[Bf-funboard] Named Layers Blender wiki page

[Sangwoo Hong]

On Nov 8, 2007 7:52 AM, Bassam Kurdali <bkurdali at freefactory.org> wrote:

> think of them as sets of objects: an object can belong to multiple sets
> (set of
> things that are renderable, sets of things that are chairs, set of
> things that are made of wood)


Then perhaps it should be called "sets" instead of "layers".  Why use a word
that has misleading implicit meaning when a perfectly fine word exists that
actually describes what it does which you use to describe what it actually
does. :)

Semantics aside, I think the ability to exclusively group things
irrespective of the scene graph should exists as well as the currently
existing arbitrarily grouping functionality labeled as "layers".

As the amount of complexity goes up in a scene it becomes more and more
difficult to manage how they are organized and a system which automatically
compartmentalizes said organization is very helpful IMHO.  Not to say that
other 3D applications have it right but they seem to see the need for both
exclusive and inclusive ways to organize the scene.  Maya for instance has
"sets" which are able to take arbitrary objects as members as layers do in
Blender.  It also has a "partitions" function which makes it so sets put
under it's jurisdiction are mutually exclusive of each other.  They give a
good example of a case in which it would be desirable in their help system.
I'll site it here.

--
For example, suppose you're animating a cartoon character's nose as he
smiles and laughs. You added a cluster to several CVs for adjusting the nose
as he smiles and another cluster to different CVs for adjusting the nose as
he laughs.

Creating the two clusters creates a set for each group of CVs. Occasionally
you want to move CVs from one set to the other. When you move the CVs from
one set to the other set, they remain in the first set. You might not want
the CVs in the first set because they add undesirable deformations [because
you are doubling up the influence] as you transform the cluster.

To avoid this problem, you can create a partition and put both sets in it.
[Clusters in Maya are dealt with as sets which contain arbitrary vertices
and their weighting information.] The partition prevents one set from having
members of another set. When you move the CVs from the first set to the
second set, they're automatically removed from the first set.
--
3DS Max takes a similar approach to their layers system in which a group of
objects added to one layer will be removed from the layer it used to belong
to.  This way there is no ambiguity about what layer an object lives in and
the objects are sure to be just in the layer I meant them to be in.  After
all, once one peels a layer off an onion and eats it, one can't peel that
layer off of the onion again and eat it, again.  Max also provides the
arbitrary groupings, and more importantly settings, of things through their
"scene state" functionality which I mentioned earlier on this board.  Also
quite useful IMHO.

Anyway, I'm sure it will take someone much more technically savvier then
myself to implement such a thing but perhaps a Maya-like "partitions"
approach would be least time consuming to implement.  That way the currently
existing functionality can stay the way it is but there will be a way to
manage scene objects in a way that is mutually exclusive to each other.

phong.
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