max organisation problem

rollin

i´m working on a continuously growing animated scene and i´m beginning to get in trouble with the organisation .. the default max layer thing is not the best way to organise a lot of objects..

how do you work, if you have multiple animated object with a lot of other stuff fillig easily 20 and more layers?

in maya you have this nice "scene explorer" is there something similar for max?


i found some plugins but they are not realy helpfull

thx

Mark Dygert

I haven't found anything has handy as the Maya scene expolorer but these few things could help.

File > Xref objects
This allows you to import objects from another file. You won't be able to edit these objects but you can right click a file in the menu and open it very easily it even politely asks if you want to save your current scene. It can be a pain switching back and forth between files if the object isn't finished, but if it is. This also allows you to set a "proxy object" to be displayed in the viewport but use the real model for rendering. Such as a extremly low poly version, sometimes I just copy the object and apply the optimize modifier to it and crank the settings up, it looks like hell but who cares it renders the original. Or I just use a primitive like a box or cylinder as a proxy object. It also might give you a slightly higher lvl of organization?

- Also check out the asset tracker, its no where near as robust as it should be but its uselful for easily changing paths for images.

Personally I only use the graph editor/dope sheet when I'm working with BiPed footsteps. I'm not really sure how to use it for scene tracking, Lampoly could you expand on it a bit?

rollin

ola.. thx for the repy´s

i´m already x-refing a lot but thx anyway

seems in max 7 there is realy no better way to organise your stuff.. at the moment i try it with naming conventions and reduction of "useless" layers..

but with that.. if i use, lets say, 6 bipeds in my scene .. they should be named bip01, bip02 usw.. right? so if thats true is there a eays renaming tool? (e.g: put to my whole selection "imsonasty_" in front of the name)

sinistergfx

A renaming tool? hmmmm.

Tools > Rename Objects

Eric Chadwick

No find/replace in the stock tool though. I use Paul Hormis' renamer script instead... http://www.hyperent.com/TiM-Scripts-UI.html
Naming along with selection sets/layers is the best organization for me.

rollin

hey thx both of you.. !
much to learn young padawan

J.I. Styles

blurs object script definitely has the handiest object management/naming toolset. For bipeds though, it already has that built in. Go to motion panel>Biped tab>click on "modes and Display" bar>Name: text field

use that and just change the name and it changes it from Bip01xxxxx to whatever you want.

arshlevon

i have been working with huge scenes latley for music videos, and i have found using a combination of xrefs and groups works great. you can open a group and work with it, and then just close it again. so i can have a group with hundreds of cars in it, and it will only be called cars, then i open the group and i have access to all the cars. when i am done with the cars i close the group and its just called cars again. very handy when working with tons of objects.