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CHAPTER

Building Complex

Scenes with Containers

and XRefs and Using

Asset Tracking

sing containers and external references (XRefs), you can pull multiple
scenes, objects, materials, and controllers together into a single scene. IN THIS CHAPTER
UBoth of these features allow a diverse team to work on separate parts of a
scene at the same time. They also provide a great way to reuse existing resources. Working with containers
How often do you go into your garage during the winter months? Unless you Externally referencing objects
have a pair of warm overalls or a space heater, you probably just throw in any and scenes
tools you use, the Christmas lights, spare quarts of oil, and the kids’ bikes wher-
ever they fit as you make a mad dash back into the warm house, and then when Setting up an asset
management system
spring comes, you have a real mess on your hands.
Max projects can be the same. During an aggressive project, Max files, textures, Understanding Autodesk’s
and render passes get saved all over the network. By the time the project is fin- vault system
ished, you may have a hard time reusing things simply because you can’t find Using the Asset Tracking
anything. This dilemma is compounded when you work on a team with several interface
individuals throwing stuff all over the place.
An asset tracking system can help with this problem by introducing a system that
acts as a little secretary, logging every object thrown to the network. This little
secretary also is smart enough to keep track of the latest updates of all files, mak-
ing sure that each accessed file includes them. It also locks any file that is being
used to keep unwanted fingers out of the pie.

Working with Containers

Containers provide a great way to group several objects together, but containers
have several additional features that extend beyond simply grouping objects
together. For example, a container can be saved as an external file, which makes
them easy to reuse in other scenes. Containers also can be unloaded from a scene
to make the rest of the scene load quicker and to improve performance. Containers
also can be locked, and the creator can set edit permissions for others.

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