11
$\begingroup$

I don't quite understand the new "collection" workflow, if i have a Collection with a bunch of object, and duplicate that collection, the newly created collection seems to be "linked" to the original one, anything i do to any of them effects the other.

what am i missing here ?

thanks

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
3
  • $\begingroup$ I guess you need to first duplicate your object in the 3D View, then press M to put them in a new Collection $\endgroup$
    – moonboots
    Dec 16, 2018 at 19:20
  • $\begingroup$ Unfortunately making the collection "Single User" or "Local" doesn't help either. Really keen to find out how this is supposed to work, cause right now it's pretty useless. $\endgroup$
    – bortran
    Jan 27, 2019 at 15:16
  • $\begingroup$ @moonboots, what about nested collections? If we do as you suggest then the hierarchy will be condensed into a single collection. This is just another example of how 2.8 is not as capable as people are praising it to be. $\endgroup$
    – Logic1
    Sep 18, 2019 at 10:53

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
6
$\begingroup$

The feature to duplicate collections (without linking) has been available since commit e7ea99af1b0d933b9323be39d8b1c6f683bfba52. Therefore this feature was included in the release of 2.80 and subsequent versions.

There are two options in the context menu of the Outliner for duplicating collections, Duplicate Collection and Duplicate Linked.

Outliner context menu 2.81

The screenshot shows the context menu of the Outliner in version 2.81

Duplicate Collection calls the bpy.ops.outliner.collection_duplicate() operator and does precisely what you intend.

Recursively duplicate the collection, all its children, objects and object data.

The old behavior with the linked object data is now called Duplicate Linked which calls the bpy.ops.outliner.collection_duplicate_linked().

Recursively duplicate the collection, all its children and objects, with linked object data.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
2
$\begingroup$

The problem lies that duplicated collections only duplicate the top collection in the hierarchy, and also just adds the objects to the duplicated collection instead of duplicating the objects.

The painful workaround, (when I refer to subcollections I mean all the collections nested in a top collection, and the collections nested in these nested collections, and so on)

1) Duplicate the hierarchy:

Duplicate the collection and then duplicate each subcollection, then you unlink the original subcollection, do this in a recursive way. to know if everything has been duplicated you compare to the original collection, all subcollections must have a .001

2) Duplicate the objects:

With all the hierarchy duplicated, then select the objects in the top collection and duplicate the objects (go briefly to viewport), now you have to select in each duplicated subcollection(the .001 ones) the original objects and unlink them, conversely, you select in each original subcollection(without .001) the duplicated objects and unlink them.

Now compare collections, all the objects in the duplicated collection must have a .001 and the original collection not.

This hierarchy duplication feature is being worked on, so the full duplication of collections will be easier https://developer.blender.org/T58702

"We will likely add a "Duplicate Hierarchy" for this in the future, for now all this does is duplicate the collection, not its contents." I hope when the developer says "its contents" also refers to objects inside subcollections

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ Has there been any implimentation for the "Duplicate Hierarchy" feature yet? This seems so simple that I am in astonishment how there is no solution yet that just works. $\endgroup$
    – Logic1
    Sep 18, 2019 at 10:58
2
$\begingroup$

Save your file with a new name as copy. From your original file, append the collection of the copy

Done :)

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ This worked for me, it's a brilliant work around to Blender's broken design. $\endgroup$
    – Logic1
    Sep 18, 2019 at 11:06
0
$\begingroup$

Tick everything in duplicate data and that's it. By default, Blender doesn't copy material, curves and textures I guess.

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/2.80/editors/preferences/editing.html#prefs-editing-duplicate-data

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .