Select fixtures as a group / group fixtures together

General Chat Suggestions
1

I know this has been suggested before in one way or another, but it would be neat to have a way to select multiple fixtures together and then manipulate them as one.

A way to group fixtures together via a context menu would also be welcome.
It could function a list of groups displayed in a side bar in a similar fashion to how fixtures are displayed now in order to be able to quickly select, lock/unlock, edit, scale, move or manipulate a group of fixtures together or in isolation.

Fixtures could be selected and then added to a group via the gizmo with an “add to group” button, then saved under a user defined name (eg “headlight”, “upper_grille”, “dashboard_cluster”). Selecting the group would highlight all fixtures which are part of it and allow them to be manipulated as if it was one fixture or allow better focus on these fixtures in isolation (eg by temporarily disabling/ignoring highlighting of any fixture not part of the group).
Effectively, this would allow for free editing of the fixtures in context and then manipulating them as if they were a single prefab model. One could also hide any/all fixtures not part of the currently selected group.

Use cases:

  • editing large elements comprising of dozens of individual fixtures such as grilles, lights, interior panels etc.
  • adjusting large portions of a vehicle design to suit new morphs, stretched/altered wheelbase, bodywork shape etc.
  • copy/pasting complex custom made elements for quick editing (eg. Making a custom seat out of individual fixtures, then cloning it instead of having to recreate it in another row, making custom rims or other complex and repetitive design elements)
  • quick rescaling/manipulating of dozens of fixtures to perform minor corrections which would otherwise be tedious, laborious and time consuming
  • easily select the fixtures you need/want especially if they are buried deep underneath layers and layers of other fixtures (this is already possible but searching 300+ identical elements to find one you need is still a p.i.t.a - it would help immensely if one could select a group of fixtures which contains the one fixture you want to edit, hiding everything that isn’t relevant at the time)

I’m sure there are many many many more potential benefits of such a system and it would make the in-game editor that much closer to 3D manipulation software - something I believe the more advanced users will surely greatly appreciate.

Tl:dr
There should be a way to select, group up and save fixtures as a group to quickly find, select and manipulate multiple fixtures at once.

6 Likes
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This would be especially useful with modular head- and taillights, which contain multiple elements (one lens + at least one bulb as a separate fixture) - being able to select every part of a modular light fixture, with the intent of moving or resizing all of them simultaneously, would take the hassle out of fixture manipulation under such circumstances.

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Unfortunately this isn’t possible for performance reasons.

The issue is that each fixture would still need to cut, stamp and conform to the body; this is already a fairly slow operation with a single fixture, and it would multiply for each additional fixture being manipulated at the same time. Even a few fixtures would bring the most powerful computers to their knees.

4 Likes
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Thank you for your reply. I suppose I didn’t consider the performance impact as much as I should have, though I’d argue that it would still be preferable to manipulate a “ghost” of a fixture group and then, once finalized, choose to “update” the positions of fixtures involved. Having to wait 5, 10, 15 minutes or longer for this to happen (in a similar fashion to how fixtures load upon first opening a project) would still be preferable to spending potentially hours on painstakingly individually moving and matching each fixture by hand.

Also, 3d manipulation doesn’t suffer from the same performance penalty as fixtures ignore bodywork entirely - it would simply be a case of transforming their position. Would you see this as feasible in 3d mode only, even if it came with a caveat of being able to move a limited number of fixtures at a time?

Eitherway, I’ll remain hopeful that some future optimization may yet allow this to be overcome. Thanks!

1 Like