in a recent thread i discussed some issues i was having using Lisa's Botanicals. now that that situation is under control thanks to SamTherapy and Acadia, i want to do more...

some of the props are groups of flowers. when i load them, they show up as individual objects. if i make one the parent of the others, i can rotate them as a group. that's great.

however, if i want to resize the entire group, i have to resize each one and in addition they do not retain the same relative spacing. one thing i tried was to make a pz3 file and then changed the file type to a character file type. they load all at once and rotate together but they are still individual objects and cannot be resized together.

so, can i combine them all together into one object in some kind of reasonable way while maintaining their relatives sizes and spacing? is this possible without using some other software?

i would get it like i want it then export everything as an obj.then import it,be sure to uncheck all boxes so it loads right.then save it as a prop.

It is.
Load those flowers and organize them the way you want.
Then choose File->Export->Wavefront .OBJ
Choose a name for your flower group, leave the checkboxes with the export options (As Morph Target, Weld identical vertices, etdc) as they are, and check the items you want to export in the Hierarchy editor view that you're going to see.

Start a new scene.
Choose File->Import->Wavefront .OBJ and uncheck all import options. Browse for the .OBJ file you just exported.
Now you have one single object that represents the flower group.
You can save that prop to your props library.

Caveat: you no longer have the option to move/rotate/scale the individual flowers in the flower group prop.

Another way:

• choose one of the flowers as the "base" flower;
• parent all other flowers to this base flower.
• select the base flower and open the hierarchy window (Window->Hierarchy Editor).
• Click the "Create new figure" button in the lower right corner of the hierarchy editor and give it a meaningful name (like "FlowerGroup")

You now have a "FlowerGroup" figure in your Figures/New Figures library. You can load that figure into your scenes, you can scale the entire figure by selecting its Body and use the scale dials, and you can still move/rotate/scale the individual flowers in the group, even show and hide individual flowers of the group.

Hope this helps,

Steven..

very cool. that was more straight forward than i thought. thanks a lot for the solutions, guys.

svdl: (Steven) you were the solution to the first part of the adventure. i used your script for setting normals forward in case you didn't read that thread. i am using more and more of your scripts. i must owe you dinner at least....