Best method for combining interior and exterior in one scene

[Jon Berntsen]

Hi

More than often, we have started to see loads of loads of interior elements fully populated in exterior scenes. I get that one take would be first doing the interior and then do the exterior, in the same scene file. If it was that easy. Really messy and chuggy. Let us add some more parameters as well. 1) We have specialists in each of those fields doing each their stuff 2) Project management and human resource planning: Interiors and exteriors will never be finished at the same time, so chances are that the exterior dude will have to wait for the interior to be done. In and out on a project means time which means money. We don't want that. 3) Re-use of models. All our max-vray-detailed house models are being saved on the server for later re-use. Which means they suddenly can be used in very huge exterior projects, which does not allow for fully populated interior scenes due to hardware limitations. One fully populated and one stripped will have to be made. That takes time, and time ... is money. 

So what about xreffing somehow? For avoiding doing double work, the interior scene has to be finished before the exteriors can be finished. That means no matter what, the interior has to be made before or at least simultaneously as the exterior. Xrefing opens up for the possibility for double faces if the interior dude just detatches a wall and applies plaster or colored or whatever material on the walls, and the exterior dude will then have to counter this by deleting the same walls from the exterior. That means time, and time means money, and nah. No go. 

A few ideas exploited right here, without even closing in to a better solution than just the interior dude grouping all interior elements, and the exterior dude importing in his file. This is our current solution. A part of me wants this to be more streamlined.

So what do your studio do in these situations? Thanks.

Edited August 24, 2020 by Jon Berntsen

[Jon Berntsen]

Bumping thread. Anyone?

[Changsoo Eun]

For this, I would use Xref Scene.

The key is a good layer management.
Make sure Interior and exterior team uses own prefix for all their layers.
Each team can work on their scene and one assembler use xref scene for final assemble and rendering.
 

 

 

[Jon Berntsen]

On 9/4/2020 at 6:36 PM, Changsoo Eun said:

For this, I would use Xref Scene.

The key is a good layer management.
Make sure Interior and exterior team uses own prefix for all their layers.
Each team can work on their scene and one assembler use xref scene for final assemble and rendering.
 

 

 

Thanks for your input. Sounds like a decent way of doing it. Too bad layer management in max is so under-developed, but might give that take a shot!

[Changsoo Eun]

Hm.. I don't have particular issue with layer in max. The nested layer is really powerful. Only issue is you can not have duplicated name layers.

The reason why I recommend to organize layer well is that xref scene doesn't allow you anything other than turn on/off layer and property by layer. It is by design. Xref scene give you better performance in exchange of flexibility.

If you mix layer name with hierarchy, max will try to auto correct and that could be headache.
So, as long as the layer names on each file are uniquw. You should have much of an issue.