Animate/Control layers in linked file

Coding Python Support
#1

Hi all,

a few questions: i am building a new animation rig. I would like the user to be able to toggle the visibility of a hires and a lores mesh -after he loaded the file as linked- (or referenced). How to do that?

a)
I use the approach shown in BBB, using groups. So the user picks the group in the file dialog, adds the group to the scene and create a proxy instance of the rig. But this causes all layers from the original file to be merged to layer one. So i cannot use animated layer association anymore.

b)
Associated layers can be animated in the IPO window. But i tried to use a pyDriver / Expression on the paramter without success. Seems like it is not possible, nothing happens.

Another question about proxies: what if i wanted the user being able to activate/deactivate some modifiers on the character mesh? It seems to me that this is not possible either.

Thanks,
Ivo

#2

After fiddling around and reading the docs i am able to answer some of my questions meself:

In the Outliner you can right click on the “LI” icon and choose “Link Group Objects to Scene”. That way you get an instance of the mesh as well and you can adjust some few modifiers (subsurf visibility). Then select the first link object and create the proxy with Ctrl+Alt+P. The layer associations are still lost, but at lese you can reassign them. However you cannot disable an armature modifier (that is what i would like to do).

I am still wondering how to handle the lores/hires thing though. Can you redirect a link to another file afterwards?

#3

hmm, interesting request

#4

I meet these problem too,hope someone can find a solution for it.

#5

For hiding bones you can set the bone’s display object to an empty mesh. That way you can still transform it.