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I hope you guys can help me out here. I have searched for a very long time and I am not sure if I am wording this correctly. So thank you for your patients.

I have an object in blender that uses duplicated group instances and it uses a lot of them. Sometimes I need to change all of these at the same time to a new group instance. I was hoping there were a way to select all of the instances, change them, and without editing the original version.

The object is a hair brush with multiple bristles. I have the bristles colored for the product and then I need them rendered next to another brush with different bristles. When I copy the whole brush with bristles, all the data comes with it. But if I want a new color and edit the group, it changes on the original brush too. So now when I make these changes I have to go onto the brush, select every individual bristle, go to the object panel, scroll down to the Duplication section, and select a new instance of the new group for EVERY SINGLE BRISTLE! And I have been driven to the brink of insanity. Please help me. Thank you again!

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  • $\begingroup$ Well I guess I can just make the duplicates "Real" shift ctrl A and then edit them quickly. That would be fine too, not as elegant as a solution, but it would work. Still, there should be some kind of plugin to handle changing all the duplicates at once. $\endgroup$
    – kevMul
    Jul 30, 2015 at 14:31

2 Answers 2

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Select all your dupligroup instances and on the active one change the dupli-group group. Then righ-click the input field and select Copy to Selected:

enter image description here

This will change every object in selection.

You can use this technique on many object properties.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for this! But for some reason that option is unclickable and will not allow me to do this. Am I doing something wrong? $\endgroup$
    – kevMul
    Jul 30, 2015 at 17:34
  • $\begingroup$ Nevermind, started a new file and that works! Thank you @Jerryno $\endgroup$
    – kevMul
    Jul 30, 2015 at 18:03
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You can change the link of your duplicates.

In this example, all spheres are linked duplicates, we want to link some of them to the cube:

enter image description here

Select the objects you want to change (Right-Click and Shift+Right-Click to add):

enter image description here

Finish selecting the source object, in this case the cube (Shift+Right-Click), it has to be the active object (last selected):

enter image description here

Use Ctrl+L to make the link and select "Object Data" in the menu:

enter image description here

Your objects are now linked duplicates of the cube:

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ @Ray This works as far as changing the directly duplicated objects Alt D But is does not work on the Group Instance items. But thank you! Very cool and I will use for other things. $\endgroup$
    – kevMul
    Jul 30, 2015 at 17:38
  • $\begingroup$ @kevMul just make the duplicates real 1st, as you said in your comment, just 1 more step $\endgroup$
    – Bithur
    Jul 30, 2015 at 17:51
  • $\begingroup$ @Ray Oh yea! Lol. That would do the trick. Was hoping to keep them as instances though. Thank you again! $\endgroup$
    – kevMul
    Jul 30, 2015 at 18:00
  • $\begingroup$ @kevMul this will make them instanced again after link, just temporary real objects $\endgroup$
    – Bithur
    Jul 30, 2015 at 18:02
  • $\begingroup$ I am not the author of the post, I just did some minor formatting changes, please direct comments to @Bithur $\endgroup$
    – Ray Mairlot
    Jul 30, 2015 at 18:17

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