Duplicate and Clone

Video captions: This tutorial will give you an overview of the duplicating and cloning of objects in Autodesk VRED Professional and will highlight the facets of these functions with an example at hand. The first step will be creating a clone of the existing car geometry. Therefore, we open the Scenegraph, which can be called upon via the Quick Access bar.

Select the Skoda Yeti group and open up the scenegraph menu with the right mouse button. In the sub-item, Edit, we find the command, Clone, which we execute. Autodesk VRED automatically creates a clone object of our selected geometry and names it as Skoda Yeti clone.

During the duplication of an object, which just means the copying of the relevant geometry, in other words, the creation of a current snapshot of a geometry. The Clone command supplies us with an additional connection between the original and new geometry, where a duplicate needs just as much memory as the source object. A reference object is much more memory friendly, as a reference just functions as a pointer to the original object. Autodesk VRED creates a reference object of our geometry. We will explore this connection further in the following.

Next, we select our Skoda Yeti clone group and move it with our Transform tool. To do so, activate the render view by selection with the left mouse button and then please use Shift and W to move the cloned object along the Y axis. The clone function creates a connection between the original object and the respective cloned object, meaning that modifications on the original object automatically take effect on the cloned object. To better show this, we select the Skoda Yeti group and rotate or scale the vehicle at our leisure. The shortcuts, Shift and W or Shift and E, help us to do so.

As you can see, changes to our original object automatically transfer to the cloned object. In reverse, modifications on our cloned object don't take effect on the original geometry.

All reference objects are updated automatically. The further function of the clone command can be illustrated with a quick material assignment. Please open up the Material Editor, which can be selected in the Quick Access toolbar.

The next step will be creating a new plastic material. In the menu of the editor under Create > Create Material, select Plastic. In the Diffuse Color, the color of the material can be changed. In our case, please select the color that differs from the already existing paint of our vehicle. To do so, click on the colored area next to the color selection slider, which prompts the color picker window for you to choose your color.

Now, please select the just created material with the left mouse button and drag it with the mouse button held down onto our geometry. In this case, it is not of importance onto which object an assignment is applied, as a material assignment takes effect on an original an original object or a clone object.

To break up the connection between the reference and original object. Please select your cloned object in the scenegraph and open the scenegraph menu with the use of the right mouse button. Please make sure the mouse cursor is placed over the selected group node, in our case, the Skoda Yeti clone node, while calling the screengraph menu.

In the sub-item, Edit, we discover the command, Unshare, which we execute. The referenced object has been reverted to a normal object and has no more connection with the original object.