Libraries and Linking - Animating with Blender: How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish - page 87

the main scene, as in Figure 6.18. Select the
phone and press Ctrl-Alt-P . A confi rmation
appears asking if you really want to create a
proxy object, and, of course, you really do.

The outline color immediately changes to pink,
and the wireframe view reverts to the normal
colors, indicating that this is now a local asset.
You can now keyframe the object for trans-
formation just like an ordinary object. Mesh
modifi ers can be added, so that you could,
for example, add subsurfacing to the proxy
even if it wasn't applied to the library fi le.
You can also examine its material and other
settings, although you still cannot change
them. If you attempt to enter edit mode on
the object with the Tab key, you'll fi nd that
it works! Indeed, you can edit the mesh of
the phone. However, and this is the danger of using a proxy object for animation, any changes you make to the
mesh will disappear the next time the fi le is loaded.

Figure 6.18 The phone brought in as a link

When a fi le with proxied links is opened, Blender retrieves all of the supporting information for the object from
the original library fi le, replacing any changes you may have made the last time you worked with the proxy. Any
animation work that you have done is retained. The animation itself is saved in a separate asset (an Ipo) that is
local to the BLEND fi le. But if you are in the middle of a work session with a proxy object and decide that you
need to alter the mesh a bit . . . you'll be surprised the next time you open the fi le to fi nd that your work is gone.

If you want on-the-fl y simplicity, the ability to examine settings and parameters of the object, and can restrain
yourself from working directly on the local version of the object, using a Ctrl-Alt-P proxy is a good solution
for linking objects that need to have object-level animation.

NOTE
In Blender 2.46, there is a bug in object proxy creation that causes materials to not display prop-
erly after proxy creation. Saving and reloading the fi le will set everything right.

Creating and Linking a Dupligroup

The other method of applying object-level animation to linked assets requires a bit more preparation. If you're
following along with the fi les on disk, delete the proxied phone from the scene before you continue. Figure
6.19 shows the master fi le for the phone. Notice that the phone's mesh outlines are green. Green object lines
in Blender indicate that the object is a part of a Group.