9

Editing the Stack 505
• If you click Yes, the two trees become
independent of one another. Each has a unique
copy of the modifier and can be bent separately.
• If you click No, the two trees continue to share
thesameinstancedmodifier,butseparately
from the instance in the original group. The
two trees can be bent together.
See How Instanced Modifiers Work (page 1–511).
Collapsing t he Stack
YoucanuseCollapseAllorCollapseTotocollapse
all or par t, respectively, of an object’s stack to an
editable object that preserves the cumulative effect
of the collapsed modifiers on the base object. You
might choose to do this i n these cases:
• You’ve finished modif ying an object and want
to keep it as is.
•Youwanttodiscardanobject’sanimation
tracks. Alternatively, you can
Alt +right-click
a selected object and choose Delete Selected
Animation.
• You want to simplify a scene and sav e some
memory.
Note: In most cases, collapsing all or part of the
stack will save memory. However, collapsing some
modifiers, such as Bevel, increases file size and
memory use.
After you collapse an object’s stack, you can no
longer parametrically adjust either its creation
parameters or the individual modifiers affected by
thecollapse.Animationtracksthatwereassigned
to such parameters also disappear.
Collapsingthestackdoesnotaffecttheobject’s
transforms; it affects world-space bindings only if
you use Collapse To. Collapsing the stack does not
save memory if the stack contains no modifiers.
Tip: Before you use either Collapse option, use File
menu>SaveSelectedtopreserveacopyofthe
original parametric object.
To collapse the stack:
1.
Right-clickthemodifierstackdisplay.
2. If mo difiers have b een applied to the object,
choose Collapse To or Collapse All.
Collapse To—Collapses the stack, up to and
including the chosen modifier, into an editable
object. Modifiers on the stack above the chosen
modifier are not affected, and you c an still
adjust them individually.
The resultant object t ype depends on the
uppermost modifier that outputs a specific
geometrytype,ifany.Ifthestackcontainsno
such modifier , the result is an editable mesh
(page 1–996). If the collapsed portion of the
stack contains a modifier that outputs a specific
geometrytype,andnoothersuchmodifieris
aboveit,theresultisthattypeofobject. For
example, if the topmost such collapsed modifier
isEditPoly,theresultantobjectisEditablePoly.
Collapse All—Collapses the entire stack into
an editable object, other than world-space
bindings. Any world-space bindings on the
stack are left intact.
The resulting stack list shows a single entry:
EditableMesh,unlessanymodifiersonthe
stackoutputadifferenttypeofgeometry.For
example, if the topmost such modifier is Edit
Poly, the resultant object is Editable Poly.
If no modifiers are applied to the objec t, choose
one of the Convert To options:
•EditableMesh
•EditableSpline
•EditablePatch
•EditablePoly
•NURBS
Note: Depending on the object type, not all
Convert To options might be available.