What's New in File Referencing

File referencing options in the Outliner

Reference node display

A new Reference Node display option in the Outliner makes it easier to locate and identify all the loaded and unloaded file references in your scene. You can access the option in the Outliner by selecting Display > Reference Nodes. The Reference Nodes display option is on by default.

Create and manage file references

New Reference menu items in the Outliner let you create and manage file references without opening the Reference Editor. In the Outliner, -click a reference node or referenced object to access file referencing commands.

Watch: File referencing options in the Outliner

Allow Referenced Animation Curves to be Edited

You can now edit animation curves from referenced files. These changes are managed by the reference node like other reference edits. You can modify an animation curve, such as changing tangent types or editing keyframes, then export the updates as reference edits to an offline file.

To edit animation curves in referenced files, you must turn on Allow Referenced Animation Curves to be Edited in the Referenced Animation Curves section of the Animation Preferences.

Edit animation curves from referenced files

File referencing improvements

Maya 2013 includes a number of new file referencing features and options that improve file referencing workflows.

Updated reference node Attribute Editor

An updated reference node Attribute Editor displays information about reference nodes, such as file path, namespace, and sharing details.

Create file references

Operations on multiple references

Using the file referencing options in the Outliner, you can now perform referencing operations on multiple references including the following:

Loading, unloading and reloading
Importing
Locking and unlocking

Preview unloaded content

A new Preview unloaded content option lets you view the hierarchy of the unloaded references in your scene without loading the reference in the scene.

Preview unloaded content

Archiving unloaded references

An option has been added to scene archiving that lets you include files associated with unloaded references in the scene archive.

Namespace updates and improvements

Merge into selected namespace

A new Merge into selected namespace option lets you choose to merge referenced or imported object namespaces with a namespace that exists in the parent scene. When duplicate namespaces occur, the namespaces are merged and duplicate object names are incrementally suffixed with a number.

This new option lets you keep duplicate namespaces and avoids an accumulation of new namespaces each time your referenced or imported objects have the same name.

You can access the Merge into selected namespace option in the Reference Options, Import Options, and Assign Offline File Options windows.

New MEL Commands

Namespace MEL commands have been updated to allow easier manipulation of namespaces.

These new command updates include:

The namespaceInfo command has several new flags for querying information about a namespace. New flags allow for namespace names to be returned in various formats: baseName, absoluteName, and fullName. The isRootNamespace flag determines whether the namespace is the root namespace.
The namespace and file commands have new operations for namespace management: mergeNamespaceWithParent and mergeNamespaceWithRoot. The namespace command also has a new collapseAncestor option.
For referenceQuery, the flags -namespace and -parentNamespace query the full namespace path of a referenced node, file, or its parentNamespace.
The ls command has additional functionality related to namespaces. The -showNamespace flag returns object/namespace pairs. The -absoluteName flag can be used with ls -showNamespace, to return the absolute namespace names regardless of current namespace or relative namespace state. For example: ls -showNamespace -absoluteName.
You can now rename and create nodes using absolute namespace paths. For example: :ns1:ns2:mySphere.