Is it possible to add a reference to an external (non-blend) geometry file?

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1

I am coming from mostly using Clarisse and Maya* among other tools (just for reference in case anyone is familiar with these tools and their referencing abilities).

What I would like to do in Blender is reference an external file (one that is not a blend file itself). This is different than importing from an file format like alembic or usd. Instead it would be a lightweight file link to this external file and would (preferrably) allow me to reference these assets as lightweight, packed geometry (ala houdini).

I don’t think something like that is currently possible in Blender, but I wanted to check here to make sure I am not missing something.

Thanks.

*I mourn the passing of Clarisse, and can’t wait for Maya to die. Sigh.

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I don’t think you can reference external files in different formats.
I have never tried that but based on my experience managing linked files and library overrides you can only use .blend files to reference/link other .blend files

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There’s talk about a feature like that for usd:

(see Radonly Insanting section)

There’s also a google summer of code project implementing an import stl node for geometry nodes which would allow a similar thing for stl files.

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Thanks for the link!

Here’s hoping that full usd referencing comes soon.

(edit: just watched the video - super interesting and super exciting for the future of blender. Thanks!)

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