Appending Rigs

Hello everyone! (I am working in Blender 2.72a)
I am working on a short animated film and wanted to use an existing rig of mine. I appended the rig, and didn’t link it, but it seemed to link it to the original one anyways. I cannot edit the rig in the new file, including animating it. I tried making it local, but then it severed the connection between the skeleton and the model. When I tried to re-parent it, it went all wonky. Any tips on how to append a rig without linking it?

How did you append the armature?

Select the append menu option, select the file that has the rig you want to append. You’ll now see a series of folders, don’t select the armature folder, instead, select the objects folder. Now you’ll see a listing of all objects in your file, select the object that has the name of the armature. This brings in the armature object and you should be able to enter edit or pose mode for the armature.

Of course, you now have to hook the appended armature up to the character mesh, via parenting and auto weighting, or manually do it with an armature modifier on the mesh and weight painting the mesh.

Randy