Tips/Tricks-3dsmax: Scene States and Batch Rendering
One thing that I have found very useful for past projects is something in 3dsmax (r8 or newer) is called “Scene States.” Though one might consider Scene States as being similar to layers, they really aren’t because they do so much more than layers. Layers contain an object’s visibility, renderability, and only a few other object properties. It does allow excellent scene object management. Scene States, on the other hand, additionally capture all the other scene information like lights, environment settings, camera set ups, and model visibility plus a lot more.
So why is this useful and when do I use it? Its useful because it allows me to set up a single scene (or camera shot) with the multiple uses in mind. A perfect and simple example is a shot I intend to composite. Looking at a past project as an example you can see the scenes states I have saved below.
Its not uncommon that you would have all the 3d elements in one scene, but when its time to render, you either have to separate them out to render them (as elements), or hide/unhide each rendered layer and render them separately. And what if you had a different lighting set up for each element (or layer)? Now you would definitely need multiple .MAX files right? Not with Scene States. That’s precisely the strength of it. You have have multiple setups (even multiple renderers) that are then “called back” at render time.
Of course Scene States is really works well with “Batch Render” (from the render drop down menu, shown right). Here you can see how I organized all my states. I am thinking “layers” in my compositing program. The image at the right is Batch Rendering window where I can render all the states as if it were one scene. This is HUGE time-saver when using backburner for network rendering because the rendering manager just goes by what the scene state is for each job, I don’t have resubmit a ton of jobs to fix things or keep things separate.
Nice article.