Director 3D > Cloning and Grouping

Cloning is a powerful tool that can allow you to download one complex model (such as the “car” featured in the diagram here) and then create several instances of it, rather than needing multiple copies of it. It should be done “before” the movie starts playing as it does involve a performance hit.

Cloning has the following effects:

• it creates a new node;
• the new node has its own unique modifiers;
• the children of the cloned node are cloned.

Consider the following file. The original model group has been cloned and different behaviours have been applied to each clone group. They are all rotating at different speeds and in different directions.

You can download the source file here (right click and choose Save Target As).