Everyhing you need to know about linking and library overrides in Blender

Discover how to link and debug library overrides in this Blender 3.4 tutorial
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00:00 intro
00:29 How to link an asset
01:45 What’s the benefit of linking
03:07 Preparing your file for linking
03:41 Library overrides
09:12 Using Custom properties
10:49 Overridable Custom properties
11:58 Debugging Linked character
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[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

🔥Discover all my courses and free rigs : www.p2design-academy.com/

[@domolutz]

As somebody coming from Maya this video is very much appreciated. I've met too many Blender users who just don't use this feature because ppl don't know about it... and in any production with multiple ppl linking is necessary to keep the production going and prevent errors on the finishline. Thx for this video Pierrich

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Absolutely, you can’t work on medium too large scale production without it. The industry is slowly migrating to blender and people will get to know this kind of tool better eventually

[@simonzhang3D]

Thats because blende is mainly used by solo artists i would say and thus not needing it as much as studios. But ye slowly Blender is more and more used by progessional studios and things like that are a must have!

[@athinasdesigns]

Thank you so much I've been looking specifically for this feature because I remembered Maya had it to see if theres a way to make my work flow easier. We'll explained ❤❤❤

[@helios4753]

Switching over to blender from maya and videos like this are super helpful. Blender is so alien to me.

[@user-oe9yh3or4u]

Well, sometimes a person needs to conquer his fear of losing months of progress or encounter bugs and try use linking for future projects. Thank you for the tut! I think now i'm ready.

[@ShiroiAkumaSama]

For 10:50 if you wanna mass activate Library overridable for all custom properties (at least shape keys, for bones I believe was in the forum from CGCookie, I need shape keys though not bones) you can use this script (I dunno if copy paste will keep formating from KZbin) but I saw this question multiple times in the internet, I recently created this one, it is for the active object btw. feel free to change: import bpy # Get the selected object obj = bpy.context.active_object # Iterate over all custom properties of the object for prop in obj.keys(): for key in sorted(obj.keys()): if key not in '_RNA_UI': obj.property_overridable_library_set(f'["{key}"]', True)

[@user-lt8kb1xi5j]

Thank you Pierrick, you are my hero!

[@indoorjetpacks]

absolutely top tier explanation coming from maya. so many blender tutorials are geared toward starting with blender and "getting used to it" and/or working in an environment without other people or without the normal pipeline of mid-large shows/episodics, so seeing a well put together explanation of how to do this is fantastic. absolutely earned a sub and i'll be looking around at the rest of your videos

[@Akki_gugu]

wow great, there is always something new to learn from you even on a known topic. thank you soo much Pierrick

[@ernestoescala4161]

I always had troubles with the link/append and now I understand why. Thank you!

[@KelimSteel]

So helpful, thanks a bunch!

[@TaylorJonPeters]

Incredible! Best tutorial I have found on libraries and linking. THANK YOU!

[@DryadDryAgain]

I've already had a few problems that this would have been useful for. Glad to know about it moving forward!

[@dariogonzalez2126]

This is exactly what I needed. Thank you very much for sharing this valuable knowledge!

[@manavdesigns]

I've just started alive course. Great work my friend

[@annielee6582]

It's super helpful when you menstion to check the Library overwitable in the drivers. Thank you!!

[@onlyeyeno]

As always top level content with excellent and concise explanations, thanks for sharing the wealth of Your knowledge. Best regards

[@idle_animator]

Thank u pierrick ! This is super helpful

[@xushnudramazanov1720]

you are absolute pro of blender mister!

[@NoobHit]

Now linking is truly demystified to me. Had alot of trouble working with linked libraries etc. Thanks alot for making my life easier.

[@williamanim4267]

Hey!! Happy to watch a new tutorial of you. Thanks you for all the work made to give us really useful tutorial ^-^. Learning everyday to be like you on the big leagues xD

[@samseddmedia]

That is so informative! Animating a linked rig doesn't put keyframes on the armature from the original file!? That's extremely helpful! Thanks, Pierrick!

[@philippelepilote7946]

Just in time for me, thank you so much !

[@danielescali8960]

thanks man , always helpful !!!

[@Morraak]

Very cool to know! I can see this helping with getting a job in the industry, thanks Pierrick!

[@craigtomes4743]

Thank you, i Really needed this

[@andklv2]

about library override - you better use icons with a chain link, by shift-clicking you create library overrides, which are stored with file and work as designed.

[@andklv2]

3.4.1 says materials override is not implemented yet

[@chagaze7199]

so impressed by your tutorials ^^ GGs

[@Barakooda3D]

Best blender linking video so far. thanks.

