This has been superseded in 3.5 and up by the Custom Prop Editor.
In 3.4u1 features where added to add the ability to auto link some templates. The template has to be built using the basic shape single bulb. It can be comprised of however many of those single bulb elements you want.
Planning
It starts with a bit of a plan on how you want your element layout to be. For singing faces, you will want groups for the eyes, mouths and then the bulb/base. You may want other groupings for other types of props. All that really matters is that all the lights are represented somehow under a single group. Here is the layout from one of the forums of a Chroma bulb from Boscoyo Studios. Some of the colors are crappy, but it is good enough for this example. You can make your own for whatever your prop is from a picture or drawing of your liking.
Display Setup
This covers some of the steps described in other areas of the documentation around building elements in Display Setup. Make sure you have read those sections if you are not familiar.
So lets start in the display setup and start building our elements for the bulb. I choose the generic number item template at the top and configure it as shown below for the 143 pixels that are in the Chromabulb.
At this point, this is enough to be able to auto link them in the preview. But we will want some groups for better functionality, so we can go ahead and do those as well and still be able to auto link. Now I group them according to which pixels correspond to the parts of the Chromabulb.
I have not renamed any of the individual elements, but just grouped them together and removed the extras. This follows the grouping on the layout plan above.
Now all my elements are defined. I can set the color handling and patching later.
Making the Template
Now I am going to create a scratch preview to build the template. This will allow me to build the template all on it’s own outside of my real preview.


Preview Linking
Now I switch over to my real preview. Here I am going to select the top level group of my Chromabulb I want to link. After I select it, then I find my template in the dropdown at the top and select it. Then I click add to preview while my element is still selected. Resize and move the new bulb on your preview. If we did everything right, I can then click off and back on the Chromabulb-1 element and I will see all the bulbs light up in purple indicating they are linked.
Now I can go back to the display setup and either manually setup more or I can copy my existing one and paste as new. I can then use the new find replace or the template rename to clean up the names. For any new ones I now longer need to create the template, I can just add more in the preview and link them as I go. The only thing I need to remember is to retain the same name association somewhere in the new elements as I created in the template. I just need to make sure that when I add more in display setup, I don’t lose the Px-xx naming on each item as that is what makes the link association. The following examples will work.
- Px-1 My Element
- My Px-1 Element
- My Element Px-1
All have the Px-1 in them and will link by association to the template bulb Px-1.
Once I am done creating the template, I can remove the scratch preview if I no longer want it. It is not required once the template is saved.