Is it if I linked an object from another .blend file when I edit the object on the other .blend file, it will be updated too?
I am frequently updating my character’s models so I need to link them to avoid the trouble of re-importing then in each .blend file?
Short answer: Use Append in almost all cases.
If you Link assets from linked.blend to main.blend then main.blend will always rely on linked.blend. Relocating projects with linked assets can be problematic. Another drawback is you cannot have multiple instances of a linked rigged asset each with unique poses.
Only use linked assets when working with a large team where each person is working on a different part of the project but need to see what others are working on, and even then you will want to remove the linked assets and replace them with appended ones in the very end once it’s finished.
More advanced tips:
If you have things made of multiple Objects you want to work on outside of your main.blend the best workflow I’ve found is to use Groups. Pay attention to keeping objects at a consistent scale, and Apply Scale to Objects whenever it makes sense to do so. For example you can have kitchensink.blend and all of its Objects are in the “KitchenSink” Group. If you make changes to kitchensink.blend then within main.blend select everything belonging to the “KitchenSink” Group and delete. Save As, close main.blend, and re-open it (this clears the ghost data that might otherwise prevent you from re-Appending a Group with the same name). Then Append the more recent “KitchenSink” Group.
So it is not a good idea for animated objects. I will only use it for static objects then since I also update the level mesh frequently.
Yeah, with animated Objects it could get really complicated. If you want to use it for static Objects that’s fine, just remember to replace the Linked data with Appended data in the end. I had an experience where I relocated a folder, all the links broke, and things were missing from my scene. This happened even though all the assets were inside that one folder and were supposedly using relative file paths.
So I don’t trust linking except for special group collab situations or cases where you need to go back and forth a lot between .blend files. And in either case you want to swap those linked versions with appended versions once you are done editing them.
Alright. Thanks for the heads up.