Duplicating Objects

You'll often create new objects by starting with existing objects. Sometimes you need to copy an object many times to create a complex object. Maya's object duplicator is under Edit Duplicate on the menu. The default is to duplicate an object in place, and you can do this with the hotkey Ctrl+d . The new duplicate appears by default exactly over the original object, so you normally follow a duplication with a transform.

Advanced Duplication: Array Duplication

In some cases, you want to create more than one duplicate. Use the Edit Duplicate option box to modify how duplicates are made. You can make each copy with an incremented transform from the previous one, as shown in Figure 3.7. Maya makes only linear arrays ”duplicates that appear in a line. To fill an area or a volume with objects, you simply choose Edit Duplicate option box again with the line or area of objects duplicating along a perpendicular axis.

Figure 3.7. The Duplicate Options dialog box, with each new copy increasing its scale by 1.2 and moving three units in X.

Duplicating Instances, Upstream Graph, or Input Connections

In Figure 3.7, you'll notice that there are options for creating instances rather than copies. You'll also notice two check boxes at the bottom of the dialog box, one for duplicating the Upstream Graph and one for duplicating the Input Connections; these options are explained in the following sections.

Instance Copies

Instances are different from copies. Instances appear as unique objects, but Maya is actually referencing the original object's geometry (in Maya terminology, its shape node ) exactly for each instance. The instances can have unique transforms and have different materials applied, but any change to the source's (or any of the instances') geometry is reflected in all instances. This can be a big timesaver when you need to change an object's design after you have positioned many copies of it in your scene. If they are instanced, you can update all of them at once!

Upstream Graph

If you look back at Figure 3.1, you can see how an object normally maintains its creation history so that you can edit its creation parameters later. When creating duplicates, however, the new copies have none of these options in the Channel Box. In other words, their upstream graph does not exist. If you duplicate with this option checked, each duplicate gets its own duplicated creation options.

Input Connections

In this duplication mode, you get a result similar to instancing , in which the source's creation parameters are copied to all the objects. In this mode of duplication, however, all the copies are unique objects, and you can modify each copy in different ways without affecting the other copies or the original.