Libraries and Linking - Animating with Blender: How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish - page 94

Don't panic. This can almost certainly be fi xed. There are a number of reasons that your links might be
broken, and each has its own remedy. These only apply to libraries that are linked with relative paths.

WARNING
When attempting to fi x broken links, do not save any of the shot fi les you have opened. Saving
a fi le with a broken link can result in losing the link, and possibly other local data, entirely, mak-
ing it unrepairable. Of course, if you are fi xing the original library fi les themselves, any changes
you make will have to be saved. But avoid saving any fi le that reports broken links.

● If only a single link out of many in your fi le is broken, then the culprit lies with the original library fi le.
First, examine the supposed path in the Outliner. Look on your disk for the fi le. It is possible that the
library fi le has either been moved to another directory or that the fi lename has been changed. In either
case, simply move the fi le back to its original location or restore its original fi lename, both of which can
be obtained from the Outliner in Library view. If the path and fi lename are correct, you will need to
look inside the Library fi le. Most likely, the name of the original object has been changed. You need to
change it back to its original name to restore the link.
● If some, but not all, of your links are broken, then fi les have been moved or renamed. If all of the links
were to the same fi le, check to make sure that fi le's name and path appear as they do in the Outliner.
● If all of the links in a fi le are broken, there could be a number of reasons. First, has the shot fi le been
moved from its original directory? If it is not in the same position in the directory structure relative to
the libraries as it was when the links were made, it will fail. To fi x this, simply move the fi le back to its
original directory. If that is not the case, then it is almost certain that somewhere along the way a direc-
tory has been renamed or moved. This will cause all links to fail. You must restore the original directory
structure for the links to function again.
● In addition to the information available in the Outliner and the console, you can also have Blender gen-
erate a report on any missing links. In the main File menu, there is an entry for External Data that has a
number of options. From that menu, choose Report Missing Files . With this command, Blender gen-
erates a text fi le with a list of any missing links that can be viewed directly in a Text Editor window.

It's pretty obvious from the troubleshooting advice given here that maintaining fi le and directory names, as
well as their locations, is of primary importance when dealing with libraries and linking, and that changing
them, either accidentally or on purpose, will result in problems. The organized directory structure suggested
in Chapter 3 is an attempt to minimize your need to move things around when you've begun to work. Of
course, you might run into a situation where you need to move a fi le. If it's a shot fi le that contains lots of
links, it turns out that this is not so hard to do.

Moving a Shot File and Maintaining Its Links

If you want to move a shot fi le to another part of the overall directory structure of your project, use the
File

> External Data menu to select Make All Paths Absolute . Then save the fi le and quit Blender.