Scene Tab Organizing
RCDeschene
Posts: 2,816
Something I've been curious to ask about the Studio Scene Tab... Is it possible to group or move loaded items in the list like in Autodesk Maya's outliner? I tried dragging an item to place it in-between two others, but when I released it just ends up becoming parented to them. I'm the kind of guy who rather prefers neat and structured lists, and such things are especially important to have when working with 3D.
Post edited by RCDeschene on
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If you want to group items, create a Null, give it a descriptive name, and parent items to it.
Create Nulls and parent your objects to those. You can use the Nulls as a sort of 'header' or 'group'.
/edit
Damn you, Mike. Beat by a few seconds.
So, the answer to my question is no, there is no natural function to group Scene items. Perfect. Another thing to suggest to DAZ...
Well, thanks anyway...
Well... that's is not exactly true. You can Group anything to anything in DAZ just by drag and drop. It's called Parenting in DAZ. The Null idea is just so you can name the Group.
In the Scene Tab Drag a item to any Item. They are now Grouped, or Parented together. Move the Top item and all the items move, with the last position you placed them in. I use this all the time for tables with items on them and other such reasons. Large scenes with trees and rocks, Group and it all stays the way I set it until I change one item by itself.
There are options to order Scene pane items (in the menu triangle) - Ascending/Descending/Do Not Order - but that's about it.
mac
I know that, definitely. Like I said, I use Autodesk Maya, so I know parenting rather well. But while that is a sufficient way of keeping multiple items together in one scene, it's NOT the form of grouping I'm looking for.
When you group in programs like Maya, it's rather much like the suggested Null method here in that the items you are clustering together aren't necessarily "parented" to an "item" so much as they are unified under a titled header that you can view toggle on and off, move around as one object, rearrange on the outliner, etc.; basically, structuring your scene pane as a table of contents. But the thing with DAZ is that, while Null Parenting does create the illusion of grouping, it doesn't have the same functions as a real object group would have. Parenting to Nulls won't view toggle the children or rearrange in the Scene list. For some reason, and I don't know how DAZ did this, but even though you'll have an array of items fitted/parented to Genesis, such functions only occur when you do them to the Genesis figure itself despite the fact that they appear as their own items in the list.
Now, with that all said, you're probably wondering "well, why is that such a big deal to you?" The answer to that is as I said previously, I'm a creature of organizational habit (I have strong OCD) and I think it's unsightly to see Scene lists that don't have a neat structure to them. This is rather especial because I use DAZ 3D Studio mainly for visualizing original characters for game ideas and other forms of fiction work and just about all my characters have multiple costumes. So, Instead of creating numerous file versions of the same character, I slap all costumes items on one figure and toggle on and off which costume setup I want to see at the time. I personally find it quicker and simpler to do. However, the backdrop with that, as is the whole point of this topic, is that you have much more to manage in one scene. This is why grouping functions like in Maya are much to my desire.
Ahh... much clearer to me now. I would also like to see that in DS, I do some Comic-book stuff and being able to toggle clothing sets on or off would be a big help. I have to keep different versions of my characters for fast load at this time. Your way would work so much faster and easier. Thank you for the detailed explanation.
I am frustrated with this too. For example, in the scene tab, as things go along, I create new cameras. I would like to put all the cameras together, a neatness things. In the scene triangle, there is a "Reorder" button. I select a camera and "selected children up" and nothing happens. I am using a Macintosh running Yosemite. Maybe that is the problem. I would like to put my cameras next to each other, characters next to each other, etc. I can group all my cameras, but that is not the same as just reordering elements as they appear on the scene tab. Its not the most important thing, mostly neatness, but one should be able to reorder items. Maybe because I have animation?
My, this is an oldy!
Yeah, even though Daz eventually added a grouping function in DS4.8, rearrangment functionality is still missing. If we able to so much as answer my plea back when I made this thread, they might concider expanding on it for DS4.10. :)
Still not there in 4.10, it seems.
What a pity.