WEBVTT 00:00.210 --> 00:07.440 Welcome to the introduction to data blocks in this video you'll learn about data blocks. 00:07.440 --> 00:08.330 Understand. 00:08.330 --> 00:15.300 But knowing about them is about to become much more important especially as they are seen starting to 00:15.300 --> 00:17.360 get a bit more complex. 00:17.370 --> 00:21.450 Now we have come into contact with data lots lots. 00:21.450 --> 00:24.900 But let's now go explore them directly. 00:25.470 --> 00:28.390 So what is a data block and its characteristics. 00:28.380 --> 00:32.520 Well they must have unique names. 00:32.520 --> 00:39.330 So if you've got two things with the same name it will blender will spend it with the usuals 0 0 1 on 00:39.330 --> 00:40.810 the end. 00:40.830 --> 00:45.170 Now they can link to each other which is very powerful. 00:45.180 --> 00:51.570 They can even link across blend files and that's going to become very important very soon. 00:51.580 --> 00:55.310 McKay unused data blocks are eventually removed. 00:55.320 --> 01:02.640 Now we've seen that where we have a literal zero next to our texture's or next to our materials that 01:02.670 --> 01:07.210 aren't applied to anything because a material is a type of data block. 01:07.380 --> 01:13.410 And that's where we have used a fake user in the past to preserve that particular day to block. 01:13.410 --> 01:16.940 So it's not destroyed when closing blended down. 01:17.430 --> 01:25.320 So sharing data blocks Here's an example of that's the same texture on many materials the same material 01:25.320 --> 01:26.040 or many meshes. 01:26.040 --> 01:33.630 Now we've done that before where we have several mesh objects all sharing the same base material. 01:33.630 --> 01:35.990 We've done it with a particle system. 01:36.000 --> 01:39.660 Now we've often shared and then made that data block unique. 01:39.660 --> 01:47.040 So if you've cast your mind back to the rabbit that we've created we started off with a particle system 01:47.400 --> 01:56.190 and then use the same particle system again and then started making it unique depending on loads of 01:56.190 --> 01:57.210 different factors. 01:57.280 --> 02:00.410 You could do the same with a mesh you could take the same mesh data. 02:00.520 --> 02:06.510 I duplicate an object and then take it from there make it a unique object. 02:06.810 --> 02:11.390 Okay so let's go have a closer look at what these data blocks are and where they are. 02:11.420 --> 02:17.860 And blender of course before we get started let's press chemists on our source tree. 02:18.120 --> 02:21.440 And I'm going to put in here data blocks. 02:21.510 --> 02:23.760 I don't know what it's going to be about data rocks. 02:23.760 --> 02:28.620 Well sure I do but I don't know what it is about data blocks for the moment so we can amend that later 02:28.620 --> 02:28.770 on. 02:28.770 --> 02:30.840 But we know it's something about data blocks. 02:30.930 --> 02:32.440 So let's go hop into a blender. 02:33.580 --> 02:39.940 Okay so we're back over in blender and we're going to have a closer look at our building scene that 02:39.940 --> 02:41.450 we've just put together. 02:41.740 --> 02:48.950 Now what we can do here is in the outline now have a look at all of the data blocks that exist and that 02:48.940 --> 02:53.640 will give you a good overview about what constitutes a data block. 02:53.770 --> 03:00.650 So I'm just going to make the outline a much bigger so we can see what's going on and the outline as 03:00.670 --> 03:05.540 head where it says all scenes this dropdown we can change it to data blocks. 03:06.290 --> 03:13.460 And let's just scroll up and down there and we will see that there are quite a few things that are actually 03:13.460 --> 03:14.270 called a data block. 03:14.270 --> 03:18.470 So we got our blend file data and then it's broken down into all these little bits. 03:18.470 --> 03:20.210 Now some of this is exposed. 03:20.210 --> 03:25.550 When you were going to append these objects you saw the other things that you could potentially append 03:25.550 --> 03:29.540 including materials and other objects in the same. 03:30.080 --> 03:38.330 So we have objects here those make up all of our object data and as we can see here we've got this little 03:38.330 --> 03:41.580 square next to it so that's an object data block. 