66 - Referencing rig files (Cartoon character rigging series)

Referencing is much like loading in a texture file into maya, I just holds the path to that file so if any changes happen, maya doesn't care as all it does is load the file with that name in that path.

For example, if i created a shader and hooked in a texture file, then if i edited that texture but still kept it in the same folder with the same name and file extension maya wont have a problem and will just look in that folder and load the texture no matter how you have edited that image.

The same if for referencing except we are referencing rig files (or other files if you want like the set mesh).

This means maya doesn't care what's in that file, it just loads it up even if you have updated that rig. What this mean is that with a reference file we can start animating, and the scene where animating in will only contain key frame data. So because it loads in the reg much like a texture, the scene file doesn't actually contain any of the rig or mesh so when you save it only saves the key frames (and any stuff you do make in that scene file like normal).

So for example saving a scene that has a shader in it with a texture assigned, the scene doesn't contain that texture it just loads it in, so the file size of that scene will be small as it doesn't actually contain any of the texture information just a file path to load it.

This is an important animation tool as when you start animating it is still possible to edit the rig file, then re-open your animation file and maya will just look at the file path and load in your new rig. And as long as you didn't rename any of the control curves (objects that get the animation on them) maya wont care in the slightest to what edits you did to that rig, all it will so is take you animation and applies it to the objects name it was assigned to.

This also means if you did some animation but decided you wanted it on a different character rig, all you need to do is rename the file path to your new rig (much like just changing the path to a different texture) and provided the control curves are named the same the animation will be applied instantly with no hassle.

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Please leave any comments or questions below and ill try help as soon as possible.

Thanks for watching :)

Source files can be downloaded at:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/30666061/JDT...