Blender Tutorial : Linking And Appending : DO’s and DON’TS!

Posted by Aidy Burrows on Jan 22, 2016

? WHATS THE DIFFERENCE between Linking, Appending, Importing and Exporting?

? Take advantage of the HUMAN POWER to coordinate by setting up a large project between multiple artists!

? Animate an INFINITELY looping Helicopter blade rotation

? Bringing it all together into a MASTER Blend file

? Understanding AND correcting someone else’s blend file for your purpose

? Randomly using UPPERCASE in a bulletpoint list can be FUN!

VIDEO CHAPTERS

(Colors at the top of the video for easy navigation)

Chapter 1 (red) – Introduction

Chapter 2 (orange) – Import and Export

Chapter 3 (yellow) – Append

Chapter 4 (green) – Linking and local

Chapter 5 (cyan) – Group Linking

Chapter 6 (Indigo) – The Big Picture – Analysing someone else’s Blend

Chapter 7 (purple) – Fixing Materials and Textures

Chapter 8 (pink) – Fixing the Drivers

Chapter 9 (red) – Linking a rig the correct way

Chapter 10 (orange) – Creating the chopper blades animation/action

Chapter 11 (yellow) – Linking all into the master file

Chapter 12 (green) – Edit Linked Library Addon

Blended Blends Blending

The below image shows 3 blend files (as shown down the side).

TOP BLEND > This has the model and the rig which are both in the same group.

MIDDLE BLEND > Here the animator has linked in the group from the top blend. They can’t start animating until they get control of the rig though, so with the group selected they go ‘CTRL ALT P’ to make it proxy and select the armature from the options.

BOTTOM BLEND > Here the director has linked in the group from the top blend and like the animator made it proxy. Also linked in is the ‘Action’ from the middle blend. Now the director can create the lights and camera to render (or put that in yet another blend!)

All of this (and more) in more detail in the video above.