I’m new to this and this is my first post so… apologies if I sound a bit demented =)
I’m playing around with a character model and have been creating new scenes with the “Linked Object Data” option. This allows me to tweak the model as I go, fixing problems with it, and ensures that the model is fixed across all the scenes.
The problem I have encountered is with Shape Keys.
I’ve been using these for facial animations, but I’m assuming they’re a part of the Object Data as changing the facial expression in one scene changes it across all the scenes.
Now I thought that I could link them to bones in my armature and solve the problem (also making it easier to play with the expressions), but it turns out that the Drivers are part of the Object Data and so this doesn’t work either.
Is there some better way to control facial expressions independently in scenes that have Linked Object Data?
hello
Unfortunately, there isn’t really a way to win in this situation, blender has a really screwed up linking system :(. The way I got around it was to use groups and proxy objects, but they also have several bugs such as taken an extra frame to update and a few others. I’ll outline what to do here anyway
The idea is that you can create a group that contains your character mesh, the armature and the facial controls armature, then link that into your main scene. You then go into Object -> Make Proxy. Just select you armature and your facial mesh and your good to go :D. They will be posable and keep the animation data forever, so it’s pretty safe to use. One problem is, if you have several constraints and parents for your objects it can update incorrectly and take a frame to get where it needs to, making it very hard to animate. I’ve got a thread on here as well asking about that though, I’ll update here if I get any news(Might not even happen to you )