How to Output Material Index on a linked group containing armature and mesh?

Hello Blender Artists Forum,

I’m currently working on a project in which I am animating a CG object on top of live action footage. Currently I am linking in a group that contains both the armature and mesh into my live action plates for animation.

Since I am linking in the mesh I don’t have any local control of the Output Material Indices. For compositing I was hoping to have control over each shot’s Output Material ID’s (for an exr render). So I tried to proxy the mesh, and blender just created a duplicate of the mesh with no animation on it.

I’ve already tried updating the material ID’s in the parent project, and those did not carry over in the link

Is there some other way to edit material ID’s on a linked mesh? Or am i doing something wrong when I proxy the arm in my scene shots with the live action plates?

Thank you for all your help!

Teresa

Changing mat IDs in the source file SHOULD carry through to the main shot file. That’s a bug or a nasty missing feature if they don’t. Another thing you can do is add controls to your rig somehow for Mat IDs (custom properties, perhaps).