Pardon my noob question, but for the longest time I thought Blender Link function is the same as Maya Reference function only with extra steps. But then I found out that the model I had linked cannot be parented to the armature even after I did the override library thing. The parent with automatic weight option does not show up and the model refuses to stick and does not move with the bone after I tried out the remaining options.
How do I get this to work? I’ve been planning to rig the WIP model on the go. Link the model onto a new file, rig it, and then link the rigged model file to the animation scene. A process that is very common for anyone familiar with Maya. There’s got to be some way to replicate this process in Blender and this hang up is a thorn in my workflow at the moment. Thanks in advance for anyone who can help.
That exact workflow is not possible at the moment. Linked files in Blender are not like references in Maya.
Currently, a library override will only allow you to modify just a few properties of an object, but not the mesh data, which is what you need to rig a model and add/remove modifiers to it.
Well, allow me to take the public space here and say that Blender dev team should immediately get to work and straight up COPY both Maya reference and its graph editor function asap. same buttons and all. The workflow they offer are absolutely vital to the professional animation scene. The first one allow both modelers and animators to progress at the same pace, saving so much time. The second one is extremely intuitive to use, the “flow” button practically complete half the animation for you just from blocking. Implementing these two features in future updates will improve users experience by the order of magnitude, and will actually convince more people and companies to switch camp. I will not go back to Maya anymore and can only look forward to these new developments. Thank you for your reply and take care.
Well. In Blender, we can append the model for the rigging and then we link the whole Armature + Mesh in animation file.
And if we need to update mesh, we edit original blend file of rig by re-appending or remapping new version of mesh in it.
Mesh datablock of mesh object can be replaced, without changing relations between objects.
For any datablock, you can remap user.
Normally, there is a propagation of mesh attributes, during mesh editing. So, in theory, reskinning should not be necessary and linking of mesh could be satisfying. But in case, it happens. Object from a linked library can be replaced by another one from another linked library.
Saving several versions of mesh as different copies of a reference mesh file or dealing with several incremental saves of mesh file to update in rig file is a little bit similar. It is a little more fastidious for rigger. But that is not making the workflow of simultaneous progress of rigger and modeler impossible.
Rigger just have to do a manual update instead of having comfort of an automatic one.
In theory, you can replace mesh of a linked object having library overrides, by adding a geometry nodes modifier to it.
But the interest of the link is lost ; if you don’t update mesh changes in its original file, if you have a long procedure to remap everything.
During Blender conference, developers expressed their desire to bring library overrides for mesh weights.