[Bf-blender-npr] Subgrous visibility

[Tamito KAJIYAMA]

Hi,

Just some random thoughts that came to my mind:

Groups do not seem to provide a good enough solution to link/append a
set of objects and associated Freestyle settings including groups,
because groups only deal with object membership by definition.

How about using scenes as a unit of link/append operations?

1. Set up a character in a scene, rig it, and gives it a Freestyle
setting. If you have another character or more, you do the same in
independent scenes.
2. Open another .blend file and link the scene.
3. Select the character (or a group that includes the character) and
Make Link to another scene where the character is going to be used.
4. Copy the line sets from the linked scene, and paste them to the other
scene. Group references in line sets will remain valid.

Linking a scene instead of a group makes more sense to me, since it
allows importing everything associated to the character asset.

I guess the steps from 2. to 4. can be automated more and less by an
add-on (say, a "Freestyle Asset Linker" add-on).

Note that line sets are part of scene datablocks and cannot be linked
(appended) directly. It is my impression that this design increases some
complexity in link/append workflows, which if necessary is a matter of
discussion and future improvements. A relevant question here is: should
line sets and line styles be unified?

-- 
KAJIYAMA, Tamito <rd6t-kjym at asahi-net.or.jp>


On 22/04/2014 03:27, Vicente wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Ok, yes, it works. But it's independent of the "Instance groups" option.
> The user has to import the main group AND the groups with the FS
> information.
> It's not the most intuitive workflow (at least for me)... but definitely
> it will do the trick for me. :)
> But I assume that a lot of blender users are going to import only the
> main group and expect the whole thing is going to work, so maybe this
> should be arranged in other way in a future.
>
> Thanks
>
> Vicente
>
>
> On mán 21.apr 2014 16:14, Tamito KAJIYAMA wrote:
>> Hi Vicente,
>>
>>> We can not import "freestyle" or "no-freestyle" because it would be
>>> pointless.
>> It would be pointless because what we want to import is logical
>> membership of objects in a group, and not duplicates of the objects in
>> the group, right?
>>
>> Re-thinking of this issue, I just got to know that the Link and Append
>> commands on groups have an option called Instance Groups (enabled by
>> default). Turning this option off seems to achieve exactly what we need.
>> Could you please confirm it?