The Scene States feature provides a fast way to save different scene conditions with various lighting, camera, material, environment, and object properties that can be restored at any time and rendered to produce numerous interpretations of a model.
You save and restore scene states with the Manage Scene States dialog, which makes it a convenient way to quickly compare how different parameter settings affect how each scene looks. Because scene states are saved with the MAX file, they are easily accessible to everyone on a design team.
Scene states also allow you to experiment with different scene setups without having to save the entire MAX file each time a change is made. This means you don't need to open and close files in order to render different conditions of the same model. As well, scene states do not add to the size of the file.
When you save a scene state, you can choose which aspects of the scene to record:
- Light Properties Light parameters such as color, intensity, and shadow settings are recorded with the scene for each light or luminaire.
- Light Transforms Transforms such as position, orientation, and scale are recorded for each light.
- Object Properties Current Object Properties values are recorded for each object. This includes settings for Advanced Lighting and mental ray.
- Camera Transforms Camera transform modes such as position, orientation and scale are recorded for each camera.
- Camera Properties Camera parameters such as FOV and depth of field, including any corrections made by the Camera Correction modifier are recorded for each camera.
- Layer Properties Records the settings for each layer in the Layer Properties dialog at the time the scene state is saved.
- Layer Assignment Records each object's layer assignment.
- Materials All materials and material assignments used in the scene are recorded.
- Environment Records these Environment and Exposure settings: Background, Ambient, and Tint colors; Global Lighting
Level; Environment Map; Environment Map on/off state; Exposure Control rollout settings.
Tips for Managing Scene States
- When first becoming familiar with scene states, minimize changes to make it easier to keep track of what each scene state contains.
- Saving all scene aspects in a scene state allows you more flexibility when restoring. When you include all the parts of the scene, you can choose to restore all or just a few of the aspects that were originally saved.
- Additions made to a scene after a scene state has been saved affect how the restored scene will render. For example, say you already have a scene state named Omni that contains omni lights. You then decide to save another scene state named Free Spot that contains a free spot light. When you restore the Omni scene state, the scene will contain both the omni lights and the free spot light.
If you decide to add other lights to the scene that you don't want to render with the existing lights, you need to remember to turn off the new lights and overwrite any existing scenes that have Light Properties saved. See Saving Changes to an Existing Scene State on how to overwrite an existing scene state.
- Use descriptive names for scene states. If scene state names are too long to see in the dialog, resize the Manage Scene States dialog or use the scroll bar at the bottom of the dialog.
If you select individual parts to be saved with a scene state, it is useful to note in the scene state name which parts are recorded.
- If the scene contains more than one camera, restore the desired scene state first, then change the viewport to the desired camera view.
Scene State Limitations
- Even though you can select multiple scene states from the Manage Scene State dialog, only one scene state can be restored at a time.
- The currently restored scene state name is not displayed in the user interface. It's helpful to save rendered scenes by their scene state name as a reference.
- Materials must be reopened in the Material Editor after a scene state containing objects with material assignments is restored.
- If part of a scene state is later deleted or hidden, a warning does not display when the scene state is restored indicating that there are missing parts or that the scene will not be restored as it was when originally recorded.
- Likewise, if you delete one or more scene states from the Manage Scene States dialog, you are not presented with a warning that you are about to delete them. However, you can restore deleted scene states with Undo.
- Viewport configurations are not saved as part of the scene state. Therefore, you cannot use scene states to control which viewport is active or whether viewports are minimized or maximized.
Scene States and Batch Render
Scene states do not store viewport layouts, such as which camera view is active, so you can use the Batch Render dialog to coordinate rendering from any camera that is saved with the model. With each camera task that you assign to the batch render tool, you can specify a saved scene state that will be automatically loaded and rendered.