3ds max Scene management questions

omid3098

Hi again!
I'm creating a scene into max. so I need some suggestions on how to modify my models.
I have a wholescene.max which contains my whole scene of cource!
and I create other models like trees in the seperate files. when I want to check them in my whole scene, I have to arrange them there. and If results was not good enough, should change my tree in it's original file and import and arrange them again.
well it's very time consuming to work on this pipeline.
I can not arrange my models with XRef import mode too. because it will give just a dummy and I can't arrange other instances from that dummy.

well here I am! :poly114b:
is there any other ways manage this kind of scenes?

r_fletch_r

take a look at containers(max 2010 up). im pretty sure they can do this.

omid3098

WOW!! thats really amazing and easy to work..! thank you r_fletch_r

Mark Dygert

2011 and up allow local editing of container objects, meaning you don't need to open another file to edit the contents of the container.

tis teh awesome!!1

SHEPEIRO

you can edit containers save them out and unload them in 2010 too, they dont work with xrefs though, having alot of containers in your scene does slow it down but you can just save the ones you dont need and delete the container to re-load it later

i would further organise your scene by useing container for chunks of area, then colour coding the objects within, with several containers open for edit you can then use the select by colour tool (hotkey it) to easily isolate types, within areas

yiannisk

i used to see my xrefs and modify them however i like even in version 9!
i could merge them and export them back to xref files. load them with their default materials or apply new ones.. and in general do anything i needed to do.

I'm not sure what you were doing..

what i am doing now doesn't require the use of xref or containers much unless when we make cinematics.. but are they really that much different than xref objects? and in what way? (other than that it is a different file format that i am loading)

i can't see any different functionality than what i could previously do with xrefs..

SHEPEIRO

they are a different way of structuring your scene more than the underlying bizzness, theyre basically little max scenes all packaged in groups with an easy load/save/edit function

theyre basically a nice friendly way of partitioning scenes...so you can have the container in your scene but not loaded then if your exporter works with them correctly, will export the unloaded ones saving a shit ton of memory in big scenes. you only need to have the container your working on loaded if you want to use say a neighboring section as reference you can load it in, however you need to make a slight change so you click the edit button fix it, click the save button, everyone else who has that container loaded will see the edit, you could do most of this with xrefs, but it would be alot more painfull, im loving the container system

omid3098

thank you guys for suggestions.

this scene is for a video game. basically I created that with template models and simple objest to get my overview of whole scene and design.

any other ideas would be helpful.

you can edit containers save them out and unload them in 2010 too, they dont work with xrefs though, having alot of containers in your scene does slow it down but you can just save the ones you dont need and delete the container to re-load it later

i would further organise your scene by useing container for chunks of area, then colour coding the objects within, with several containers open for edit you can then use the select by colour tool (hotkey it) to easily isolate types, within areas

I did not understand you well. I grouped same models like trees, shops and .. and this way I can modify them separately. what do you mean by chunks of areas?

SHEPEIRO

by chuncks of area, i mean, all the objects in section (say a hallway or room) can be within a container, then use colour co-ordination or layers to control types of object Eg. all trees in one layer all the ground objects in another etc etc

omid3098

yes.. sure! thank you.. I''m using Outliner 2.0.3 for that.. :thumbup: