WEBVTT 00:01.220 --> 00:07.360 Welcome to relinking blend files in this video you will make a commit. 00:07.370 --> 00:13.820 Trust me at this point there's a possible day to frustration almost inevitable if you don't make some 00:13.820 --> 00:15.470 sort of go back point. 00:15.470 --> 00:20.500 So whether it's a commit whether you're zipping up your data folder your current working folder. 00:20.660 --> 00:26.480 Just make sure you've got a backup before you do anything like this because it's potentially highly 00:26.480 --> 00:27.880 destructive. 00:28.140 --> 00:36.120 I understand the ordeal you need to do things in if you wish to change a linked file or its data blocks. 00:36.680 --> 00:39.700 And we'll also see what happens if you change a link. 00:41.060 --> 00:49.370 Sir first of all moving or renaming blend files make a commit so that if something does go wrong you 00:49.370 --> 00:55.030 can go back to its copy the files to a new location. 00:55.040 --> 01:00.540 Even if that means they're in the same location or an entirely new folder that doesn't matter. 01:00.650 --> 01:04.780 But what does matter is we do not remove the originals at the moment. 01:04.790 --> 01:12.870 They must stay there rename the copied files appropriately so we've made a fundamental change. 01:12.920 --> 01:14.670 Then obviously you can rename them. 01:14.670 --> 01:17.570 Or in my case I am about to go through. 01:17.600 --> 01:21.970 I just want to shorten the names and make them a bit neater. 01:22.460 --> 01:31.220 Doing it in any other order will break links and any links broken when you save the blend file will 01:31.220 --> 01:35.920 be lost forever which of course will result in more work reconstructing. 01:36.050 --> 01:37.760 And as we've seen with the. 01:37.760 --> 01:41.810 Was certainly with my Gothic church so far there are a lot of parts that are reused there are only about 01:41.840 --> 01:45.310 eight in total that do the whole building. 01:45.350 --> 01:48.520 Certainly the window parts and the blank wall paints. 01:48.530 --> 01:53.010 If those links were broken I'm going to have to pour a lot more parts back into my model. 01:53.180 --> 01:55.110 I don't want to do that. 01:55.420 --> 01:58.630 There we've got moving or renaming data blocks. 01:58.760 --> 02:03.380 This isn't so straightforward as a completely different method to preserving them. 02:03.380 --> 02:06.870 Should you want to move or remain them remember. 02:06.920 --> 02:10.670 Make a commit so you can roll back at any point. 02:10.670 --> 02:11.980 Copy the files. 02:12.940 --> 02:19.630 Then open up that copy and make your data block adjustments so you might want to change the mesh name 02:19.660 --> 02:21.800 of an object or even the object name. 02:21.820 --> 02:26.490 Or perhaps you want to change the mysterious all name that you've assigned. 02:26.490 --> 02:31.150 Perhaps it was an appropriate but you need to make these adjustments in the copy. 02:31.950 --> 02:36.270 Then we'll go ahead and link the new file into the scene. 02:36.270 --> 02:43.980 Make links to the new object replacing the old one and then finally you can go ahead and delete or archive 02:43.980 --> 02:51.820 the old blend file and that's as we will shortly see will happily remove that link from Blender any 02:51.820 --> 02:52.220 way. 02:52.230 --> 02:55.560 By the act of doing that on the next save. 02:55.770 --> 02:59.980 So let's go experience all of this and hop on over into a blender. 03:01.160 --> 03:08.480 Okay so back in blender The first thing this I'm going to do is demonstrate what happens if we do something 03:08.480 --> 03:11.840 to an existing blend file that's linked into our scene. 03:11.990 --> 03:19.220 So let's go ahead and go to the file system here and I'm going to do the front door because it's one 03:19.220 --> 03:24.670 of the least use pieces so something goes wrong at least then I can sort it out. 03:24.710 --> 03:26.920 So I've got Church front door here. 03:26.930 --> 03:32.150 If I go ahead and delete the numbers at the end of it which is one of the things I want to do because 03:32.600 --> 03:37.660 I think I'm going to go for a more of a standard format with these underneath except that they're going 03:37.660 --> 03:42.480 to be two by four or two by two or four by four and a thickness a stick. 