How to attach/bake multiple objects with modifier animation in them

[Morbid Angel]

So lets say I have 10 objects which I am animating a shell modifier on them, for example I animate the outer shell to go from 0.01 to 5 over time and animation is different on each object. Now I need to attach them or make them one mesh but preserve this animation. How would one do that? I don't care about hisotry stack at this point but I do need them all to animate...

[henning]

You could just use mesh select modifiers for each element (former object) and above each mesh select mod the respective shell modifier with its own animation.
Or bake the whole thing with xmesh.

[joconnell]

With built in tools I don't think you can. As henning said it's a case of copying each object on frame 0 and collapsing & merging to a single object, then either copy and past the shell modifiers or use something like skin wrap to let the original meshes drive your new collapsed attached one, then point cache the lot.

[Morbid Angel]

thanks guys, I figured as much...I used vray proxy which did the trick, xmesh could also do it just as well but I don't have that plugin.