Welcome to packing external data in this video you will learn how to embed images into the blend file
both individually and collectively.
Understand this is essential when sharing a blend file with anyone else.
Now no it can create a bloated file if the external data becomes obsolete.
And I'll show you how to remove external data.
So let's operate on over into blender.
Okay so back over in blender.
I must been some.
No I'm not in solid modem selling textured mode.
Gonta matea OKAY IF YOU EVER good citizens tabel you rendering something and it comes out this magenta
this bright pink It means you've done something to them.
Basically to hide your pictures your textures from Blender.
I know exactly what I've done.
I've inadvertently moved my texture's folder that I was working from from my downloads into the work
pack.
First time currently working on into that person working folder the fluffy bunny folder and that's broken
these textures.
So there's a couple of ways I can go about fixing this.
I can move the folder back but that defeats the point of having my work folder so I don't want to do
that.
I could re reference them all.
And there's only three in this case that would be acceptable although if your project was much bigger
this would that would be an absolute nightmare renat renaming or relinking hundreds of files even tens
of files is going to be an absolute pain to do so we don't want to do that either.
So first of all in order so you can experience some of this pain.
I've got a short challenge for you.
I would quite simply like you to rename your asit pack folder.
So pause a video.
Now go and find it and rename it put a one on the end or something like that so it just changes what
the folders called.
Okay guys.
Welcome back.
Right.
I have already essentially done that.
In fact I've moved my folder that's another thing you can do but renaming it is probably the simplest
thing you could do.
So let's go ahead here and make sure that it's not working.
So if you go over to file and open recent you can open up your file again and just make sure that you've
now essentially broken your texture's.
If you go to the viewport shading and select material you should see it being bright pink.
Brilliant.
Well okay not exactly brilliant but it is.
To do this exercise of course.
So now we've got these three images no longer existing blender does not know where they are or what
they do.
Of course you could rename your file and they all come back again removing that one from the end or
however you rename them.
However if they're not what you can do is simply re link them.
So if evil is so you move the impeaches to several locations on the hard drive perhaps you created your
own nature back and wanted all the grass in one folder and then realized that you'd broken some other
blend files and you couldn't just move one folder back.
Then you'd have to relink them.
So in order to do that you can do it in the text to tab itself.
We've got here grass blade 10 P N G.
And if we open up this file here we can navigate to the appropriate folder and I'm going to go here.
OK what's a shortcut for it.
Your section assets nature texture's now want some here.
I only defined it again because the name is already pre populated.
I can just click open image and we should see that coming back.
Brilliant.
Now this image here what I'm going to do to get this one back is I'm going to switch to the image editor.
In fact I'm just going to make my screen a bit more comfortable for me by getting rid of the tall shelf.
I'm going to split the insoo and just open up the image editor here so I don't have to keep flicking
between screens and the properties panel here.
I'm just going to remove that and I'm going to go to on the head by here.
There's a picture next to where it says render results on my screen and I can go ahead and look what's
going on.
So you've got a zero next to the grass blade 10 that means next time we open up this file after saving
it.
That graph is going to disappear.
That's what that was sorted.
But it also produces 0 0 1 at the end and that's because blender essentially has two files within its
database that are have the same name so scrolling down a little Lets do the grass seed which is the
middle one I believe and what we can do here is if we open up the properties tab again is actually got
a reference path at the top here we got the the image itself and a source path here.
If we click refresh.
Nothing happens because it's it's not refreshing anything is refreshing an empty file something that
doesn't exist.
However if I go to open I can also go and find the file I want so I'll go and do that now.
In my next nature texture's pack and I can just click Accept and that should come back.
Now the benefits of doing it that way is it.
Now we look on our items in our scene our pictures here in the movie image editor.
We haven't produced another one of these zeros zero ones.
But this time round we've not so it helps prevent this from happening by going into the image editor
sgo into the image that does work and adding it back in.
Now once we've done that we can go ahead and select the grass seed let's say so were in that now and
we can go to image and pack the image and that will pack it into the blend file.
Brilliant.
Now I don't know if you noticed that on the screen but this source file here is no longer highlighted.
It's essentially linked within the blend file.
Now fortunately for us if you ever need to link it to an external file again you can do that.
There's a little button here.
This is save an image into the pack blend files to disk and this one here is to unpack for file.
So that will then.
So we've got a couple of options here use far in the original location create when necessary will put
it back exactly where it was before.
And then we've got a source file again that we can use.