03:42.490 --> 03:48.920 Kurtz OK again point to zull maybe even multiples or point two but as long as I know there's a standard 03:48.920 --> 03:54.440 across the building that's undoing I shouldn't have to put in all these extra details. 03:54.830 --> 04:02.180 Okay so now that I've renamed that if we get went ahead and re opened our church there we go the front 04:02.180 --> 04:08.300 door has disappeared and I think it's used over here as well so that one has also disappeared and we 04:08.300 --> 04:15.080 can have a look in the outliner itself we can see that the parts there's actually an empty there now 04:15.080 --> 04:20.320 in the parts and that no doubt will be the church door so here we go. 04:20.330 --> 04:25.800 Having a look in the outline of the church door is now an empty where it used to be. 04:25.820 --> 04:34.040 Now if we go ahead and save the blend file at this point in time we will destroy that link forever we'd 04:34.040 --> 04:41.000 have to read link the church door into the scene which is not always a bad thing but imagine having 04:41.000 --> 04:44.570 to do that for something is repeated a couple of hundred times. 04:44.570 --> 04:46.270 Not sure how often. 04:46.400 --> 04:51.770 In this scene so far the blank wall piece is used but it's used an awful lot and I wouldn't fancy having 04:51.770 --> 04:56.540 to reconstruct it all because I had made a silly mistake with moving something. 04:56.540 --> 05:00.880 So instead of doing that's what we can do is go back. 05:00.950 --> 05:04.880 I am just going to highlight those numbers. 05:05.350 --> 05:12.040 Fortunately the naming convention meant I can just do that because we named our file the same as we 05:12.040 --> 05:16.400 named the mesh data and the object data. 05:16.540 --> 05:20.490 So now that I've renamed that fact should restore the file. 05:20.480 --> 05:22.770 The important thing is that you don't go ahead and save. 05:22.930 --> 05:24.750 That's easy to do. 05:24.760 --> 05:28.290 For instance you may not notice that a wall piece. 05:28.330 --> 05:30.760 Sorry you will notice Civil War pieces missing. 05:30.910 --> 05:36.250 But if you've got a small let's say a candle or something in the scene and you'll look into it from 05:36.250 --> 05:39.100 the outside and you're making some changes from the outside. 05:39.100 --> 05:42.340 You might not notice that disappearing. 05:42.340 --> 05:48.160 So now that we've reverted in we've changed the name back we've got the door back there so if we wanted 05:48.160 --> 05:57.140 to move our object the first thing to do is make sure that we are using relative or absolute paths. 05:57.160 --> 06:04.120 Now by default it's using a relative path which basically means that it's not reliant on whether or 06:04.120 --> 06:09.540 not you're in the exact use a directory on a particular computer. 06:09.580 --> 06:14.950 What it does mean is as long as all of the stuff is grouped in a similar way on every computer. 06:14.950 --> 06:22.060 So in this case I have my project folder and meshes as long as and the other folders that are associated 06:22.060 --> 06:22.400 there. 06:22.450 --> 06:27.110 As long as that folder structure still exists on another computer it will work. 06:27.130 --> 06:33.070 So let's go ahead and just check what we've got so when I go in link a file there or where the operator 06:33.070 --> 06:35.730 panel usually set on the lower left hand side. 06:35.770 --> 06:41.800 We've got relative path ticked and that will be ticked by the phone and we will also want to leave it 06:41.800 --> 06:47.080 ticked so we will leave it teched have a click Cancel to come out of there we check that. 06:47.080 --> 06:52.890 So the first thing that we'd need to do if we wanted to move information about or rename and rename 06:52.890 --> 06:54.370 things what I'm going to do. 06:54.490 --> 06:56.540 So I don't have to type too much. 06:56.590 --> 07:00.130 Let's go to the file system and copy the blend file. 07:00.310 --> 07:06.000 Now that we've copied the blend file we can just rename it and for speed purposes. 