Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 6
Libraries and Linking
Objectives
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Libraries, and why you should bother
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Linking assets that do not animate
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Linking assets for object-level animation
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Linking assets for character animation
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Managing your links and libraries
Libraries, and Why You Should Bother
Imagine for a moment that you are working on a large-scale animation project that includes many scene
fi les, each representing a different camera view and portion of the overall timeline. Of course, because this
will eventually be edited into one continuous animation, the different scene fi les all need to contain the same
models of the characters and sets, the same materials, and the same lighting. The most obvious solution is to
create one master scene fi le that contains all of your characters, sets lamps, and cameras. Then you create a
bunch of duplicate fi les and rename and use each duplicate for a separate shot.
Perfect, right?
Well, what if after you begin working, you realize that the way you weight painted the main character's mesh
just isn't giving good enough deformations? And let's say you've already animated 5 out of 20 shots. Or more
simply but signifi cantly worse, “What if you want to tweak a material setting? Do your characters share mate-
rials or do they contain duplicates? Will you have to edit every duplicate of that material in every shot fi le to
get it all to match?” Immediately you see the shortcoming of the simple duplication method: Any change you
make to any element must be made in the same way on every copy of the fi le.
That could be . . . cumbersome and result in a lot of potentially large BLEND fi les.
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