Blender Library Tips

Some tips to get the most for your collection of items.

Blender Library tips and tricks.
General

Enter you personal info in the preferences popup. Then you can use the FILL button to auto enter your info in each item you add. If you are adding an item you did not created, please use "Unkown" or the original artist name if available. I´ll try to add options to preserve creator info in each item.

To remove Favourites or Categories just press and hold CTRL while clicking on its name. To rename and item of its description you can CTRL-Click in the info menu.

To save space in the hard-disk you can use the Open [item] .blend, in the manage menu, to open the .blend file wich holds the item and then choose Compress File from the file menu and then Save. This is not necessary when exporting items since the .TAR packages are compressed.
Camera Library

You can save animated cameras. If the camera has an IPO it will be saved too and retrieved along with the camera later. So you can store cool travelings and such.

If saved camera is tracking and empty named CameraName.Track (ie: "Main Camera.Track"), it will load tracking that empty, thou if the tracked object if something else, it will be missing, but the camera will still track the spot it was originally tracking.

The above can be combined (a camera with a track object and and IPO)
Object Library

You can store several objects as one item, this include Meshes, Curves and Armatures; so you can store a full character with props if you want to. Just have them all selected on the 3dView before pressing the ADD OBJECT TO LIBRARY button.

If you store curves wich use "bevel objects" please also select the bevel object or it won´t be saved along. This also applies for "curve deform" curves.

Frame the objects the way you like to show in the preview thumb with the active camera before adding. The preview will also use the current scene lights.
Material Library

If your are using Blender 2.41 or below, pack your image textures before adding if you plan to share your materials (this also applies for the texture, object and particle libraries wich also store image textures). You can always use the "open material .blend" option to manually pack the images on an already added item.

Material Ipos atached to materials are also saved along with the material.
Texture Library

Textures of type Blend can be used to store colorbands as a base for new texture developing (ie: load a Blend texture with colorband and then change it´s type to the desired one, the colorband will stay there ready to use)
World Library

You can save animated worlds (see Laser Beam World in my world pack), the IPOs attached to the world's textures with be saved along with the world.
Particle Library

This library is experimental. Python access to particles is limited so it uses a trick to load particles into an existing object (swapping object data). If something goes wrong you can try to load the particles with its original object and then manually copy the settings and materials to your object.

You can store static and animated particle systems.

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