Blend files for separate objects? Textures?

Hello all,

I’m a Blender newbe. I’ve successfully modeled a simple table (with wood texture) and went on to a chair. I have a question regarding separate objects and blend files.

First, is it OK to save these separate objects as separate blend files? I want to combine them into a scene later, but I noticed that opening a blend file also gives me the camera position, any lights, etc. How do you take only pre-modeled objects from these files and combine them into a new scene?

Next, I noticed that when re-opening my “table.blend”, it had become purple. Google told me that this is because Blender couldn’t find the texture files. I had indeed re-organized the files (moved it into a subdir) so I assume texture paths are relative to the blend file. This leads me to the second question (as I first assumed textures were added to the blend file as binaries). How do you guys “package” your objects? Make a subdirectory for each, and place all necessary textures in there as well? I.e.

Objects/Table/table.blend
Objects/Table/Textures/wood_texture.png

Objects/Chair/chair.blend
Objects/Chair/Textures/some_other_wood.png
Objects/Chair/Textures/pillow_cloth.jpg

Or perhaps use soft-links in case a certain texture is used for several models?

Kind regards,
Sander

You can move any object from one blend file to another with the Shift+F1 append function.
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.5/Manual/Data_System/Linked_Libraries
You can pack textures in your blend file either from the File / External Data / Pack into .blend file or for a textures, to the left of the texture name is a small icon like an open box, juct click it to pack the texture.

Thanks Richard! That packing did the trick. Makes for a much neater directory layout.

At the pace this is going, expect a feature-length animation film somewhen in 2016 :slight_smile: