Containers & other ways to organize bigger scenes

[hurrycat]

Hello,

has anyone tried incorporating Containers into their workflow? I tested them in a small scene and seemed to offer functionality that neither groups, xrefs or proxies do. But I'm reading they can be buggy at times (?)

I have started working with a collaborator on projects and I would love it if you had any good tips about organizing bigger scenes, or maybe a tutorial you could point me too?

Thanks

[Aram Avetisyan]

Hi,

I would recommend just reading the manual of containers in Autodesk website:
https://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2024/ENU/?guid=GUID-50762DFA-E412-4377-AFBA-F62C82A22F39

The important differentiator between XRef and Containers is the rules/rights to be able to modify the container.
Usage of containers depends on the type of collaboration you want to have. If you want to model something which is to be used by another (or vice versa) without being able to modify the original model, use containers for this and disable Edit in place option. This way the original container can be inherited, merged into the scene, then modified etc. but the originally supplied .maxc container is unchanged, meaning it can be referred back to as the original/unmodified work of the supplier.

For the rest of the aspects, they are more or less the same. Groups are not quite Xrefs or Containers, because they do not save out a part of file and then use a placeholder in the scene to load them, effectively making the scene lighter, but groups are rather simple helper objects to make the transformation for a group of objects easier.

So:
• Groups - local simplification for objects transformation and management.
• XRef and Containers - linked files which can offload the scene into parts to make it lighter. Containers also provide modifying rules/rights options. XRefs and Containers need helper objects to transform them in the scene, which is not as fast/convenient as groups.

For the bugs, I have not heard any significant and reoccurring one - make sure the XRef/Container/Scene units are correct and everything should be fine.

[hurrycat]

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!
 

[Tom]

Hi,

Really interesting topic, thanks for your input.
Did you ask on Autodesk forum if there is any workaround for this material duplicate issue?

[piotrus3333]

use XrefMtls with containers.

[Aram Avetisyan]

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!

If this is reproducible, it should definitely be reported to Autodesk.
Another scenario will be that you DO WANT the materials to be overridden. So there should be a prompt, if you want to use the scene or the imported material, or auto-rename all, just like when merging a scene into another.

XRefs can be merged as well, and the material duplicates warning window/prompt should appear (I do remember this). The drawback will be the absence of the modification rules.

There have been single digit cases of me ever coming across containers - I have mostly used XRefs and they have been working fine (not to say they are ideal, there are many drawbacks and limitations). From what I from your description, XRefs are probably a better match for your case.