How do you relink a linked file if the original path to the linked file is altered? For instance, if you email a file and the file that is referenced (linked), the original file path will not exist and so the link is lost. How would you fix this?
Maybe I am missing something here, but if you link a file into a new file, then e-mail that file, you haven’t removed that file from your computer, you’ve e-mailed a copy of it, so the original file is still on your hardrive and still available to blender…
Randy
Hi Randy,
Sorry for not being very clear. If I move both the original blender file and the blender file that is referencing it to a different computer, then the directory path between the two files is altered and the link is lost (on the new computer location). In that situation, is there a way to tell blender the new location of the reference (linked) file?
'Hope I’m describing this well enough. If not, let me know and I’ll try and be more descriptive.
-Cheers
Ah, now I got you! The best solution would be to use ‘relative paths’ linking. Create a directory for the entire project and in that directory then set up your project files however you want - additional sub directories, individual .blend files, image files, etc, etc. Then create your main project file in this directory, linking in all your assets, etc. Then when you move your main project directory around, say a different computer, different drive, usb drive, etc, blender knows to look for the linked assets relative to the main directory and project file.
So if your directory structure is c:\MyBigProject\ and your main .blend file, all your assests and files are in that directory, when you move the main directory to a new computer and say on the new computer it’s stored at e:\user1\MyBigProject\ and open your main .blend file, blender knows to look for all the assests relative to to the location of the main .blend file within the MyBigProject directory, regardless of drive letter, etc…
Hope that made sense…
Randy
Thanks Randy. Yes, that made sense and works very well.
May I ask one more question, since you seem to be very knowledgeable about these aspects of Blender? When you link to a rigged character, how do you access its shape keys? They are grayed out when I link-in the character to a new Blender file. And even if I make a proxy of the mesh they are still inaccessible. 'Can’t seem to figure this out.
Sorry for so many questions, but I am just trying to figure out the proper production pipeline for dealing with scenes with multiple characters and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of specific information available out there. BTW - your rigging videos for the cartoon fish are very interesting, and thank you for those. I am going to have to experiment with the mesh deformers.
- Cheers
I thought I gave you the link to the wiki for that… hmm, well here it is:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Data_System/Linked_Libraries
You can link or append to get assets into a new .blend file. The major difference is when you link a file in, you cannot change the file, like edit shape keys, change materials, etc… you can only use that asset and animate it. But when the linked file is changed and you reload the file you linked the asset into, the changes made in the original file you linked in will show up in the blender file with the character linked in.
When you append, you have access to everything in the appended file, you can change materials, edit geometry, change the rigging, etc, etc. But any changes you make in the appended file won’t be made to the original file.
I guess I would think of it this way, in a big production with lots of people, modelers, animators, riggers, etc, you would use linking. If you are making a simple animation and just want to reuse an asset you already made but make changes to it’s materials or it’s textures, then you would append, so you can make the changes without affecting the source file.
Randy
ps - glad you found & like those tutorials, the mesh deform isn’t used much, but as I described in the video tutorial about it, a normal bone-only based rig would have been incredibly complex to preserve volume and make it all work good. Not very beginner oriented. To do the videos with a bone-only rig would have been 3x longer…
Hi Randy,
Yes, I guess I must be overlooking something basic, because I’ve linked-in a rigged character whose source file contains shape keys, but I cannot seem to access those shape keys. Making the mesh a proxy does not do the trick. Obviously I must be doing something wrong as not being able to access shape keys for a linked characters would be very crippling to a production
BTW - when I link in a rigged character (linking to the mesh and the armature) animation is only possible if I only proxy the armature. Making both the mesh and armature proxies causes the armature to loose its influence on the mesh. Is this behavior correct?
Edit: just found this link on blenderartists:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=171997&page=1
It seems Eclectiel has run into my same situation. And he/she rightly points out that a production like Big Buck Bunny couldn’t possibly have been produced with this limitation, so there must be a way
jcarter20 , correct, proxy is only useful with armatures or static objects in your scene. This solution is valid for the another thread too but i dont will reopen it :
Like the armature is the only useful proxy object, you must use drivers for the shapes (like bones in face )inside that armature. Its the form of they make BBB and Sintel…
Ahhh- okay, now I get it. So, build your rig with drivers for the shapes and they’ll link through. Now this is making more sense. I’ve been digging in to Nathan Vegdahl’s rig for Big Buck Bunny and noticed that all his shape keys were somehow locked. I’d guess that was because they were being driven by bones in the armature.
Thanks so much, GabySoft. This helps a lot.
- Cheers