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I use Blender 2.8 and I know how to create several instances of the same object (alt+D). But, once created, all these instances are just listed as single objects in the outliner and need to be selected in edit mode to become "obvious".

Is there another way to know this without selecting any of them in the viewport ?

Thanks for your suggestions.

Asthalis
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    It's hard because two objects can share the same mesh, but not the same animation data, or the same materials, same transforms, etc. How do you define which state is valid to mark two different objects as such ? What you can do is put them all in the same collection, for instance. – Gorgious Apr 16 '20 at 23:48
  • I thought about adding a indication in the "relations" sub-menu (object properties panel) just like the one that reminds the parent of an object. This way, it would be easier to make sure which objects share the same original mesh and can be edited simultaneously. – Asthalis Apr 17 '20 at 09:03

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Since there is still no obvious way to Mark Instances & having to manually identify them is a bit messy. Maybe it would be good for future updates to consider adding this somehow.

My suggestion. Look at the way Modo 3d from the Foundry does this. It's simple and effective. The Instance in the Item List (Outliner), is coloured pale pink and has it's name shown in italics. However, if you don't have the outliner visible, you still need a way to discern the Instances.

In the 3d Viewport of Modo, the Instances are shown as wireframes of the same pink shade when unselected. When they are selected, they conforms to normal object shading, the same as the source object.

Mark Davies
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It is a good idea to improve the Outliner, in particular to clearly visualize the dependencies between the different objects.

If you develop all levels in Outliner you can see the name of the mesh for each object. And if the name is the same then the corresponding objects are linked .

Otherwise if you select an object , you can select all linked objects by cliking Shift+L and choice Object data.

enter image description here

moroplogo
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  • Thanks for your answer. shift+L is indeed a way to see all instances of the same object. I wish there was a "visual" way to get this info from the outline or the object properties, just like parent/child relationship. – Asthalis Apr 17 '20 at 09:08