This post pretty much sums up what I'm talking about, but just wanted to make some additional comments (and put my vote in for this feature).

http://www.esenthel.com/community/showth...ight=group

It would be great if you could not only group objects, but them create a prefab from them (that is what UDK calls it). It would simply just be a list of refrences to objects and their relative matrix. When you get a group of objects how you want them in the world editor, you could select to group them into a prefab. Then you can places prefabs into the world and move them around without having to think of all the individual objects.

For example, I have a bridge that consists of the visible bridge object, a non-visible collision mesh object and a non-visible navigation mesh object. They all need to be separate objects, and the last two only display in the editor, not in game. If I want to move the bridge, I need to move all three objects. As dominoe pointed out in the other thread, it can get tricky.

Isn't grouping and prefabs the same thing?

This is listed as currently in development on the roadmap.

Well I guess it depends on how you define them.

For example, if you have a house with furniture in it, you could group it so that you can move the house around the world and all the furniture goes with it. That would be a group within that world. But then if you want to create another copy of that same house in the same world or in a new world, you'd have to manually set up all the objects again and then group those too.

Instead, it would be better to define the first group as a prefab. Then you can just create copies of that prefab (even in other worlds) without having to set them up again.

Yes a very important feature and actually a must have it was called Prefabs in Hl2 also if I remember correctly.

UDK,Gamestudio3d,Trinigy,HL,HL2,Unity uses prefabs for their names. It's really just grouping with a matrix reference point.

eg Prefab in UDK =

Prefab1
-Building
-Interior
-Chairs
-Chair1 / Pos / material
-Chair2 / Pos / material
-Doors / Door frames
-Entrance / Pos / material
etc.

When stored and used as prefabs all the object uses the Prefabs matrix as relative point to their positions and not each ones seperate.

I wanted to write a post about the creation of the engine functionality, which called on other engines 'prefab'. But I see that has already been asked about it.
Is there any progress on this improvement?
For larger projects, it greatly simplifies the job.

(03-30-2011 07:08 AM)Driklyn Wrote:  Isn't grouping and prefabs the same thing?

This is listed as currently in development on the roadmap.