So there's lots of options going backwards and forwards there's a pack button here as well pack and
unpack are both there and we can remove the pack here.
We can create some data on our hard disk as well.
There's lots of options but in general you want to keep this with in your blend file and then it won't
go astray.
Now as one final option here and that is under the file menu if we go down right towards the bottom
there's external data and there's an option here to pack all into blend.
Now this will pack absolutely all the external data that you referenced into the one blend file.
Now we use this with caution depending on what are doing.
Now we can also turn on automatically pack into the blend file as well which again has to be used with
caution.
If you're working with external material on a regular basis you're working with an artist who's great
at doing textures and they put their say their textures into a Dropbox file that you then reference
the downside of bringing in a blender is if they do an update for you you that won't automatically update
your blender file when you open up the the blend file again.
That can be a disadvantage.
Now if we are only working by ourself and we're only working with small images then it doesn't matter.
It's not going to bloat the file that much.
But if you've imported a movie and you go and pack that into your blend file your blend file is going
to get huge all of a sudden which may cause the ability issues.
Now one of the great things about blender is very customizable.
So what you could do if you wanted to safeguard any work that you are working on if you if you like
reorganizing your computer lots.
Or perhaps you've got someone in your family uses your computer relights organizing it for you.
And argle one of those.
And we we can actually go to here take that and then save the start-up file as well.
But you do that on a brand new file so I'm just going to save the work I'm working on at the moment.
Go in to a new file and you go to automatically pack into blend and save your start-up file and then
that setting would exist in every single one you opened up.
But bear in mind you may have to undo that depending on what you're working on.
So one final thing when you have your file saved like this and we have automatic turned on you may get
errors.
So the first error here is that my final pink square is still missing.
Who would have to sort that out the iris final PRNG is not found so I've obviously moved that during
one of my clean ups.
You probably don't have that one missing and you may have a rabbit reference image missing as well if
you're using the ones in the reference pack.
So of course I've got a challenge for you.
I would like you to go ahead and read link missing files series link any missing files and switch on
automatically pack just for this blend file.
Now an optional things turn this option on and save it to your start-up file itself.
And I'm going to do that myself.
It's entirely up to you whether you do that yourself.
Paul's video now and relink your missing files.
Okay guys.
Welcome back.
Let's get straight on over into blender.
Right so I'm going to first of all focus on my pink image here.
So it was the grass blade.
So luckily in the outliner it gives me a clue.
So I'm going to go to my source up the top here and open and go along to.
That was in the properties of the U V editor and go ahead and open up the correct file in the nature
textures.
And except I should open it up.
Brilliant that's brought that one back so I'm going to go ahead and automatically pack into blend file
a case I've got my iris and I've also got a rabbit reference that isn't working.
So rabbit reference is a background image I used earlier on.
Now arguably whether or not that's important to keep I don't know at this stage I don't think I'm going
to use it again so I could delete it.
That would also solve the problem.
But in this case I am literally just going to remove its incorrect reference.
I've got a similar option here.
I'm just going to probably just get rid of that bit over there so I can see what's going on.
I just want to go ahead and open up the correct one and what happened there was that it was a different
named folder.
Had read in the folder of course and there's the rabbit reference re.
So I can just click set and I'm going to go file and say yes and I've got one final thing which is my
iris.
Okay so that is a texture we have applied to the eyes.
I'm going to have to go hunt that one down.
So eyes is it's on their image texture.
Iris final I think this is the one and I've put that in my supporting docs open image long ago file
and save.
Are there any more errors.
Iris final Iris final are because I've done that.
It's actually renamed it.
There.
So let's just see if we can bring in the appropriate one.
In fact let's see.
First of all if it's got a zero next to it so euv image editor and let's open it up.
So Iris final It's not got a zero next to it yet so we can remove that with the cross just here.
And as it says it's under link it.
We need to use the shift key at the same time.
So I'm going to do that now.
And when I press that we should have forced a zero next to the iris final.
I didn't have the open.
Let's try again.
Iris final so I'm going to go ahead and save my file it will come up with an error.
However hopefully when I reopen it and save it's sorted now because I've done a lot of work on something
that I can't see lets go and make sure that it is done before continuing forward.
Now again you might not have any of these issues on your rabbits.
I'm just going to make sure I don't have on mine.
So let's just zoom in.
It looks like you've got the right texture there.
It looks good.
As it renders out Yep I'm happy with that that the iris has been applied.
Brilliant.
How did you guys get on.
I hope you recovered all of your images we've got no more magenta squares and I will see you guys in
the next lecture.