07:06.010 --> 07:09.980 I'm going to call it church front door C F D. 07:10.140 --> 07:13.810 Lower case they have case does matter it is case sensitive. 07:13.810 --> 07:19.810 What we don't want to do is invert the break some think by not getting the case right. 07:19.900 --> 07:23.500 So I've named it cft hopping back into blender. 07:23.500 --> 07:28.130 I can then go to the data blocks in the outline. 07:28.420 --> 07:31.450 Once I'm in the data blocks will need to go and find the libraries. 07:31.450 --> 07:33.280 Now this is going to look a bit messy. 07:33.280 --> 07:37.100 We think we've named everything and in fact we've missed something. 07:37.120 --> 07:39.950 These libraries alas okay because they're hidden away. 07:40.060 --> 07:43.360 But since we're here we can actually go in and name them. 07:43.690 --> 07:48.410 Now I've gone into the section a few times so I know straight away mind. 07:48.440 --> 07:53.610 Library 0 0 4 is the door and we can see the file path down here. 07:53.770 --> 08:02.110 Links to the door itself now because the data blocks are in the file itself have not changed. 08:02.110 --> 08:04.390 All we've done is moved the file position. 08:04.420 --> 08:10.750 We can update this to the new name or even the new position if we moved it to a nother folder. 08:10.850 --> 08:16.870 The first thing I'm going to do is actually call it front door on the library so that I know what it 08:16.870 --> 08:21.550 is just by looking at it so if I need to come back later I know where it is and we can see here is a 08:21.550 --> 08:22.470 relative path. 08:22.480 --> 08:28.570 It's got the two slashes Dodderer meshes and then we've got the file name there so one of the reasons 08:28.570 --> 08:34.870 why I wanted it shorter is sort of this area and a few other areas in blender you get I can't widen 08:34.870 --> 08:41.570 that so it's just too long so we had it church front door and I'm just going to go back and make sure. 08:41.800 --> 08:48.370 Oh no that wouldn't work you do have to make sure this is named perfectly so if it does mean you look 08:48.370 --> 08:53.830 here and then you hop back and go see if they don't blend cft or blend lowercase etc.. 08:53.850 --> 08:58.740 It's in the meshes folder will have not changed anything there so that should be absolutely fine. 08:58.750 --> 09:02.790 What we can now do is go ahead and save the blend file. 09:02.830 --> 09:08.740 Don't make a mistake and don't make a mistake try to do double check for it you've got this right before 09:08.740 --> 09:13.610 you click save and then go ahead and let's reopen the file again. 09:13.880 --> 09:15.290 Then all should be okay. 09:15.370 --> 09:21.560 If you're doing things like this for your own sake do them one at a time and commits. 09:21.580 --> 09:27.880 In between each one so that if you do make a mistake you'd know where you've made the mistake and you 09:27.880 --> 09:29.600 can just go back to that point. 09:29.710 --> 09:35.140 If you got to change all of these pieces out or just move them all to a new folder and you're doing 09:35.140 --> 09:41.530 this to keep it nice and sane for you then of course you will need to make that commute in between is 09:41.530 --> 09:44.880 what you will want to do is do the whole lot again. 09:45.060 --> 09:50.030 So now that we've done that the other thing is if we knew a data block. 09:50.140 --> 09:52.120 Now that's something slightly different. 