Appearance and Geometry behavior on CloneTree

Question

Hi guys.. I have a difficulty in understanding how Appearance and Geometry behave on CloneTree. I hope somebody here can help me.
I have a BranchGroup BG with a total 4 Shape3D's contained in it. When I created those Shape3Ds, I've made sure that their Geometry and Appearance has getDuplicateOnCloneTree()=true. In addition, those Shape3D share the same Appearance (but not Geometry). Also, I have set the capabilities as follows
obj.setCapability(Shape3D.ALLOW_APPEARANCE_READ);
obj.setCapability(Shape3D.ALLOW_APPEARANCE_WRITE);
obj.setCapability(Shape3D.ALLOW_GEOMETRY_WRITE);
obj.setCapability(Shape3D.ALLOW_GEOMETRY_READ);Next, I cloned that BranchGroup using
BranchGroup cloneBG = new BranchGroup();//clone
cloneBG = (BranchGroup) BG.cloneTree();Until this point everything goes well. Total of 8 Shape3D is rendered correctly. Next, I tried to change the Color of Geometry, using
((GeometryArray) Shape1.getGeometry()).setColors(int index,
                      Color3f[] colors);of one of those Shape3D (say Shape1). From what I've learnt, those Geometry is referenced when BG is cloned. So, this change will affect the other Shape3D which shared the same Geometry. This is actually what happened then, where 2 of my Shape3D has its color changed (Shape1 and its clone).
The problem comes when I tried change the appearance, using
Shape1.setAppearance(Appearance appearance).
Shape1 has its appearance changed, but its clone doesn't.
Any clue?
Regards,
-danurwenda

Answer 1

Sorry guys,, it's entirely my fault. The appearance is indeed referenced, not duplicated. So it makes sense that the clone remains unchanged.
Having realized this, I got another problem. I want to assign 4 appearances, one for each of those Shape3D. I want the clones affected by this change, too. If I use setAppearance() to the original Shape3D, surely it won't work. Any suggestion?