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Thanks

[@guibnv]

Your content is pure gold mate! I work with blender for quite some time, but was always cautious to use these features on ongoing projects. Thank you so much to clarify it on such comprehensive manner!

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Thanks, happy it helps

[@JoaoVictor-vd9fn]

This is so awesome

[@BlaBla-sf8pj]

super tuto ! thx !

[@rayanmagneto]

Awesome :) had this doubt for some time , thank you again :)

[@CaCriGuz]

Great video! Thank you so much teacher. :)

[@saldiquentin4187]

Amasing video! We use this technic for some months now in our studio, but we search for our rigged characters through the Asset Browser! It is a bit more intuitive, even if you have to put everything inside a common folders hierarchy

[@TheFrozenMonkeyKing]

Excellent video! If I had this available back when I started my student project it would have turned a couple days of testing and troubleshooting into just 13 minutes! A weird bug I had, which I can't seem to find online or reproduce consistently was that sometimes when I linked in two rigs, their action constraints would spam the console and eventually crash Blender at random. The only fix I found to save those project files was breaking the links and making everything local. No idea why.

[@yongbangyang]

I'm curious about the best practices and full workflow for game development in this context. After the animator finishes animating certain actions, what is typically done next? Does the animator export the armature with actions alone, excluding the mesh, or do they merge the actions into the source file through appending before exporting them into the game engine?

[@TheSpideyGuyAndrew]

Thank you sir , I've learned alot from u

[@ertar0]

Thanks!

[@mohamedahmed-jv4gz]

thanks man really helped !

[@Shalfatk01]

i know that i told it many times but. your tutorials are just soooo usefull... i lost a lot of time triing to fix things like this. thanks for sharing your knowledge with others.

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

You can say it as much as you want. IT's always a pleasure to read your kind words

[@billyjjackson]

This is so useful, not only in a team but also when making complex scenes alone. Awesome work, thank you 😁🙏

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Yes, definitely. There would be a whole tutorial just to explain all the great use cases. like cross scene linking, instancing...

[@billyjjackson]

@@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN it can be quite complicated to get used to, but it's well worth the effort to streamline workflow. It's great that you have made a tutorial to refer back to - thank you 😁👍

[@aiyor]

Excellente vidéo, toujours aussi pro, précis. Incroyable :)

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Merci 😁

[@beeverone4740]

Thanks Pierrick!

[@juliah7492]

this is gold!

[@yuniorfrometa4749]

thanks for this tutorial

[@mdefontaines1264]

super video intuitif merci!!!!!!

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Merci à toi

[@andreyoliver7935]

Thank you!!!

[@CasBox]

Thank you very much for sharing this knowledge. It was very clear explanated. I was struggling to find a tutorial that helps me to create a bigger project with more objects, characters and scenes. Most of the tutorials in youtube are about isolated elements and never about how to create a set o scenes... This linking system will help a lot. As a suggestion, you could make a tutorial about creating a project with more scenes, using the library importing objects and using linking files. Thank you

[@DryadDryAgain]

Today I embark on Alive! 🥳

[@Gobolinn]

[ library override -> troubleshoot -> re-sync ] this is by far the MOST important tip if u edited the source file and hope to see edits in the linked blend file, I've been deleting and relinking my objects like an idiot for ages

[@JamieDunbar]

So good to see someone talking about this. Linking is absolutely vital to a production, but it's a rather confusing process and most people don't use it. Thanks for filling the void. Have you encountered a bug where you set up a custom property to animate a material, but in the animation file the material doesn't animate? Happens to me quite a bit but I haven't been able to track down what causes it.

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Nope, didn't meet this bug before.

[@adamleyon8297]

awesome

[@Tinfoil.Hatter]

Thanks Adrein Brody's Brother ;)

[@GotInTheRobot]

Nice

[@KnightOwl_Art]

For anyone having the issue Pierrick has at the end of the video - your armature might have some broken constraints, such as a "stretch to" constraint with no bone specified. Try clicking the bone that looks messed up in pose mode to identify it, and then fix the constraint in the original linked blend file. That way you can fix the problem at its source so you don't have to resync the override every time you open the file.

[@joelngocnguyen]

Hey Pierrick, thanks for the video ! I have a question When I tried to to upload the Animator File elsewhere (Google Drive) and redownloaded it to continue animating. The Linked Collection is gone when i opened it, therefore my progress is also gone. Although I can still see the linked collection in the outliner but I can't see them in the viewport. What can I do to fix this?

[@x-rust5667]

Hi and thanks, that was very detailed and informative. However, there are 2 more issues I would include that aren't obvious and I'm trying to solve - NLA strips and character's pose library. Even after Library override-Make, the strips in the NLA editor which came from the character file won't delete when hitting X or Delete and won't give any error either. Does NLA editor have its own override somewhere? And the poses won't appear in the asset shelf, I don't understand in which data block they are stored.

