Blender’s linking system is vital for any serious production, it allows artists to create multiple complex scenes quickly, and efficiently and any linked in datablock can be updated from it’s source file during the course of production.
However one feature (As far as I’m aware) is not included with this linking feature, and to me that feature is rather crucial for any serious usage of the linking in a production, that is the ability to save an source asset, and update that asset in the target file ‘without’ having to re-open the target file first.
This can be worked around by saving the file, and clicking the latest file to re-open it, however it is several steps too many.
Therefore I’m proposing that a new operator be added in the menu below the link option, this is basically an operator that will search through all of the datablocks currently linked into the scene, check the save dates of the source files, and if newer than the current datablock records, then proceed to link in the new data.
That is true, but I still think having a way to do it with one click would be a lot better. If I’m running two instances of Blender, one on each of my screens I’ll usually be modifying a single asset in one instance, and have the other instance of Blender open with scene set-ups, with all of the linked data in.
I’ve had a few ideas for tools that I’d like to develop in Blender, but never gotten around to actually doing any of it.
So I think, until (if ever) this feature gets put in I’ll make this my ‘simple’ introduction, and code a button that saves the file, and then re-opens it. It’ll save a few steps, although it’s not a perfect solution.
Shouldn’t be to hard to make an operator that does something like this since the text editor does something similar (pops up a button if the saved file is newer than the one referenced by blender).
