Welcome to Importing Blender Files!
In this video we'll be showing you how to import multiple
Blender files into a scene. We're going to be learning the difference
between append and linked and understanding that
a composited scene can exist with both types in it.
So appending! So this is great when making a
scene with multiple models. And note here that you have control
over the model, it's scale and position,
and you can edit the model. So it's like taking
a copy into the current Blender file. So a great
example of that would be a coffee table plus two cups, which
are just one .blend file backup, or indeed, you'd never
guess it, a bowling ball plus multiple pins! So let's have
a look at linked! Now, we're making an object
of components, so if it's one object that has multiple
components in it that make up this overall object.
So you do have no control over the model's position,
scale, etc., and you cannot edit
the model, it's done in the source file. So if you need to
adjust anything, when you link an object into your scene,
you have to change the actual .blend file itself and then
reopen the file and it'll come through. A great example there would be like
an anatomical model, where you've got a bone layout
and you want to add muscles on top. Well you can do the muscles in a separate
Blender file and move them in, etc. etc., into the right
position.
Let's explore this now in Blender!
So here we are with the bowling ball we've created! Now the first
thing I will want to do is go over into the Outliner here and
just do a bit of tidying up, because we've still got items in here we don't
need, and we're working on this Icosphere. Well let's name that, straight away,
BowlingBall, if you haven't done it already. If you have, well done! Cube,
well we're not using that anymore, so I'm going to delete that, and the same with Sphere.
So we've got a much more simplified model here. Now I'm going to go to
File and Save As, and I'm just going to make sure
that's saved in the right place for me.
There we go, so that is saved! Now,
we're going to open a brand new Blender file,
and the first thing we're going to do is, we're just going to setup a little stage
for this to work on. So I'm going to delete the
Cube that we have there, and then, I'm going to add a
Mesh and I'm just going to add a Plane. Ah that's quite small, at
the moment, so I'm just going to boost that up, let's say
16 on the Radius. So that's a nice floor plane for our stuff to
work on there, so there we go! Let's now
import one of those models! So let's import the bowling ball first of all!
See to do that you'll want to go to File, and we've got our two
options down here, we've got Link and Append. Now,
in this case, if we Link all of this stuff in, it will appear at the origin
in the middle of our screen, because that's where the model was produced and
it will be of no use to us, so we are going to be using Append.
So you simply go to File, Append,
or you can use Shift and F1, and then, go find your file.
So mine is in my bowling assets folder. Now you
obviously will have setup a project folder and be working
from that, so go grab your Bowling Ball from there. Once you've clicked on
Bowling Ball, it's not opened it up, it's opened up this new
hierarchy, so a .blend file is a container file of
lots of other Blender objects, settings, etc. as you can see down there.
And we want Object, so click on
Object, and there's our Bowling Ball. And if we hadn't renamed
it, that would have said Icosphere and there would have Cube and UV
Sphere or just Sphere down here, as well. So we want Bowling Ball, you can double-click that,
or just click here and then click Append from Library up here, there's the
Bowling Ball in our scene! Now it's come in on the origin. I'm just going to
shift it over now, because the next thing I'm going to ask you to do
is import the pin. So it's challenge
time!
It's time to Import the Bowling Pin! So go ahead now
and import the pin, and do make sure that your bowling ball
and pin are the same relative scale.
So pause the video now and go give that a go!
OK guys, welcome back! Let's hop straight
on over into Blender!
Right, so let's get this pin into our scene! So I'm going to
go to File, Append. Now, I'm already
here, I'm just going to click up one, because I know... Ooh, and again
and there's my Bowling Pin. So now that's in our...
There Object and Pin. Append from Library.
So we can see here that the ball and the pin
are at different scales. In fact, I think the
bowling ball itself, because of my mistake earlier,
is just over twice the size. Instead of making it a
Diameter of 2.16, I made it a
Radius of 2.6. So my mistake, but we'll go
ahead and correct that now. Now we have two options, if we knew
we were going to use this ball over and over and over again, then what
we'd want to do is edit the initial .blend file
of the bowling ball itself, otherwise
we could edit it in the scene as well. So because we've appended it, we can just
multiply it by a scale factor to bring it back to the right amount.
I'm going to do things quite properly, because there's a good chance that I'll want
to use this bowling ball at some other point, in either this course
or in a game I'm producing or something else. I don't want to have to keep remembering
to rescale it. So I'm going to Save my file
now, and I'm going to call this
Bowling Alley. Why not, it's descriptive of what we're doing.
And just save that file. Great! I'm now going
to go back to my original bowling ball.
There we go! And we're going to have to change the scaling on
this. Now, I've already done the math and the basic
scale here, because... Oh, I don't want calendar, I want
calculator. ...we have a bowling ball that
is 2.6 in diameter, it should have been in radius. So
we can already sort of guess we're going to be multiplying it by something like 0.5 to half
the size, but the proper radius it should have been is...
Well Diameter was 2.16 and
this is going to be 1.08.
So we need to do 1.08, which is
our size we want it to be, and the size it currently is is
2.6, so I'm going to divide that by 2.6.
And we can see there, I need to scale this by a factor
of 0.415. I'm not going to worry about the other bits
involved there, so 0.415. OK,
so scale with the S key. Oh, that's selected first!
Scale with the S key. Excellent! And
then, we need to just go 0.415
Enter, and we're going to
save that now. So that's over it in the bowling ball, and it's now the right
relative size to the other model. Now, I'm going to go File,
definitely saved it, and I'm going to go Open and go to our Bowling
Alley. And you'll notice that this hasn't changed and that's because it's
appended and not linked. So I'm just going to Delete that from our
scene, and I'm going to go File, Append,
go up up, and go to our Bowling Ball,
and go to Object, go to Bowling Ball, and Append
from Library. Now if you got the scaling right the first time,
unlike me, then you wouldn't have to go though that. But there are
going to be times when you
mess up your scale, at some point.
Don't worry! And in this case, the bowling ball was so simple we could almost go back
and model it again, but that's not always going to be the case. You're going to come
across a, you've spent hours and hours doing something and it's one and a
half times too big or something silly like that. Don't worry, you can always scale it
back down. This is a 3D Modeling package, you can do anything! OK,
so that's our scene basically setup there! We need to
do a few more things, and we'll do that in the next lecture. Now,
go ahead and share in the discussions how you got on, and I will see
you in the next lecture! Take care!