[@kaykred1668]

Where can I learn how to create quick character mockups that can be used in my short videos?

[@PCgmesforever]

so is this pipeline possible with linking ? "model bled file" --- links model to -- "surfacing blend file" and ""rigging file" while also ""surfacing file" links shader to "rigging file" --links rig to -- "shot / animation file" ? Because I have some troube with materials and vertexgroups dissapearing form "rig file" .

[@ForsythJC]

I only recently started using linking, after wondering why appending two different objects of small file sizes quadrupled the size of the current file. My biggest issue with linking is that everything turns teal in the outliner when I start overriding. I might be doing it wrong, though. I’ll take a peek when I get home (currently at work).

[@kordaling]

Thanks Pierrick, i can link without issue, but everytime i reopen the Blender file, the linked file path is wrong. I need to relocate it every single time. Secondly, it seems that i can't use the "animation layer addon", even after i used the Library override do you have any idea?

[@stephengaskell1562]

I think I must be the only one doing it wrong, ha! So I use assets and bring them into scenes, linked. They are initially empties that instance the source mesh (as explained in the video) and they can be moved around. However, as soon as the library override takes place (which you need to do to access the armature), the model snaps to the origin (or at least, it's original source location) and cannot be moved. So my question, which I can't seem to find answered anywhere, is how to you pose AND move a character too? It seems that I can only do one or the other.

[@gaetanritel]

First, thanks for this video, i have a question, do you know, how can i switch to edit mode please,

[@tyjuji]

If you need to add shape keys while animating, such as to prevent clipping etc., how would you do this, if you cannot edit the data?

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

You need to create them in the source file. You can asked the current animation to your source file to guide you on the creation of the shapekeys. Or, you can make the linked data local, but you lose the benefit of linking

[@flxko438]

Anybody know where library overides is inthe newest version of blender? when i right click the outlier I can't see the option in 3.2.0

[@kordaling]

Hi Pierrick, in your amazing animation course ALIVE!, you says that the Referenced Rig(linked) does not work and we have to do a library override to the rig once it's linked to do any animation on it, is this basically unlinking?

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

You always need to do a library override to access the rig, this is not a limitation. I’ve been using it a lot recently for a pretty big project and it was stable. Guess they improved it

[@FalcoOnline]

Thank you for this great overview. One perhaps naïve question: is the memory usage lower when you link an asset into another Blend file? Could it be a solution when combining many characters in one scene? Or does the memory cost remain the same?

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

I don't think you saved that much memory in the end as these assets are "in" your blender scene. Linking is great for multiple scene projects, or as you mentionned, when you have multiple characters. Way easier to fix a character in its own scene instead of having a huge Blender file with all your characcters.

[@FalcoOnline]

@@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN That makes sense. Thank you.

[@Peaceminus_0ne]

how do you fix the sliding in walk cycle?

[@juliah7492]

yeees!

[@hamsa4478]

how long is the render time for 1 minutes video with low polys in blender...?

[@DanielPartzsch]

From my experience having a character including armature and hair as library override in your scene make saving the scene much longer than if you save the original file (eg approx 30 sec vs almost instantly). Does anyone else encountered this problem and maybe has some advice how to avoid or improve this? Thanks!

[@jaye6612]

Custom properties are kind of screwy when it is used with Library Overirdes tho, eESPECIALLY TROUBOESONE when used with Rain and Snow . When I open a file and com snack Rain's mesh would always be incrediblbly malformed. As for Snow his textures would usually be missing

[@Numonique]

I always wondered... if you link a rig, and the character artist decides to modify the rig or change the shape (add a bone, sculpt additional mesh etc...), all already animated actions are gone/useless/invalid right? In this kind of workflow, the rig and mesh and weight painting needs to be set instone, otherwise it would destroy the work coming after it, right? Because changing color is not doing much. But a new bone would destroy weight paints and everything. Or am I missing something?

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

No, that’s actually the benefit of linking. An animation just take into account the name of the bones and its keyed Transform channel. If the character rig it model is updated but feature the same controller bone’s name, your animation will still work.

[@arib8782]

Hi, thanks so much for this video! I have a question: My Blender scene is running slow because of its almost 400,000 vertex count. But I made collections for groupings of various objects in the 400,000-vertex-group file, and linked to those collections from that file using a new file, but the new file says the vertex count is also almost 400,000 and has started running slow. I must be doing something wrong, and I was wondering if you or anyone here might know what my mistake is?

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

What you link is what you get. So if you link a 400K object, the linked object, memory and performance wise, will be 400K What you should do, is to create a Low poly version of that 400K scene. What we would call a proxy. As if you were doing a very rough and low poly retopology of your model. And basicaly, you can link it too, and just disable the 400K collection while working and just enable it for rendering.

