Tagging Objects & Groups

Tagging objects so they can be changed when product variants are generated

Tagging Objects

When you tag an object with a name, you make it available to have its material or visibility changed by Variant.

For example, if you had a chair with a footstool tagged V[STOOL], when requesting the 3D file you can set the STOOL mesh's material to LEATHER or even make the stool invisible.

An example of changing the visibility and material of tagged meshes in the Variant CMS

You can tag many meshes with the same tag. This is useful in cases where one setting (e.g. ‘body colour’) should affect many different sub-meshes.

Tagged objects can only have one referenced material. If the mesh is multi-material, divide it into meshes with one material each, then tag those meshes individually.

Tags can only contain numbers, letters and the underscore ‘_’ character.

Try not to tag meshes

You can tag child objects, parent objects with multiple children, or meshes themselves.

In some editors, meshes and objects are separate (screenshot from Blender)

In editors where its possible to name mesh data (like Blender), we recommend not tagging meshes directly. This is because developers cannot change transforms on meshes directly (since their transform is stored in the parent object).

Tagging Groups

3D applications use many names for objects in the hierarchy that can contain meshes and other objects: Object, Node, Null, Group etc.

You can tag these objects in order to apply your material and mesh options to all the children of the object.

By combining group tags and individual mesh tags, you can create very complex variant systems with much less effort, fewer tags, and no unnecessary duplication of assets.

What a tagged Mesh Group looks like in Blender, alongside an example of tagging a mesh when an object could be tagged more effectively instead.