9

Using Layers to Organize a Scene 655
warning before doing so. Choosing this activates
the toolbar button.
Layers
Layers are like transparent overlays on which
you organize and group different kinds of scene
information.Theobjectsyoucreatehavecommon
properties including color, renderability, and
display. An object can assume these properties
from the lay er on which you create it. Using la yers
makes it easier to manage the information in your
scenes. Layers are used primarily to control the
v isibility of objects i n your s cene, however they
also controls the color of objects ’ wireframe and
the frozen (page 1–70) and hidden state of objects,
as well as their radiosity properties.
Forexample,youmightwanttosetupalayerthat
wi ll contain detailed, custom furniture. To do this,
you create a layer and set Viewport Display to
Bounding Box. Then you set the object’s display
properties to ByLayer (in the Object Properties
dialog (page 1–117)). This will keep the viewport
display quick. Then, whene ver you want to import
new furniture, switch to this layer. You don’t need
to set up your viewport display every time you
import new fur niture. Also, if you don’t want to
render the furniture, you can turn off that layer’s
Renderable property.
Note: When you link an AutoCAD file into
3ds Max, any layers that are frozen (and all objects
that reside on these layers) are not imported.
Note: Objects can be hidden and frozen on a
per-object basis; however, an object residing on
ahiddenorfrozenlayerwillalways adopt the
hide/freeze state of its layer.
Tip: If you set lights’ render control to ByLayer (in
the General panel of the Preferences dialog), you
canusetheRendercolumnintheLayerManager
toquicklyturnlightsonoroffinyourscene.
Layers can help organize the contents of a scene.
Layer-Object R elationships
The Layer Manager (page 3–656) displays layers,
as well as their associated objects. This m akes it
very easy to organize, and make changes to objects
in a scene. With the Layer Manager, you can
adjust property settings at either the layer level,
or individually for each object. Each property
can be toggled b etween var ious states, including
the ByLayer state (page 3–920).Whenanobject’s
property is set to ByLayer, the object inherits that
setting from the layer it is associate d w ith.
Note: TheHideandFreezestatesofanobject
cannot be set to ByObject. Objects can be hidden
or frozen on a per-object basis; however, they w i ll
always followthebehavioroftheirlayerwhenitis
hidden or frozen.
S pecia l La y er 0
When you beg in a new scene, 3ds Max creates
a special layer named 0(default).Bydefault,
objects on layer 0 have their v i sibilit y settings on,
renderability is on, and viewport display is set.
Yo u c a n’ t d e l e t e o r r e n a m e l a y e r 0 .