you said but once I have all four rims/tires duplicated and named, you say group them. Does this mean a bounding box around all four and I can make another node from that? When I select all four after naming them and making the nodes all it does is select all four nodes in my outliner and I can't make a seperate group of all four.

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# 4 16-10-2012 , 01:42 AM

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In the outliner, shift-select all four groups and then Ctrl+g... should work.

-stwert

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# 5 16-10-2012 , 12:02 PM

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Why not group all the rims in one group, then all the tires in another then group both under one parent node? This way, when you're shading, selecting geometry that should be using the same materials are less of a hassle.

- Genny
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# 6 16-10-2012 , 06:13 PM

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Why not group all the rims in one group, then all the tires in another then group both under one parent node? This way, when you're shading, selecting geometry that should be using the same materials are less of a hassle.

Originally Posted by GecT

That way works too. Thanks.

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# 7 16-10-2012 , 11:59 PM

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I was thinking about this on the bus... yeah I have a life. This grouping would make shading easier, but I think rigging and animation would be more straightforward with each wheel as a group. All depends on what the ultimate goal is. It's also not too hard to overcome the shortcomings of either.