Please read about and download the scene explorer expansion pack.
- Introduction.
- Optimizing the scene explorer.
- Creating an advanced layer system in 3ds Max 2010.
- Conclusion.
- Other useful scene explorers.
- Autodesk on containers.
Introduction.
In 3ds Max 2010 the team at Autodesk have introduced containers. These nifty little things are useful for many things including;
- working with others in a collaborative work flow by saving containers to separate files,
- saving system memory by only loading the end result of the modifier stack of objects inside the container,
- enhancing viewport performance by caching the final model in the container.
What they haven’t told us (but they have hinted) is that using containers and the scene explorer together gives us an advanced nested layer system. We can customise a scene explorer to show containers, get rid of the stuff we don’t need and we now have an advanced layer system.
Optimizing the scene explorer.
Autodesk have also greatly improved the performance of the scene explorer system since it’s humble beginnings in 2008. We can further improve it’s performance by removing unnecessary columns from it’s interface. I have removed the extra revit columns from the selectbyname interface to make it more usable.
Creating an advanced layer system using containers.
Let’s make a custom scene explorer to replace our layer manager.
- Create a new scene explorer; tools | new scene explorer
- Make sure that sync selection is activated from the selection toolbar (this is optional)
- Remove all the visible toolbars; scene explorer | customize | toolbars
- Activate the containers toolbar; scene explorer | customize | toolbars
- Remove all the obsolete columns by dragging them down into the blank space
- Add any columns you would like maybe; colour, hidden, frozen, and display as box. Just remember that the fewer columns we have the better the performance; customize | configure columns
- Open the manage scene explorers dialog; tools | manage scene explorer
- Rename your scene explorer and click save and save it under the folder ‘autoload’. This will make it always available under the saved scene explorers list under the Tools drop down list.
Conclusion.
This is our new layer interface. Now we have access to a variety of controls to manage our containers. We have all the features from the scene explorers interface, dragging and dropping objects, editing object names and the rest. We also have all the new benefits of using containers. If you like, you can unload them or save them out to disk to improve performance and make them available to other users, or we can leave as they are embedded in the max file.
Other useful scene explorers.
I’ve also created a couple more useful scene explorers. One to replace the old light lister which is pretty defunct, and I’ve used maxscript to expand the scene explorer interface to list cameras features so I can create a camera lister as well. Currently this lists only standard max camera features.
Download three scene explorer presets here, containers, light lister, and the enhanced camera lister. To install, just drop the file in your max viewport.
Autodesk.
This is an excerpt from the Autodesk New Features guide, which can be found here.
The new Containers toolset in 3ds Max facilitates collaboration and flexible workflows by enabling users to collect multiple objects of a complex scene into a single container. Place related objects―such as sections of a city―in a container and treat them as a single element. To improve scene performance, temporarily unload containers from the viewport display while maintaining their relationships to the scene and reload later when needed―saving memory, increasing viewport performance, and decreasing load and save times. Translate, delete, copy, or save container nodes; use containers to override object properties for scene organization without affecting layer organization (similar to a nested layer workflow); and reference multiple containers created by others into a single scene so users can work together in context. Users can access and edit each other’s container, allowing flexible workflows while also imposing constraints on what can be edited.