How can I apply (not add) modifiers to multiple meshes at the same time?

Question

I have about 200 objects that all have the subdivision modifier added. I want to "apply" the modifiers (effectively "baking" the subdivisions to the meshes).

Is there a way to do this to all objects at once, or do I have to go through all 200 objects and manually apply the modifier to each one?

Answer 1

Here are are some Python scripts that could accomplish your goal, although I dislike being forced into using a programming language unless I need to do something complicated or repetitively.

In the following there may be some nuance as to how you select the objects to apply modifiers.

The simplest is to look at all objects, and apply the modifier if the object has the modifier of Subdivision:

import bpy

for obj in bpy.context.editable_objects:
    if "Subdivision" in obj.modifiers:
        print("modifier_apply: ",obj)
        bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj
        bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(modifier="Subdivision")

Or, let’s say they all have a common name like "My.Subd.*", so perhaps:

import bpy

bpy.ops.object.select_all( action='DESELECT' )
# get a list of objects with a name pattern
bpy.ops.object.select_pattern(pattern="My.Subd.*")
objs = bpy.context.selected_objects
print("objects are: ", objs)
bpy.ops.object.select_all( action='DESELECT' )
for obj in objs:
    print("modifier_apply: ",obj)
    bpy.context.view_layer.objects.active = obj  # set active object
    bpy.ops.object.modifier_apply(modifier="Subdivision")  # apply only a type of modifier

Or, perhaps you have linked all to a named Collection and can enumerate with:

objs = bpy.data.collections['Collection_subdiv'].objects

Answer 2

Ok, I was able to (kinda) figure it out. Here's a way to do it in case someone else is wondering:

select all the objects you want to apply the modifiers, press Ctrl+a, then select Visual Geometry to Mesh. This has the same effect as "applying" the modifiers, but can be done to multiple objects at once. The limitation is that it will apply all modifiers, you can't pick and choose which modifiers you want to apply.