DupliGroup

Reference

Mode: Object Mode
Panel: Object ‣ Duplication ‣ Group

Duplication Group or DupliGroup allows you to create an instance of a group for each instance of another object.

DupliGroups may contain animations, objects with physics simulations and even other nested DupliGroups.

Basic Usage

Create a Group:
  • Selecting the objects to be grouped.
  • Create a new group Object ‣ Group ‣ Create New Group
  • Rename your group in the properties editor: Object ‣ Groups
Create a new Group Instance:
  • Add ‣ Group Instance
Change the Group Instance of existing objects:
  • In the properties editor: Object ‣ Duplication, enable Group.
  • Select the name of your newly created group.

At this point, an instance of the group will appear. You can duplicate the empty, and the DupliGroup settings will be preserved for each empty. This way, you can get multiple copies of linked data very easily.

DupliGroup and Dynamic Linking

See Appending and Linking to understand how to dynamically link data from another blend-file into the current file. You can dynamically link groups from one blend-file to another. When you do so, the linked group does not appear anywhere in your scene until you create an object controlling where the group instance appears.

Important

Material Transparency will not display when instancing dupli-groups; this is a known limitation of Blender’s viewport.

Making a DupliGroup Object Real

Say you want to make further edits on an DupliGroup instance:

Simply select your DupliGroup and press Ctrl-Shift-A to convert the DupliGroup into regular objects that can be transformed and animated normally.

Note

Note that if the DupliGroup was linked from an external file the Object Data (mesh, materials, textures, transforms) will also still be linked from the original group. However, the various object’s parent-child relationships do not carry over.