Can I animate two instances of the same linked character in one scene?

Here’s Nobbie: I’ve got him linked to my scene and I’m posing him with a proxy rig.
Now I want two Nobbies in this scene. My initial action is to add another group instance of him, but that group instance is still being deformed by the proxy rig from the first instance.


I want to animate the other Nobbie doing something else, but when I make a proxy armature for his instance, it breaks both instances. How can I solve this without making multiple redundant libraries?

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Have you tried linking in the 2nd Nobbie from the original character file? Then make a proxy rig for it?

I understand the power of linking vs appending, but not many people understand it. I’m one of them, but I have played with it, because I see how powerful it can be.

If it’s just for a short animation and you’re the only person working on it, or a few people, appending is a better option.

Just my thoughts,
Randy

I have the same question. For the complexity of my work appending is not really an option. Linking the second <animated character> from the original character file does not make any difference wrt doing add->group instance.

The workaround I currently have, is that in my character file I have 5 duplicates of the mesh+armature, as 5 different groups I can link. However I dont like this workaround as it does not scale.

Another workaround I’ve found is you can link all the objects loose (groups panel in the outline > right click > instance objects in scene), then make the rig and its data local. It’s quite a bit messier then a dupligroup+proxy, but it will allow you to have multiple instances of the same character, doing different things, while keeping materials, UVs, weights, etc all read from a single source file.

Would love to hear if anyone has found a better method.

This is what the wiki manual says about it:
Armatures and Multiple instances Development of this feature is a work in progress; in Blender 2.43 and CVS (as of 29 April 2007), a proxy object controls all instances of a group. It is not yet possible to have one proxy per group instance. In particular, it is not yet possible to have one proxy armature per group instance. One partially effective remedy to use file append rather than file link for multiple instance duplication. File append will not be updated with update to the origination file.

And this is where it is in 2.6 feature requests
Ability to multiple linking a blendfile with a grouped character and armature inside - and making a independent armarture proxy. So each character can be animated indeipendently - or with replicated animation by offset frame… ^^maybe a good thing for the next openmovie :wink:Sonicdee 21 March 2012

I agree with sonicDee that it would be good for the gooseberry project (for example to animate a flock of sheep). But how to draw attention to this feature request without freaking out the already hard-working developers?..