Hi, few months-old new Blender user here. Apologies in advance if there were something I misunderstood about the discussed features. I’d like to propose an idea to restructure the whole ‘Link, Append, and Make Proxy and Override’ options which I believe are still being improved. As of now, these options are too cluttered for less than what Maya has in their Reference options even since 10 years ago.
Hence to logically simplify it, why not structured (and functioning) like this:
Create Reference - (the exact term used in Maya; straightforward, bring the data in from another file, accept changes nearly everything from mesh edit, changing shader and texture image, insert keyframe, layer on/off, using duplicates differently, and parenting to a certain extent, except deletions and removing mesh from bones - all while still accepting changes from the original file) Yep, that’s how it is in Maya. I hope you guys can keep up.
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Lock Reference - (placed under Reference menu, this is how you lock the referenced item from accepting any sort of changes. Essentially the same as ‘Link’ in Blender.)
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Import Reference - (also placed under Reference menu, this is to import the referenced item or ‘Make Local’ currently in Blender. Also, this is essentially similar to ‘Append’)
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Reload Reference (refresh the referenced item), Unload Reference (deactivate referenced item), Duplicate Reference (dupe the referenced item for separate use), Remove Reference (delete referenced item), Export Reference (export a specific referenced item into another format file. - These are one-stop-shop QoL extras under the Reference menu/window that would be helpful to have in Blender.
Look at the structure, isn’t it just more logical and neat than having Link and Append sitting under File while Proxy and Override sitting under different dropdown? I think how Maya does it is really simple and exactly the kind of simplicity Blender could use when it comes to Referencing.
I hope this can be put into consideration. Thank you.