03:41.600 --> 03:47.630 Most of these do have their associated icon as well which makes it a lot easier to quickly spot what's 03:47.630 --> 03:49.960 going on and look down here. 03:49.970 --> 03:51.830 There's another object. 03:51.830 --> 03:57.030 So this empty that's selected here is the room test object. 03:58.840 --> 04:00.280 Let's have a closer look. 04:00.280 --> 04:03.850 There aren't any materials assigned with this scene yet we haven't applied anything. 04:03.970 --> 04:06.880 And that's reflected here zero items. 04:06.880 --> 04:12.670 Let's have a closer look at meshes because this is something that we can have and use to our advantage 04:12.970 --> 04:17.180 because we have a let's just count them one two three four five windows here. 04:17.270 --> 04:19.780 They're essentially all the same. 04:19.780 --> 04:21.660 In fact they're supposed to be all the same. 04:22.000 --> 04:31.030 So if we go ahead and open up this we can see that there's a lot of mesh data called a very odd namings 04:31.150 --> 04:35.500 or a lot of namings but very useless namings. 04:35.500 --> 04:40.560 So in this case there's something else that we need to make sure we name correctly. 04:40.690 --> 04:45.700 Not only do we need to make sure that it's name correctly in the outline we need to make sure that it's 04:45.700 --> 04:52.580 name correctly when it comes to the mesh data itself so we can identify what it actually is. 04:52.630 --> 04:58.060 So let's go ahead and select one of these windows and I'm going to go in the outliner again and go back 04:58.060 --> 05:01.720 to all scenes so I can see what I have selected. 05:01.810 --> 05:07.200 So I have this one here is selected again that's not very descriptive at the moment. 05:07.360 --> 05:15.820 However if we go to the meche data down here we will see if we go down on the properties window to the 05:16.020 --> 05:23.080 mestisa Tap which again is that little mesh icon the three vertices joined by edges upside down triangle 05:23.080 --> 05:23.830 if you will. 05:24.220 --> 05:27.290 We can see the mesh data is verte 05. 05:27.290 --> 05:33.520 Now if we click on that dropdown we can see all of the other meshed data that's in our particular scene 05:33.520 --> 05:34.820 at this time. 05:35.320 --> 05:43.240 And that is powerful because I'm going to guess here that 0 0 1 all the way to five is these five windows 05:43.240 --> 05:46.390 like a click on each one to check but I'm pretty certain it is. 05:46.420 --> 05:49.960 I think this other verte is the doorway here. 05:50.230 --> 05:58.830 So let's go ahead and switch them sort of 0 0 once a select every window and change it to series 0 1 05:58.840 --> 06:04.300 of course yours may be named slightly differently depending on how it was all set up. 06:04.450 --> 06:07.420 But there we go mining now all changed in that one. 06:07.420 --> 06:09.380 There must be Verts procedural one. 06:09.580 --> 06:14.250 Okay so now if we have a look at this dropdown again we see those zeros. 06:14.620 --> 06:21.850 Okay now that's important because if we go in say this firewall now and reopen get those bits a meshed 06:21.850 --> 06:26.100 data although they're all the same in this case are going to vanish. 06:26.110 --> 06:33.520 So if that was a model or meche data that we wanted to keep we'd need to associate a fake user only 06:33.520 --> 06:35.260 to do that at the moment. 06:35.290 --> 06:41.170 So what we're going to do is to demonstrate that is I'm going to save the file which is now been done 06:41.480 --> 06:45.710 and I'm just going to click revert here and that's going to reload the file again. 06:45.710 --> 06:50.400 And because we've literally just saved it it won't look like anything that's happened but we go to this 06:50.410 --> 06:56.730 meche data drop down we see there's no more Virts 0 2 3 4 and 5. 06:56.750 --> 07:00.510 They've completely gone now they dont exist in this blend file anymore. 07:00.790 --> 07:04.790 In fact all of these are now sharing the same meche data. 07:04.930 --> 07:07.360 So we hop into edit mode. 07:07.540 --> 07:08.520 Look at that. 07:08.680 --> 07:12.600 We can actually see that we're editing every single one of it. 07:12.610 --> 07:21.230 So if I go and select a face let's say that's grab all I need to be a bit more zoomed in to select anything. 07:25.330 --> 07:25.750 There you go. 07:25.750 --> 07:26.900 This is the mesh object. 