State Sets provides a mechanism for maintaining and managing different states of the scene you're working on.
A typical use for State Sets is as a render-pass-management system. You can also use the feature to maintain different user interface setups and views of your scene and switch quickly among them. You access this feature from the State Sets dialog, which provides a hierarchical view and special controls.
State Sets Improvements
Changes to State Sets accelerate performance, enhance usability, and streamline interoperability workflows between 3ds Max and Adobe Photoshop and Adobe After Effects software. - By default, a state is always recording while it is active.
- A State Sets toolbar gives quick access to State Sets controls.
- In the Compositor View (RE) (Render Elements) mode, a Composite node collects the output elements of a state into a single composite. You can think of this node as a "pre-composition" prior to the main Compositor Output node. Generating a Composite for each state reduces the number of layers that appear when you export data to After Effects. In addition:
- Elements are ordered in a convenient way, with lighting effects on top—reflections, shadows, specular elements—followed by full-image elements such as scene views; and at the bottom, data elements such as Object ID and Z Depth.
- The Blend Mode for elements is initialized to an appropriate setting: For example, Addition for self-illumination and reflection elements, Normal for full-frame passes, Multiply for lighting, and so on.
- When you save to the PSD format, alpha data is now saved as an Alpha Layer Mask, making it easier to control while you work in Photoshop.
- A Rename option when you right-click a state provides another way to change a state's name.
- A Tokens pop-up menu lets you choose common variables to use in the file name pattern when you Render All States.
- A Global Scale setting lets you adust the scale of shared geometry. This can make objects easier to manipulate in After Effects.