[@arib8782]

Hi, wow, thank you so much for your advice, and so soon after I commented - I appreciate that very much. This sounds like the answer, I'll give it a try! I don't know where my misunderstanding comes from, in how I was thinking was that some of these linking videos seem to sound to me as if linking in a new file makes the new file run lighter and quicker, but I'm sure I just don't know enough yet. Thanks again. @@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN @PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN

[@jesusaulloa1653]

I'm a bit confused, so if I do perform a library override to a character armature to access its rig. Once I start animating the mesh can I work on the source file cahnging the mesh and would it update to the animation file that i overided?

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Yes, if you edit the rig or mesh in the original file, your animation file with the linked assets will update when you reload it.

[@jesusaulloa1653]

​@@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN TY! but I also meant to say if I save a file using "save as" in the original scene, would it automatically update the linked file? I'm not sure if my question makes sense but I want to have a workflow where I can create a basic character mesh that has been rigged, that I then link to the scene where I will animate. While I am animating I want to know if I start saving(save as) different stages of my character would it still be linking that basic mesh file I linked in the beginning or would it automatically be updated with the new scenes I am creating from that linked character mesh.

[@jesusaulloa1653]

hey did not notice it was the creator I really appreciate your work! @@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN For does who have a similar question to me... I think I figured it out. If you do save different versions of your character but linked an older version and animated scenes with it, if you go to the Outliner and change the display mode to "Blender File" and locate your lined scene you can right click on it and hit "relocate" from here you can look for the new version of your character scene and it should link it with out ruining the animation. Hopes that helps!

[@user-le4ym5yg5w]

Hi I have problem while moving blender project to an another PC? I losted the linked character and object.

[@ngophap6706]

me too, i can not fix it

[@thffkfltm]

After I link I can't get into pose mod. How? Pose mod just doesn't appear in the option.

[@user-gv8mp8kn9h]

Thanks for the video very useful. I'v a question about rigging and link in maya mood. I would like to create a rig with a reference/link modelisation As our modelisation might have a lot of changes, is there a way to create references as maya, but in blender ? Currently I am able to link a Rig in a file, so I can animate without any problem. When I make some changes on my Rig, it automatically updates on my animation file (without breaking it). I want to create a rig from a linked/reference modelisation, the problem is that I am not able to touch the vertex, so I can't assign my vertex to my bones. And the process should not affect at any point the modelisation file. So, does anyone have a solution ? For the moment I ll don't find a way Thanks by advance. Best regards

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Well.... I believe you can add modifiers to a linked character, so you could use a vertex data transfer to transfer the weight from a proxy model to your updated linked model. But you'll face limitations and clearly this is not the path I would take. You should have a clever WIP file with the rig and the updating model that you would link from for your animation. I'm just guessing since I never got into this kind of workflow. I generaly link rig and model from the same file and edit this source file if I need to.

[@user-gv8mp8kn9h]

Thanks for the response If we use your method can we link the rig and the model source and we can modify the topology (extrude add part ect) to the source and not trash the rig. We made skeletal Meshes for unreal and need vertex group to do it, in fact Ill don't understand the workaround . For exemple we have a car rigged and the art director tell "I ll want a hole and add an element" , if Ill make it on the source the change appear on the link but how the animator could make a vertex group if we do an additionnal animation or another bone with vertex group (in link we can't have acces to vertex)? Thanks by advance for the explanation. Best regards

[@ChristophWerner]

There's a way to "override" materials. But it's not really team friendly, because it's local... but this is what a local material became. To do it you can make a local copy of the linked material, unlink all not needed nodes and edit it for your needs. To make your local copy revertable you have to use a geometry nodes modifier and replace the linked material with you local copy there. Because geometry nodes modifiers can be added to linked objects and don't get lost when the scene was reverted, you can use this trick to replace linked materials.

[@simonzhang3D]

5:12 I really dont get the difference between the 3

[@Dhieen]

So you can do one thing in a blender file and use it in different blender files and it will be updated everywhere?? so cool! Idk yet how i can use it in my projects but i need to think about it

[@Krzyh4]

Dude, nice tutorial, but that action boss-theme music in the background is distracting as hell tbh. Maybe don't use it as much.

[@dubwork]

background music 🥴 why does people do this

[@PierrickPicaut_P2DESIGN]

Just for you 😙

[@ageofgar]

Great breakdown ! Linking is the only way to go . I do run into an issue where relocating the link of a missing rig doesn't automatically reconnect the animation (action) to it. I would have to do that manually. Still, I've been using linking since the "make Proxy" days, before Library override made it much more robust.

[@dark-wd6pd]

Nice