Drag to select multiple objects

[Surfer]

I have a scene with a grid of over 900 rotating ball objects and I have to apply various settings to each row and each column. At the moment it is taking me hours to manually click on each object whilst holding shift. How can I drag a box around multiple objects to select them all at once?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[frank beckmann]

That is not possible; just cmd-click to add and subtract from selection in 3d-view or shift/cmd-click in Object browser to select/deselect single object/s or a row/list of objects.
How do you generate these 900 objects if I may ask?

Cheers
Frank

 

[Surfer]

I made 32, put them in a folder and made 32 folders. It is to show how rotating vectors can make spatial frequencies.

 

[Surfer]

Another thing I wondered - can you apply position and rotation settings to multiple objects simultaneously? If I shift select multiple balls and apply a rotation setting, it seems that only the last object selected is affected by the setting.

 

[frank beckmann]

it seems that only the last object selected is affected by the setting.

This should work as expected. Which Cheetah3d version are you using?

Cheers
Frank

 

[frank beckmann]

I´m not sure ( I understand the goal) if this can´t be easier set-up via instancing/particle-system:

Cheers
Frank

 

[Surfer]

I'm using 7.2.1.
Thanks Frank. That model looks very similar to the effect I need, however my model needs to use balls because I have to change the orientation of each ball individually. It is basically intended to be a physical representation of the k-space of an image. I will have a play with particle meshes and see what happens!

 

[frank beckmann]

I wonder how rotating a sphere makes any difference unless it´s textured of course.

I'm using 7.2.1.

So selecting and transforming multiple objects should work.

Cheers
Frank

 

[Surfer]

Exactly - it is textured - one side black the other side white.

 

[frank beckmann]

Cool - understood.

Cheers
Frank

 

[Helmut]

No idea if this suits your project
* I use a 10x10 grid as a base for a sorted particle mesh
* there are 11 spherical elements
* for the leftmost row I have applied the black / white materials, the others are just dummy colours
* animate the 1st row to rotate as required
* copy & paste the F-curves to the subsequent rows and modify the rotational angles

it may be simpler to have a 9x9 grid and 10 rows of spheres. Otherwise switch the type to polygons.
you can then shift the animation by 36° on each successive row

 

[Surfer]

Helmu

No idea if this suits your project
* I use a 10x10 grid as a base for a sorted particle mesh
* there are 11 spherical elements
* for the leftmost row I have applied the black / white materials, the others are just dummy colours
* animate the 1st row to rotate as required
* copy & paste the F-curves to the subsequent rows and modify the rotational angles

it may be simpler to have a 9x9 grid and 10 rows of spheres. Otherwise switch the type to polygons.
you can then shift the animation by 36° on each successive row

View attachment 35410

Thanks Helmut - that is a genius solution - I hadn't thought about being able to copy and paste f curves etc. Thanks very much.

 

[Helmut]

* You are welcome. Glad to have been of help.
* As you correctly analysed, I am a lower case GENIUS. Even genius or even genius would have sufficed.
* Good fun with your project!
Servus from Vienna, AT, EU

 

[Helmut]

* Just in case:
* Note that in numeric C3D fields in most panels you can use the basic operators (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). Editing the start & end angles for the subsequent rows of balls is thus quite easy. As mentioned, you just add 36°, 72°, etc to the rotational params.