[Bf-funboard] recuring transformations of duplications

[Matt Ebb]

On 20 Feb 2005, at 12:00 AM, alex wrote:

> On Fri, 18 Feb 2005, Robert Christian wrote:
>
>> Hi all, this is my first submission. This is a feature in xsi (where 
>> I get most of my ideas from, since I used to have a student copy). In 
>> xsi, if the user duplicates and object, and then transforms it, 
>> whether it be translation, rotation, or scalling, every duplication 
>> that follow will have the same transforms applied again. So if I want 
>> to quickly lay some rail road ties down, instead of using dupliverts, 
>> this would be a lot faster. I just duplicate and move the object, and 
>> then duplicate, duplicate, duplicate... However many I want, real 
>> fast like that. Of course the user might not always want that. In 
>> xsi, you freeze the history of the object before duplicating it and 
>> this effect doesn't occur, iirc. Blender would need to use a pop-up 
>> menu I suppose. What this gives you that dupliverts and dupliframes 
>> don't, are the rotation and scalling changes. Although I'm sure it 
>> can be done, this way is really fast.
>
> Uhm well, you could just do the transform inside editmode, or use the
> Copy attributes menu. Or am I not understanding?

I think he means that each time, the last transform gets applied again, 
additively. This reminds me of the old 'Step and Repeat' feature in 
QuarkXpress. Basically, you did 'step and repeat', enter in the 
co-ordinates (say +50 x, +20 y), then every time you duplicate after 
that, each object gets added 50 units to the right and 20 units above 
the last one.

You could think of it as a more flexible alternative to things like the 
spin tool - say you're making markings on a clock, you could just set 
the right pivot point, duplicate, rotate 30 degrees, then just hit 
duplicate+repeat a bunch of times for the markings to get repeated 
around with them all rotated into place.

Maybe a way to integrate something like that in Blender would be a 
'repeat last transformation' command, so you could transform, 
duplicate, repeat last, duplicate, repeat last, etc. Or maybe it would 
be faster to just make a command 'Duplicate with last transformation' 
(not as flexible though). This is also sounding rather similar to 
joeedh's ideas about macros.

Matt
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