07:26.910 --> 07:32.740 I'm editing not over here so I have to click one of these faces and we can see it's selecting them on 07:32.800 --> 07:35.890 every single one survie extrude that out. 07:35.920 --> 07:37.880 It's affected every single one. 07:37.900 --> 07:40.180 Now that is very very powerful. 07:40.240 --> 07:45.320 And looking at it that is if you did a duplicate link. 07:45.430 --> 07:46.480 When ever you. 07:46.480 --> 07:50.170 When we went in early and built this up by duplicating it. 07:50.200 --> 07:51.760 So we done a duplicate link. 07:51.760 --> 07:58.880 What that's doing in the background is saying that this mesh object shares the same mesh data block. 07:59.140 --> 08:04.650 Very important and very useful because I'm going to undo that blob that just makes I don't want it. 08:04.840 --> 08:12.520 But let's say that we wanted to put another door in just here so we can select it and go and change 08:12.520 --> 08:15.170 it to um assuming here it's Virts. 08:15.610 --> 08:16.120 Okay. 08:16.150 --> 08:16.830 Where's it gone. 08:16.870 --> 08:23.160 Okay so it is 90 degrees different so I can now rotate that's on me x axis by 90. 08:23.180 --> 08:25.300 Yeah that's the right way around. 08:25.510 --> 08:31.200 And in one quick operation without having to find another door and duplicate it and move it. 08:31.300 --> 08:38.540 Okay we had to rotate it in that instance but you can see that I've changed the mesh data of that object. 08:38.680 --> 08:43.270 It's now looks completely different it looks the same as this one. 08:43.270 --> 08:48.580 So that's got incredible potential depending on the complexity of your scene that you can just simply 08:48.580 --> 08:50.510 swap parts in and out. 08:50.530 --> 08:57.490 And that's where it's very important to make sure you construct your models themselves to be as modular 08:57.490 --> 09:03.370 as possible because that does mean that you can literally swap one object out for another and have a 09:03.370 --> 09:05.770 completely different feel to your scene. 09:06.100 --> 09:13.290 Okay guys it's Challenge time unless a particular mesh object needs to be unique. 09:13.450 --> 09:17.980 Remove all redundant mesh data blocks. 09:17.980 --> 09:23.260 Make sure your mesh data blocks have an appropriate and descriptive name. 09:23.590 --> 09:26.370 Pause a video now and give that a go. 09:29.050 --> 09:29.670 Okay guys. 09:29.670 --> 09:30.640 Welcome back. 09:30.850 --> 09:35.310 Let's go remove all redundant mash data blocks over in blender. 09:36.400 --> 09:45.250 Okay so what we should end up with in the end is literally the same number of data blocks as there are 09:45.250 --> 09:46.990 parts in our scene. 09:47.080 --> 09:55.410 Not individual parts but unique parts so we've got this front door here the windows and the first two 09:55.420 --> 10:00.620 we've got the floor panes which is three four and five. 10:00.760 --> 10:05.310 So there's only five unique mesh data blocks in this scene. 10:05.320 --> 10:07.380 So that's what we're going to shoot for. 10:07.420 --> 10:08.270 We've already done that. 10:08.270 --> 10:10.570 These doors they naturally save for set. 10:10.580 --> 10:12.640 They share the same mesh data. 10:12.640 --> 10:15.890 However what I can do here is actually name that meshed data. 10:16.000 --> 10:20.380 I got a call that one I'm going to call it exactly what it is actually. 10:20.430 --> 10:27.070 I'm going to copy the mesh title itself the object the mesh object title and store that has the mesh 10:27.070 --> 10:27.840 name as well. 10:27.850 --> 10:29.370 And I'm going to do that to the window. 10:30.860 --> 10:34.720 Of course in this case I'm going to tell what's going on there. 10:34.790 --> 10:36.100 Three by four. 10:36.110 --> 10:39.650 That's absolutely fine by not point nought. 10:40.070 --> 10:44.660 That used to be twenty five I think because that's the size of it. 10:44.840 --> 10:47.720 So let's copy that and put that in here. 10:47.720 --> 10:52.750 Now we should find after doing that that the other ones have hit naturally inherited that. 10:52.820 --> 10:53.840 Perfect. 10:53.990 --> 10:54.400 Right. 10:54.410 --> 10:56.380 So we've got our square here. 10:56.390 --> 11:01.240 I'm going to call it floor because that is actually what it is. 11:01.250 --> 11:08.560 I'm going to change this particular one which is plain 0 0 6 to the floor in the title down there. 