References and live instances

1The big idea: build once, use everywhere

Rigging a character is real work. The reward is that you never have to do it twice. FoundryInk lets you save a finished rig onto a character in your Codex, then drop that same character into any animation as a live instance. Every instance points back at one master, so the rig, the bones, and the art stay in sync across your whole project.

2Save a rig to the Codex

A reusable rig lives on a character in your Codex, the place your project keeps its characters, locations, and lore. Open the character you want to reuse and go to its Character Rig tab. That tab holds the master rig: the art, the bones, the bind, and any Actions you built. Once a rig is saved there, it is available to insert into any animation in the project.

3The Character add-row button

Now jump into an animation. In the add-row bar you will find a Character button, titled Insert a reusable rigged character from the Codex as a live instance. That button is your doorway to every rig you have saved. Click it and FoundryInk opens a picker rather than dropping a blank row, because it needs to know which saved character you want to bring in.

4The Insert a rigged character dialog

Clicking Character opens the Insert a rigged character dialog. It lists the characters in your Codex that have a saved rig on their Character Rig tab. Pick one and confirm, and a live instance of that master drops into your scene as its own row, fully rigged and ready to pose. If the list is empty, the dialog points you back to the Character Rig tab in the Codex to build a rig first.

5What a live instance actually is

This is the part that matters. The row you just added is a live instance, not a frozen copy. It shares the master rig from the Codex. When you later open the character in the Codex and fix a wonky elbow bind or reshape the hair, that fix flows down into every animation that uses the character. You edit in one place and the whole project updates.

6Posing an instance without touching the master

So does posing an instance change the master? No. The master defines the rig and the rest pose; each instance keeps its own keyframes on its own timeline. Grab the Pose tool, drag a bone on the stage, and it keys at the playhead for this instance only, exactly like any other rig. Structure belongs to the master, performance belongs to the instance. That split is the core idea.

7A crowd from one rig

Because instances are cheap, you can insert the same character several times to build a crowd, a chorus, or a before-and-after. Click Character again, pick the same master, and you get a second independent instance with its own timeline. Pose each one differently, offset their timing, and one rig becomes a whole busy stage. They all still track the master for any structural fix.

8Bring in a rig from a file

Sometimes the rig you want is in a file, not the Codex. In the Insert a rigged character dialog there is an Import from file option that accepts an animation rig file (.fla) or a .zip that contains one. Pick your file and FoundryInk reads the rig in and drops it into the scene. It is the bridge for bringing a puppet you built elsewhere into your animation.

9Check an imported rig before you lean on it

An imported rig came from another tool's idea of bones and binding, so give it a once-over before you animate a whole scene on it. Switch to Test mode and drag its limbs to see how the bones move and whether the mesh follows cleanly. If a joint tears or a bone points the wrong way, fix the bind on that rig now, while the scene is still empty, rather than after you have keyed a hundred frames.

10Tracing over a Reference image

Reuse is not only about rigs. When you are drawing, you often want to trace over a photo, a rough, or a pose you sketched. In a drawing surface, open the Reference image picker and choose an image. It drops onto the stage behind your artwork as a guide you can draw over, so your lines land where you meant them to.

11Fade it with the Opacity slider

A reference at full strength fights your linework for attention. Use the Opacity slider, labelled Fade the tracing image, to dial it down until it is a faint ghost under your strokes. Somewhere around a quarter to a third is comfortable: strong enough to follow, faint enough that your own lines read clearly on top. Adjust it as you go if a detailed area needs the reference brighter.

12Clear the reference when you are done

Once the drawing stands on its own, retire the guide. Hit Clear next to the Reference image picker and the tracing image is removed from behind your art. Your strokes stay exactly as drawn; only the guide underneath disappears. It is good housekeeping, and it lets you see your linework the way a reader eventually will, with nothing behind it.

13Reuse or redraw: choosing well

A quick judgement call for real projects. If a character shows up in more than one scene, rig it in the Codex and use live instances, because a single fix then reaches everywhere. If something appears exactly once and never again, drawing it directly can be faster than the round trip through the Codex. And a Reference image is for tracing a one-off pose, not for reusing a whole character; that is what the rig is for.

14The limits to know

A couple of things to know so nothing trips you. A live instance follows structural changes from the master, but the per-scene keyframes you set are yours and stay put, that split is by design. And importing a rig from another tool reads what it can; treat the result as a strong starting rig to check in Test mode, not a guaranteed pixel-perfect transplant. Everything else here, saving to the Codex, inserting instances, and the Reference image with Opacity, works exactly as described.

Reuse questions