09:52.120 --> 09:54.300 Again we need to take a copy of the file. 09:54.550 --> 09:56.840 So let's take a copy of the C.F. the file. 09:56.860 --> 09:58.130 In this case. 09:58.750 --> 10:04.400 So then take a copy of that file and it's going to be called See if the two. 10:04.480 --> 10:10.300 Really really deep and I'm going to rename the mesh data here. 10:10.300 --> 10:15.700 Actually what I want to call it so instead of going down this route I'm going to rename the blend file 10:15.700 --> 10:24.280 in the moments I want to call this level of detail at E Since it's a lower poly mesh it's a very basic 10:24.280 --> 10:30.050 mesh and I want to call this then the front door. 10:30.100 --> 10:32.650 I know it's a church because that's what I'm building. 10:32.650 --> 10:38.860 You may call it whatever is appropriate for your particular model but French Church. 10:38.890 --> 10:39.480 That's great. 10:39.490 --> 10:44.170 Now say the word church I type it elodie Acres is the basic model. 10:44.290 --> 10:45.460 Front door. 10:45.590 --> 10:47.500 Don't need any more details than that. 10:47.530 --> 10:54.400 I'm going to go in and update the meche data as well to reflect on the same name that at the moment 10:54.430 --> 10:55.690 is important. 10:55.690 --> 10:58.470 Now see if the two is not the right name at all. 10:58.510 --> 11:05.160 So I'm going to go ahead here and go save as an I'm just going to call it front door again. 11:05.170 --> 11:13.290 It is explicit that's an put underscoring there is explicit though it's going to be a church that I'm 11:13.300 --> 11:14.020 working on. 11:14.020 --> 11:17.700 I can even move it into a church folder of that was at all necessary. 11:18.010 --> 11:23.340 So I'm going to save that and go back to my file system quickly and do a tiny bit of clearing up. 11:23.350 --> 11:27.670 I'm going to deletes the C.F. the two that I created. 11:27.880 --> 11:36.340 Okay so now when I go back into the scene itself the Gothic church scene I'm going to have to link that 11:36.340 --> 11:37.540 new file in. 11:39.650 --> 11:48.740 Meshes and front door object elodie a front door and then we could pick left higher levels of detail 11:48.770 --> 11:51.860 if necessary so we're going to pull that in. 11:52.130 --> 11:58.240 It's come in and we're going to make it a proxy and it's on layer 2 here which is absolutely fine. 11:58.340 --> 12:05.060 The ground is not on the appropriate layer so that's move too and how one sets all together. 12:05.310 --> 12:06.470 Again grounds back on. 12:06.650 --> 12:13.580 So in order to take that object data from that newly imported object what we need to do is first select 12:13.610 --> 12:16.570 the ones that are going to receive that data. 12:17.630 --> 12:20.900 Which is all we don't on that corner piece. 12:21.020 --> 12:25.960 Which of these two front doors are not doing very well selecting. 12:25.970 --> 12:27.230 There we go. 12:27.230 --> 12:33.020 Now I have selected those two unlive turning this other layer which Scott the last door on has selected 12:33.030 --> 12:40.820 So the active object has to be the one giving the data and then we can go to objects and make links 12:40.820 --> 12:44.760 and we can see the shortcut there is control and L.. 12:44.930 --> 12:47.230 And this is where we go object data. 12:48.610 --> 12:54.160 Now nothing will have really change because they're both the same actual mesh and the knife edge is 12:54.160 --> 12:55.500 called something different. 12:55.540 --> 13:06.670 If we go ahead and save the file now and come out of blender completely and say let's go here now that's 13:06.670 --> 13:12.970 named at cft SOME going to the leads and take a punt here that are done that correctly Unger the least 13:13.030 --> 13:20.370 churched front door and c f d completely from my archive I can do it safely because I've made a commit 13:21.190 --> 13:27.200 and then I'm going to make sure it's saved and revert. 13:29.010 --> 13:30.140 And there we go. 13:30.180 --> 13:31.320 It's still there. 13:31.320 --> 13:32.750 They haven't disappeared. 13:32.760 --> 13:35.490 Now you can use this for other things as well. 13:35.550 --> 13:40.230 So say I wanted to replace this war piece at the very top because they're modular. 