# Good way to clone a mesh with animations?

**URL:** https://discourse.threejs.org/t/good-way-to-clone-a-mesh-with-animations/19396
**Category:** Questions
**Tags:** animation
**Created:** [October 3, 2020, 1:54pm UTC](https://discourse.threejs.org/t/good-way-to-clone-a-mesh-with-animations/19396 "2020-10-03T13:54:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![samb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@samb](https://discourse.threejs.org/u/samb)
#### Post date: [October 3, 2020, 1:54pm UTC](https://discourse.threejs.org/t/good-way-to-clone-a-mesh-with-animations/19396/1 "2020-10-03T13:54:51Z")

</div>

Hi, I want to periodically add an evil bird mesh with animations to a game.Much like CoD zombies. Does anyone know a good way of doing this? ATM I am cloning the mesh with SkeletonUtils. And I do not know how to use the animations of the cloned mesh.

[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/zbQXaeK75SU/hqdefault.jpg "eviltwitter") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbQXaeK75SU)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![Mugen87](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.threejs.org/mugen87/32/5645_2.png) [@Mugen87](https://discourse.threejs.org/u/Mugen87)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2020, 2:07pm UTC](https://discourse.threejs.org/t/good-way-to-clone-a-mesh-with-animations/19396/2 "2020-10-04T14:07:12Z")

</div>

> [@samb](#):
>
> ATM I am cloning the mesh with SkeletonUtils.

Yes, [SkeletonUtils.clone()](https://threejs.org/docs/index.html#examples/en/utils/SkeletonUtils.clone) is the right approach for cloning instances of `THREE.SkinnedMesh`.

> [@samb](#):
>
> And I do not know how to use the animations of the cloned mesh.

Not sure what you mean by that. Cloning a skinned mesh does not clone animations. You can reused the existing animation clips and just create an instance of `THREE.AnimationMixer` per skinned mesh. Similar to this example: [three.js examples](https://threejs.org/examples/#webgl_animation_multiple)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

### Author: ![samb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@samb](https://discourse.threejs.org/u/samb)
#### Post date: [October 4, 2020, 5:51pm UTC](https://discourse.threejs.org/t/good-way-to-clone-a-mesh-with-animations/19396/3 "2020-10-04T17:51:50Z")

</div>

Thank you, it works now. I was also doing other stuff the wrong way.