HIde From Camera with scenes

[DJAB]

Hi,

 

Is there any way to select a group of objects and "hide from camera"? Currently I have to select each object individually and go to the Maxwell attributes which is a real pain. (say I want to hide the ceiling and light fittings for an overhead render, for example)

 

Furthermore, is it possible to have an object be "hidden from camera" in once scene but not from another? Without having to manually change the settings? So that when I go from scene to scene form z and Maxwell should remember that in this scene the geometry should be hidden, but not in another scene.

 

Andy

[pylon]

Hi Andy,

 

You can set up the Maxwell Attributes on one object, and then use the Copy Attributes tool to propagate those settings to as many other objects as you'd like in one go.

 

However, those "hide from" attributes are for doing advanced compositing and other trickery. If you just want to hide a collection of objects in a given rendering, put those objects on a named layer. You can then control the layer's visibility either manually, or by using formZ's Scenes service.

 

[Tech]

Hi Andy,

 

Yes, the Scenes can be used to control the visibility of objects, or layers -- and if possible, we would recommend using the Layers to control this.  Just make your desired Layers visible and Save the Scene.

 

VERY Important:  Once you have the Scene set up as desired, uncheck the Scene to make it "stop recording."  And then in the future, when you want to activate a scene and you don't want to make any changes, check the Scene to activate all its properties, and then immediately uncheck it.  It will then be active, and will not change if you modify the Scene. 

 

Important Note 2:  Don't control object visibility unless your  model is complete and you are not adding or modifying more objects. If you ignored this, and then Differenced a hole into a wall, if you then recalled a previous Scene, that would then make the original wall object visible -- thus making it appear as if the hole disappeared.  (Use the Layer Control instead to avoid this...)

 

Does that help?

 

 

[DJAB]

Hi guys,

 

Thanks for the response, however, Im talking about something a bit different here. Im rendering an overhead view of a bedroom and another view from eye level.

 

For the overhead view I don't want to see the ceiling but I also don't want sunlight coming in over the walls, I only want light through the window, but I need to see into the room. To get around this, I made the ceiling geometry invisible from the maxwell camera although the layer still needs to be turned on. (I also had to make all ceiling fixtures invisible to the camera too.)

 

But when I go to the eye level scene, the ceiling geometry is still set to "hide" from maxwell camera and I have to go back an manually make it visible again despite setting each scene up properly with the record button.

 

Is there no way to have scenes control this? (Im only talking about the objects being visible to maxwell camera here, for rendering purposes).

 

Andy

[pylon]

Hi Andy,

 

To the best of my knowledge, the ONLY attribute that formZ stores for objects into scenes is an object's visibility attribute, so that approach would not be possible.

 

Three further options:

1. Use formZ's Clipping planes. formZ's clipping planes actually clip the geometry at render time-- allowing light in-- so you will probably not want to use this approach either.

or

2. Use the view's clip hither parameter. This sometimes works for orthographic sections as you describe above. Light will not enter the clipped volume with this approach.

or

3. Make a plane, and enable its Render Boolean attribute in Maxwell Attributes. Use this object to clip the ceiling. Light will not enter the clipped volume with this approach. You could change this object's visibility directly in scenes, but, as noted above, enabling "Object" modifications in scenes can be quite confusing, so instead put the clip object on a layer and modifying the layer's visibility with scenes.

 

I would recommend trying #3.

 

 

[DJAB]

Thanks for the tips Ben, I will give opt 3 a try.

 

Cheers

[Gary]

Hello Andy,

 

Another option would be to duplicate the objects that need different rendering settings and put "overhead settings" on one layer, and "eye level settings" on another. Then just toggle the layers per view and render.

 

Gary