As an artist working on a scene, you must choose the workflow that works best for you. The following are a few tips for common workflow related issues.
- It is possible to assemble all the components before adding them all to an asset and publishing the appropriate attributes. However, you can also create an asset first and use the
Set Current Asset option to ensure that all the objects created thereafter are automatically placed in the asset. Building an asset this way helps reduce the risk of missing objects, which could happen if you add them to the asset manually.
- When creating an asset from existing components, you may want to include some nodes related to the selected nodes, but not all of them. You can do this using the
Preview contents option in the
Create Asset with Transform Options and
Create Advanced Asset Options window. For more information, see
Create assets.
- One of the primary benefits of using assets is to limit visual complexity and streamline your working interface. Here is a list of options to think about in order to maximize this benefit:
- Once you have published all your attributes and nodes for an asset, set that asset to
Black Box mode.
- If you choose to show attributes in the
Outliner,
Channel Box or
Asset Editor, set the
Show > Attributes menu to display
Published only.
- Set the
Outliner to
Display > Advanced Asset Contents > Under Asset to avoid displaying the DAG hierarchy. Conversely, you can also set the
Outliner to
Display > Advanced Asset Contents > Under Parent to reduce the asset to a single asset node representation in the DAG hierarchy.
- Use template views to show published attributes in a meaningful way to each artist that works on an asset.
- In the
Hypergraph, use
Options > Merge Connections to reduce the number of connection lines. If
Black Box mode is off, you can also turn off
Options > Show Relationship Connections to hide published attribute connections.
- When setting up a file with assets to be referenced by a parent file, it is usually a good idea to lock assets so that other artists cannot modify them from the parent file. You can do this either by manually locking unpublished attributes, or by setting the
Asset Unpublished option to
Lock in the
Save Scene As Options window. For more information on locking, see
Lock an asset.
- Sometimes you may want to publish attributes that don’t appear in the
Channel Box. You can do this by opening the
Attribute Editor, right-clicking the attribute’s name and selecting the asset name from the marking menu. You can also use the
Asset Editor. For more information on publishing attributes, see
Publish or Unpublish attributes.
- You can connect multiple published attributes to a single
Dynamic Attribute. For more information on publishing attributes, see
Publish or Unpublish attributes.
- In scenes representing landscapes or large objects, you can publish the
Level Of Detail information of various nodes to control the detail of related objects when the camera moves closer and farther from them. For more information, see
LOD (Levels of Detail).