Link rigged character through different scenes - how to animate it indipendently

Support Animation and Rigging
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1

Hi everyone!
I’m struggling to create multiple shots for a short animation. I was wondering how to link the same character across different scenes while being able to animate it independently, without affecting other scenes that share the same rig.

Here’s what I’ve done so far:
I created my character in a separate Blender file, then linked it to my Blender animation file. Once imported, I created multiple scenes for different shots, each requiring separate animations for the same character rig. After creating a library override and starting to animate the rig in the first scene, I noticed that when I switch to another scene, the character still has the same animation.

How can I keep the character externally linked but ensure it’s independent in each scene?

2

Hello;

I don’t know the answer for sure, but I suspect it will depend on the method of Adding Scene you’ve set in the Animation Blender file.

For example, if you have created a “Scene.001” that is a Linked Duplicate of “Scene”, this will make one react to the other in realtime for the majority of changes in the 3D Viewport Editor (including what you do to a Linked 3D Rigged Model from a different Blender file); every other of the 3 Operations for Adding a new Scene (New, Copy Settings, Full), I believe should not have this specific Linking behavior.

3

Hi @Pxy-Gnomes ,
thank you for your replay.
Yes, you’re right. It depends on it. but if you are planning to do many shot in a same environment, you would have the assets to be linked , in order to quickly make changes from the blender file where the asset is stored ( as separate file) and have those changes to be reflected to all the blender file where the asset is placed. Let’s say you create an house ( separate blender file with only the house, then externally linked to the blend file where you’re doing the animation, where all shots are created as a separate blender scene) and you have linked this house in many scene where your short movie is set. Then , you realize you want to change the paint of the internal walls and the texture. if the house where not properly linked , you would have changed in each scene the paint wall manually. Instead, because your file is proplerly linked , you only need to edit the blend file where the house is created and all the external link will be automatically upadated, in each scene.
For me this is great and it properly works.
The problem is when you want to do the same with a rigged character , keeping the same connecton of the house , **

but make the animation data for each scene separate

** . I am not able to do it and even if you make a library override of the rigged character in a scene, I have this modification applied in each other scene, so I cannot make different animation in each shot.

I found this great tutorial of @DanielBystedt multiple scene,
that was great to learn more about linking and scene, but still it does not go deep into how to create each scene ( new, full copy, linked, copy setting) for the scenario he showed. In the tutorial you can see the spaceman floating in space, used in different scene with different animation.
he showed that if you want to link in different scene an external linked assets , you would to create a scene with all your props and assets , than link them to the other scene making a copy ( alt-d ) than send it to the scene you like( ctrl p) , and delete the first copy(the one you create with alt-d).
I don’t know why you have to make a linked copy with alt-d instead of using Shift_d and than link and delete . is this the procedure?
Still don’t know how to do it with rigged character keeping the animation data separate.

4

Hi there!

I don’t mean to sound ignorant, but I’m failing to see what the problem is here. I’ve never really used Scenes in blender before, so I watched the video you linked, and I also looked over the manual.

I have a .blend file with all my background objects in it - a room & hallway, doors, pipes, wires, crates, etc… Another .blend file has the character and its props. I linked the character into the background file and created a few blocking poses and saved the file as scene_1.blend. I was going to continue on this path and the next scene would be scene_2.blend, etc.

You could just try each one yourself and see what happens, which is what I did.

Full copy creates a full copy of your scene into the new scene. This gave me 2 of everything - ‘Hallway’ & ‘Hallway.001’, ‘Crate’ & ‘Crate.001’, and it also did the same for the character, which caused problems with the character. The character has a python script that works for ‘character_rig’ but doesn’t work for ‘character_rig.001’. So I wouldn’t use this method at all…

New creates a new scene, appears to be an empty scene with default settings and Copy Settings appears to be an empty scene with different settings. What settings, IDK, but would assume they mean Scene settings/properties. Didn’t look into it.

Link created for me a new scene and linked in all the data from the current scene. This is where it can be a bit confusing because it’s not linked from an external file, but from within itself. So now Scene_1 has ‘character_rig’ and Scene_2 has ‘character_rig’ and the python script works. This is the method that I think I will now be going with on this animation I’m making. 1 file with all 11 scenes, better than 11 files…

As to the animation of the character, I went into the dopesheet editor, switched it to an action editor and removed the current action, then created a new one and it seemed to work.

I haven’t fully tested this, but I will soon.

Randy

5

hi! thank you for your reply.
yes, I tried all the scene creation and everything worked. The problem is the character animation.

I have just tested the same you did it. After making a new action the animation is reflected to the other scene where the rig is present. If animate it in pose mode the character in one scene, the other follow the same movement.

6

Ok, took a quick closer look at this.

In Scene_2, I created a new action called ‘White_Nelb_rigAction_Scene_2’. When I switched back to Scene_1, this action was still the current action. Changed the action back to ‘White_Nelb_rigAction’ (my Scene_1 action) and it playback fine. Switch back to Scene_2 and the action is still Scene_1’s action!

So it appears you have to switch actions every time you switch scenes… I was thinking this would be a huge pain and could lead to problems, you know - having the wrong action for the scene and that confusion.

But thinking this thru, it really shouldn’t be that big of a deal. In my case, Scene_1 is frames 1-90, Scene_2 is frames 91-150, so just having 1 action from frames 1-150 would be fine.

Randy

7

Yes, exactly! That approach works as a solution to the problem, but it’s still not the most optimal way. After asking to other people, I think found a method that better suits the purpose.

  1. Link the rigged character from an external Blender file into a dedicated scene, which we’ll call “ASSETS” (used solely to store assets). To do this, go to File > Link and import the rigged character.
  2. Once the collection is imported, right-click on it and select Library Override > Make > Selected and Content.
  3. After creating the override, right-click the collection again and select Copy (or press Ctrl + C).
  4. Next, create a new empty scene, which will be the actual scene used for animation. In this new scene, right-click anywhere and choose Paste Object Data.

By following this workflow, you can repeat the process for additional scenes using the same methodology. This ensures that you won’t encounter issues, and any actions or animations created will remain independent of each other.
let me know!

8

Glad you found a solution!

I didn’t test your solution because I don’t need it, I’m happy with 1 action spread across multiple scenes. I don’t need separate actions for each scene.

My next suggestion would’ve been a python script to change actions on objects to automate having to change actions manually on all objects. But it’s not needed since you found a way to do what you want.

Good luck!
Randy