Reusing action in different instances of a group

Artwork Animations
1

Hi all
I am newbie and just 1 month old in blender and still trying to figure out how to use the tool.The problem i have here is how to reuse the actions on different instances of a group.

To elaborate, i am using a blend file from the Peach open movie project. That blend file contains the rig for a character (say bird) and all dependencies(armature,model etc) are added to a group. Now i have appended this(SHIFT F1)group to my blend file and i want to use two such instances of this character(two birds). I want each instance to animate on its own and independent of other.(those movements may be premade)

After appending the group iam able to create multiple instances of that group(Add->Group->GroupName) The problem with this approach is that im not able to apply any of the actions (seen in the action editor drop down) to the new instance.I can only move the character as a whole but cannot get it to move individually. If i enable any action for the parent in the action editor or NLA all the child instances follow the parent animation. But this is not what i want. I want them to move independently .I tried to make single user copy for that action and tried to create that action strip in NLA for each instance . But this time they just don’t move at all. (i made sure the parent doesn’t have any actions enabled and actually deleted the strips in the NLA for the parent so that each child can define their own starting action) Is this possible with this apporach at all?

Another approach i think of is appending the same group twice from the same file. With this blender creates all the elements (with .001 suffix) and im just using those two appended groups as is (i.e, this time i am not going to create any instance from Add->Group). The disadvantage with this approach is my action editor shows too many entries (first ones and the later ones with .001 suffix) With this approach i am able to perform different actions on the two identical characters at same time.

So My question is

Is this the only approach available (ie reappend same group from same file ) and use the two appended characters (in the new file) as is with different actions?

OR
Can it be done with just one append and have multiple instances of that with each instance having its own actions?

Awaiting for the reply
Thanks
Srikanth

2

Have you tried to select one of the character objects and press U. Then select the option for Ipos. I haven’t tried it but I thought this would allow you to have different animation curves for the objects.

3

@ijay Actually my question was about using different ‘premade’ movements on two instances of a group. I didn’t want to create extra movements (though it is possible)
It is my understanding that when you append a group it is like creating a brand new copy with the same state. My question is if i want to have two different instances of this group can they have different movements(premade) instead of following parent?. If you reappend the group it is like two different copies having same state. But your action editor is cluttered with redundant (independent) movements.
can it be done with just one append and two instances of this appended group? (looks like it is not possible.) I have tried linking instead of appending to create proxies but they are giving different problems altogether. So for now just sticking with two groups (reappend) that works Okay.