13:40.230 --> 13:42.050 They're all the same size. 13:42.060 --> 13:49.490 It means that I can then select the door down at the bottom go control in L and do the object data. 13:49.590 --> 13:55.530 And when I do the object data you can see it replaces it and that is incredibly powerful allows you 13:55.530 --> 13:59.310 to modify your project very very quickly. 13:59.310 --> 14:03.040 And as you saw in that list there are some other things you can do as well. 14:03.210 --> 14:11.910 So say we came up with a an awesome colour for the church itself so unethically create a new material 14:12.300 --> 14:13.940 on this wall piece here. 14:14.100 --> 14:20.370 Now it's going to apply to every single wall piece that that has inherited which is the rest of the 14:20.370 --> 14:21.810 wall pieces in the model. 14:21.840 --> 14:22.600 And let's. 14:22.620 --> 14:29.000 That's to say we've we've made it an awesome orange and let's call it awesome orange. 14:29.730 --> 14:31.080 It's my new favourite colour. 14:31.080 --> 14:31.900 Awesome orange. 14:32.040 --> 14:38.850 And I'm going to hop into materials just to make sure that's applied quite bright and say we wanted 14:38.850 --> 14:44.450 that on all of the vaults that saqi forgetting what these things are called. 14:44.490 --> 14:46.750 We would select the vaults first. 14:46.800 --> 14:49.650 All of them if we wanted it on every single one. 14:50.160 --> 14:57.830 And then and only then we would click on the donor and then we go control an L.. 14:58.520 --> 15:06.410 And select materials and there we go it's inherited those materials very very powerful and can save 15:06.410 --> 15:11.070 an awful lot of work having to assign those individually. 15:11.210 --> 15:12.050 Brilliant. 15:12.260 --> 15:19.940 Okay guys I'd like you to check your naming and filing so ensure all the basic building blocks are named 15:20.000 --> 15:21.390 appropriately. 15:21.770 --> 15:28.880 I'm going to be using the prefix elodie underscore a for mine which means it's the lowest level of the 15:28.910 --> 15:31.180 Tel model I'll be working with. 15:31.670 --> 15:34.620 Make your names as concise as they need to be. 15:34.620 --> 15:40.070 So I have personally decided that I don't need the prefix church since the whole project is going to 15:40.070 --> 15:41.180 be about church. 15:41.180 --> 15:44.940 If you're doing a different type of Interior maybe kitchen or something like that. 15:45.080 --> 15:51.230 Name your project folder appropriately rather than having the individual name tag on the beginning of 15:51.240 --> 15:52.580 file is entirely up to you. 15:52.580 --> 15:57.680 This is one of those things that's at more of a personal taste and I've decided the numbers at the end 15:57.680 --> 16:02.360 might just be a bit clunky So I'm going to cut those off as well. 16:02.360 --> 16:08.450 I know that all of my building blocks for this particular scene are going to be four by four or four 16:08.450 --> 16:13.940 by two or two by two so they are going to fit together nicely and I'm going have to stick to that standard 16:13.940 --> 16:15.010 width four point two. 16:15.020 --> 16:20.510 Unless it's some sorta special part in which case it's probably not going to be modular any way it's 16:20.510 --> 16:22.440 going to be a special part. 16:23.510 --> 16:25.170 The method for data blocks. 16:25.180 --> 16:29.630 By the way works if you're renaming a moving the whole file too. 16:29.660 --> 16:36.440 So if you're going to be doing both of those tasks and not just an organizational task then you will 16:36.590 --> 16:44.960 probably be better off doing the second method but do them one at a time and remember to commit or backup 16:44.960 --> 16:49.910 your work before you do any of this because it can be very destructive. 16:49.910 --> 16:55.340 What I don't want you guys to do is obviously have to repeat a load of work because you made a tiny 16:55.340 --> 16:57.030 mistake in naming something. 16:57.920 --> 17:02.080 And this is going to be another one of those lectures where I'm going to leave you to it. 17:02.180 --> 17:08.280 I'm going to go off and rename all of my files and I'll see you guys in the next lecture.