library: In TBS, libraries are a great tool but they are often not intuitively obvious in how they are utilized. Libraries are storehouses for animation materials also referred to as assets. An asset can be a single cell or a sequence of cells or an entire element of cells, or a sequence of frames containing multiple elements, or even an entire animated scene including all its various types of elements even sound clips.

Let’s begin with a conceptual understanding of how TBS organizes and provides access to assets in a project. Each time you create a new scene, it is just like you created and labeled an artwork folder to hold that scene’s assets. Then each time you create an element for your scene it is just like you created and labeled an element folder to hold your element’s assets and placed that element folder inside your scene folder. And each time you create a cell in an element it is just like you created and labeled a picture on a sheet of paper and placed it inside your labeled element folder. So ignoring the exposure sheet and the time line for just a minute, all of these assets exist and are accessible in the library in the animation catalog. You can go into the library and view your catalogs of assets and access those assets directly. Even if you remove cells from the exposure sheet those cells are still there and accessible in your animation catalog.

So the library is subdivided into catalogs. There are basically two types of catalogs available, local catalogs and global catalogs. The terms local and global are derived from computer programming terminology and mathematics so they may be unfamiliar to many people . Local assets are only available in the specific scene or project in which they exist. The local assets in one project aren’t accessible when you are working in a different project. Global assets are universally accessible to all scenes and all projects.

When you deposit an asset into the library you create a template. It is referred to as a template because, like its name suggests, you can use it to be the pattern for new animation assets. Now you are automatically creating animation catalog assets in your library store just by creating them while you are working on your scenes. But suppose you want to share assets among other scenes in your project. All you have to do to make an asset easily accessible for other scenes in the same project is to drag the asset into a catalog inside your libraries local catalog. It is as simple as drag and drop. And if you want to share an asset among more than one project you drag and drop the asset into a catalog inside your global library catalog.

Now that you understand storage and access of library assets, let’s talk about ways to use these assets. You can use library assets as patterns to create new animation assets or they can effectively be the animation asset itself. What’s the difference? When you drag or copy a library asset into the timeline and exposure sheet you are using the library asset as a pattern to create a new and independent animation asset. Notice that it is uniquely named different from the source pattern template’s name. You can modify that new asset and there is no effect on the template from which you patterned it. If you go to the library asset itself it is unchanged. And if after you use a library asset as a pattern for other animation assets and then you go in and edit the library asset itself, it has no effect on the previously patterned copies, those changes only will show up in new patterned copies. But if you want the library asset to act as the animation asset itself so that you can edit it centrally in one place in the library and effect all occurrences of that asset in your project or projects, then you don’t want to copy the library asset as a pattern, but you instead apply the asset as a “linked” resource. Linked assets must be placed in “media” elements only, where as copied assets can be moved to drawing or image elements and modified independently.

One tip on how to view and use your library assets, these assets can be thought of as “permanent” or as “temporary”. You can drag animation assets into global or local catalogs with the intention of keeping them for a long time or just as a convenient place to temporarily place them for quick and easy access as patterns as you work. Once you have finished using these temporary assets you can delete them from your catalogs so you don’t have to deal with a bunch of unneeded clutter. The patterned copies aren't effected. Just don't delete "linked" resources because that can have disastrous effects.

You can add a new library to your existing library using the create library command. This will let you select a folder that could be on a shared drive. Once this library is created you can copy templates from your projects or global library into this new library. Then other artists can open this library in their project's library to access those templates. The create library and open and close library commands are very useful for working with and maintaining shared libraries which are separate from your Global Library. You can also use this method to build many libraries which are specific to characters or other series related assets. Then you can open and use these libraries when you need that character or assets in a project. It is a step beyond the use of your Global Library. In effect you can have many global libraries and select and use only the ones you want when you need them. So conceptually think of the Global Library as your personal global library and these additional libraries are the shared global libraries.

Hopefully this has given you some insight into library usage and its value, there are more aspects to utilizing library assets effectively but these are the basics.

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