Importing a Character Template

I’ve been looking at new ways to rig characters in the network view and the general agreement seems to be that you should connect all the layers to a composite then put everything (inc composite) in a group and make a template of that. But no one explains how to then import that template into a new scene and connect it up? When I bring the template into the new scene I get the group appear in the network view and I can view the layers in timeline but nothing appears in camera view. Even when I connect the group to the scene’s composite it doesn’t appear. Am I missing something? Everyone talks about have multiple composites but I can’t find any info on how to connect them in a scene?

Hi laurenG

I will not state which way is the best to store a template in the library.
You will find solutions for this in the video tutorials and the user guide.
But things to be aware of is that the composite module by default change the file to bitmap.
So if you want to store the template with a composite module you may want to set it to pass through. If you store the whole scene, it can be a good idea to delete the write and display module. This to prevent confusion when you import and hook the module to a new scenes composite. Both rendering and viewing can become a mess if you import a lot of characters with each of them containing both write and display modules. To import a template you can drag it to the camera window, or timeline, or to the network. You can save layers, scenes and animated sequences. You can even import/attach animated parts of a characters if they correspond exactly to the one already excisting in the timeline.

Link to videotutorial:

http://beta.toonboom.com/professionals/animating/resources/video-tutorials/library

Tip of the week, master template:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItFPXJEN8Y0&list=PL7CB38B3337030D86

Tip of the week, action template:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxPjY_Nnsf8&list=PL682F6E38F2507A13

Best regards
-Ivar