11:08.570 --> 11:09.810 Now I've done that. 11:09.830 --> 11:12.810 I'm going to select this one and switch it to a floor. 11:13.100 --> 11:18.390 This one to floor and just literally go through and do that. 11:18.590 --> 11:22.140 And then in a moment I think there are two more things to do. 11:22.150 --> 11:28.790 You'll soon find out whether or not we've got down to the right level case and now that that is done 11:28.820 --> 11:30.490 we've got this one here. 11:30.740 --> 11:37.940 So I'm going to call I don't know what to call that let's find in the outline of first of all let's 11:37.940 --> 11:38.330 just call. 11:38.330 --> 11:44.950 Q But at the moment let's call it filler because that's what it is. 11:45.920 --> 11:50.140 Let's do x y and z so it's no point to five by nought point twenty five. 11:50.480 --> 11:56.400 So nought point to five by nought point to five by. 11:56.590 --> 11:58.310 Three high plus points to fire. 11:58.310 --> 12:03.040 So by three point two five so that is a descriptive name about what that is. 12:03.040 --> 12:06.550 And I'm going to update the mesh data name as well. 12:06.750 --> 12:12.300 So let's go ahead and fill in these ones here with phil.. 12:14.830 --> 12:18.660 Soon sumate move round I'm just wondering whether I can do two at once. 12:18.660 --> 12:20.500 I'm not sure if I can. 12:20.710 --> 12:25.320 But if I can that would be much better although it's presenting a difficult selecting. 12:25.320 --> 12:31.420 So if I go here and go filler and then just check I think it's only change the active one that's changed 12:31.420 --> 12:32.060 to filter. 12:32.100 --> 12:32.580 Yeah. 12:32.580 --> 12:34.410 Does any change active one. 12:34.440 --> 12:35.530 So fill out. 12:35.620 --> 12:38.980 You can also search at the top of it becomes a bit unwieldy. 12:39.180 --> 12:44.120 So I'm going to delete this cube from the scene because it doesn't need to be there. 12:44.430 --> 12:47.100 Thus removing and this one's a bit different. 12:47.100 --> 12:49.620 This is the same sort of filler. 12:49.890 --> 12:55.560 But here it is for white not four point twenty five but it's four wide. 12:55.610 --> 12:58.620 I've got to pick either X or Y I'm going to pick x. 13:00.210 --> 13:08.520 Okay so in order to save you the mundane task of literally watching me rename a couple of mesh objects 13:08.520 --> 13:13.640 here are just fast forwarded as I was round and renamed all of these parts. 13:15.440 --> 13:20.060 And I'm going to save my file real quick and reverse it. 13:20.060 --> 13:21.140 There we go. 13:21.140 --> 13:25.480 So that means that I should have no extra ones here and look at that. 13:25.580 --> 13:31.000 The mesh data in this scene the data blocks are down to five and we can confirm that in the outline 13:31.000 --> 13:37.130 the by going to data block the meshes there are now five mesh items in here and they have descriptive 13:37.130 --> 13:37.770 names. 13:37.790 --> 13:38.480 Brilliant. 13:38.480 --> 13:45.050 So the final thing to do of course after we saved our blend file is to make sure we commit those changes 13:45.050 --> 13:47.780 so we can undo them if necessary later on. 13:47.960 --> 13:54.180 So we now know it was removing redundant data blocks or removing redundant. 13:56.040 --> 13:59.060 They two blocks in fact let's be even more descriptive. 13:59.210 --> 14:04.500 Removing redundant mesh data blocks I need to stage those files using. 14:04.540 --> 14:08.620 Ah that's absolutely fine and I'm going to press commit. 14:09.960 --> 14:10.500 Okay. 14:10.500 --> 14:11.220 Brilliant. 14:11.250 --> 14:15.990 And of course I am now in my repository that I use. 14:15.990 --> 14:18.510 This is what it's going to look like from now on. 14:18.630 --> 14:24.120 I've been keeping it nice and simple for you guys before with how you and yours would be looking. 14:24.120 --> 14:28.620 Mine's going to always look slightly different because it's set up around the structure of the lectures 14:28.620 --> 14:33.040 that you're watching rather than just the tasks that are going on. 14:33.060 --> 14:34.770 How did you guys get on. 14:34.770 --> 14:38.480 Please share in the discussions if you had any troubles or challenges. 14:38.620 --> 14:41.390 And I will see you guys in the next lecture.