Linking & Overrides (2020 / B3D 2.83)
Channel: 3Dami
Date: 2020-07-08

This tutorial goes through how to link assets and perform overrides in Blender 2.83. Lots of advice is included!


Note that this is designed for pre-university students, so everything is gone over in quite a lot of detail tp avoid mistakes during a very intense event. Tutorial files mentioned at end are not currently available outside of our events unfortunately.


In 2.83 there are still a lot of weaknesses/edge cases/bugs/closets of screaming skeletons; it is a safe assumption they will all be fixed in future versions. Here is a partial list so you can avoid issues at this time:

* Drivers aren't handled correctly when overriding. You can fix this: Override the driver and then switch the variables to the overriden data blocks rather than the linked data block. However, it seems to forget this when you reload the file, making it unworkable.
* If an override is broken by changing the name of a collection/object fixing it is, as far as I can tell, impossible with the current interface. Your best bet is to recreate the override from scratch, copying over any data from the previous (e.g. actions within the NLA). Interestingly, it can break in two ways: Content vanishes, or it just keeps going, working as before but with the link no longer updating from the source file. I have been unable to determine the reason why it goes one way/the other, though expect it's down to dependencies that have not been overriden and if it can still find them or not.
* Additive changes to the source file don't always get picked up by overrides. It seems to work by keeping two copies and taking the difference to work out what has/hasn't been overridden when looking at lists. Because there is no "deleted item" in the overriden list this is fundamentally broken - it can't tell if an extra item in the source list is new or deleted. No tool to fix other than recreating the override as far as I can tell.
* Not all modifiers are handled correctly: Sometimes you need to manually correct references to other objects within overriden modifiers.
* Latices do not work with duplicate characters: They randomly snap backwards and forwards between each other. Would guess the modifier stores a name and finds a different lattice each time through the dep graph! So no swarms of cute wide eyed cartoon characters consuming their prey at this time:-(

Note that I have not had as much time as I would like to experiment, and keep learning new things as we run events!