Okay, been experimenting with the Append->Link feature for awhile, and I’m finding some limitations, unless there is another feature I’ve yet to discover. I would like to be able to work on a group of objects in one file, perhaps with animation, texture, perhaps an entire room, or even a single car, with movable doors, windows, etc, in one file.
In my project, I’m thinking of a room on the inside of a house. Bed, wallpaper, door, chest of drawers.
I’d like to be able to have a house project Append->Link, or the equivalent, a MasterBedroom.blend file, a Kitchen.blend, LiviingRoom.blend, etc, and include these inside its own (local) outside walls and roof objects.
What I’d hoped for with the Append->Link feature was that I would be able to get two features: 1) I would be able to use low-poly objects or empty objects for some renders, and then swap those files out for higher-poly objects, a bedroom with hi-res meshes, when I had a different render, and 2) I would be able to complete an entire design of one room, with all the details, and then drop it into a project with .blend files designed by others for a master render.
What I’m finding is Append->Link only allows you to Link to a single Object at a time. That is, I can import the chest of drawers, the bed, the quilt, the top drawer, the middle drawer, etc, into my house. Then, I can change the bed object and have those changes in the house. But if I add another pair of socks to the drawer, I have to individually add that to the house project as an Append->Link.
Furthermore, if I Append-Link an object to one .blend file, mixed in with other objects, I can Append->Link objects from that middle file, but not any of the Linked objects in that middle file. That is, I cannot add a Drawer object from Drawer.blend to Room.blend, and then find that link when I Append->Link anything from the Room.blend.
One feature modification I can think of that might make this possible would be to provide a “group” object, an object that itself is a reference to several other objects, be they links or otherwise.
Does something like this exist, or should it be proposed to the developers as a new feature?
V