How to maintain linked math libraries using assets?

Support Materials and Textures
1

Hi

I have a blend that contains a lot of math functions and shading utilities (within node groups) that I use throughout all my objects, scenes, and assets. All node groups are linked into these.

How can I add my assets into my scene while maintaining these as links? Append (re-use data) gives me a local copy of the material as well as shared copy of the node group. Linking, I get a linked version of the material, but the node groups within have been made local.

I want this behavior:

  1. Append (re-use data) makes the object, mesh, and material local. I.e. speaker1 and speaker2 have different meshes but share a perforated plastic material.
  2. Node groups within local material is maintained as linked to the library file. The perforation node group remains linked.

How would you go about FORCING the node groups to remain linked if they are linked in the asset, when they are used?

2

Well, of course it decided to work as I thought it was supposed to work, immediately after asking, having battled this for all day.

For anyone else wondering, for me it was about using the Link method (instead of Append reuse data), and then Make Local to the level you want. Only if I went all the way to “Make Local All” did the node groups become local, so “Object, Data, and Materials” did it for me.