[Bf-committers] Groups bug

[instinctive new media]

On Tue, 15 Apr 2003, Ton Roosendaal wrote:

> 	group->id.us= 1;
> That'll do!

Great, Ton, this fixed it. I should have thought of this earlier.

> - groups are not removed when they're "empty"

Couldn't this problem be solved by using the group->id.us variable
to actually store the number of objects the group contains? This way, as
soon as a group is unused, it will get discarded on the next save.

> - groups are a 'global' blender feature, they are not part of Scene. So  
> groups can contain objects that have been moved to other scenes, that  
> could become confusing.

That is true for other parts of blender as well... The concept of scenes
IS actually confusing in a few ways (though it is useful, too).

> - an expand_group() function is missing. That means, when browsing  
> another Blender file (to append or link data) a Group is not expanded  
> with the objects it contains.

Yes, this feature would be useful, as you would probably want to import
a whole 'structure' from another file (that is, several objects that
belong together), so, I'll look into implementing Groups into the
library browser as well.

> - I noticed I didn't write automatic object selection (when you select  
> a group member). It is part of a group menu... this is feature that  
> should be tested if that's desirable.

I already implemented this in tuhopuu. RIGHTMOUSE now automatically selects 
all objects that belong to a group, and you can use the ALT key to select
only a single object explicitly. Glad there was still ONE modifier left :) 

Concerning the materials thing (assign a material to all members of a group
at once): It would probably be best that, if you have several objects
selected, and you change the material, a dialog would appear asking
"Change material: All selected objects | Only active object". This would
then automatically apply to selected groups, as they have all members
selected automatically.

| alexander ewering           instinctive new media
| ae@instinctive.de       http://www.instinctive.de 
|
| fon: +49-2393-220558         fax: +49-2393-220559