31
[Max] I need help! / Re: Containers & other ways to organize bigger scenes
« on: 2023-10-18, 19:32:25 »
Hi Aram,
thank you so much for your input, I had read the documentation and after 1 month of incorporating Containers into my workflow and working with a partner I have some insight to add that may help others who try to work collaboratively.
Containers generally are a great way to reduce the size of your scene, same as with Xrefs but offering you the much needed ability to edit your referenced scenes in place (without needing to fire up another max instance).
There are container-dependent rules that specify how the container is loaded into the scene's layer structure and what permissions each user has.
The MAIN ISSUE that unfortunately seems to be a deal-breaker for me is that when editing in place there is NO WARNING about the existence of duplicate materials.
Let's say I have two materials both named Material#1, in my main scene and in the container. The moment I click Edit-in-place for the container it will put its materials to the scene, meaning now every instance of geometry using Material#1 in my scene will be now using the overwritten Material#1 from the container. You have to adopt the habit of naming your materials specifically, which depending in your workflow you may already be doing, but you can see how this can be catastrophic, even for the careful ones.
I wish they would add the option to choose if you wish to merge the container's materials into the scene, or keep the ones from the main scene, when editing in place.
Let me know if anyone has any different experience. Thanks!
thank you so much for your input, I had read the documentation and after 1 month of incorporating Containers into my workflow and working with a partner I have some insight to add that may help others who try to work collaboratively.
Containers generally are a great way to reduce the size of your scene, same as with Xrefs but offering you the much needed ability to edit your referenced scenes in place (without needing to fire up another max instance).
There are container-dependent rules that specify how the container is loaded into the scene's layer structure and what permissions each user has.
The MAIN ISSUE that unfortunately seems to be a deal-breaker for me is that when editing in place there is NO WARNING about the existence of duplicate materials.
Let's say I have two materials both named Material#1, in my main scene and in the container. The moment I click Edit-in-place for the container it will put its materials to the scene, meaning now every instance of geometry using Material#1 in my scene will be now using the overwritten Material#1 from the container. You have to adopt the habit of naming your materials specifically, which depending in your workflow you may already be doing, but you can see how this can be catastrophic, even for the careful ones.
I wish they would add the option to choose if you wish to merge the container's materials into the scene, or keep the ones from the main scene, when editing in place.
Let me know if anyone has any different experience. Thanks!