Can I include scenes / sets by reference?
emu42
Posts: 50
Feels weird to have to ask something so basic but...
I would like to save environments I create for my scenes in such a way that I can include them in other scenes without effectively duplicating them each time. I want to just have a reference to the original environment in my library such that whenever I make a change to it, scenes will load the updated version when I open them. By "environment" I mean a group in the scene tree that contains any number of objects underneath it, not just a single object.
Is there any way to make this happen or do I have to keep merging things till eternity?
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Comments
You can't do that with user-facing files, although that is how asset files are handled - but saving a new asset for every variant would be a bit wasteful and a pain to manage.
I'm not sure I follow. How do I make something an asset file and exactly how is it handled differently? Is this what the Save As... / Support Asset / ... menu item is all about?
Also, I don't get what you mean by "every variant". My aim is to have ONE environment which I would like to reuse for several scenes, but the environment itself and everything contained within will not be modified for individual scenes. The only variations would be objects and settings outside the environment hierarchy.
If I'm understanding you right, I believe you can always save it as a scene subset and pick and choose what must be included. In that way, you'll be able to merge that into other scenes.
That's what I have been doing so far and it's exactly what I am trying to avoid, because each merge operation creates a copy of the scene subset.
Let me explain the problem in some more detail:
I have created some environments for a project I am working on with using tools such as UltraScene creator and UltraScatter. So there are plenty of objects and instances in there. Now I create different scenes with different characters I am working on, often re-using these same environments. I want to be able to edit those environments consistently throughout the project, so I would not consider what I have at the moment to be the final version.
Now, I have come up with two approaches to this:
1. Keep everything related to one environment in one scene file
With this approach I use the timeline and render visibility changes a lot. I cram all my characters and sequences I need for a specific environment into one Daz Studio scene file. And I can still change and rebuild the scenery and re-render everything consistently as an image sequence. But... that one file gets bigger and bigger, and what's worse, Daz Studio becomes slower and slower. And hiding characters in the viewport does not do much either, their mere existence in the scene tree seems to be enough to make for an extremely sluggish editing experience.
2. Create n scenes with the same environment (merging)
So I have one scene file that contains just the environment and I merge that into my actual scenes with character and stuff. Those files are manageable in size and editing poses etc works without much noticable delay. But now of course I have n files and I have copied the environment into each one. Halfway through the project I find some flaws in the environment that I would like to fix and I re-generate stuff. Now I have to open each of the n scene files, delete the environment and re-merge it to have my change show up everywhere. That's both tedious and error-prone.
I've wanted this for a long time too, but never filed a feature request for it.
You should do so!
I might. But right now I am still hoping that there's already some way to do it and I just have not figured it out yet.
You are describing linked resources. I don't think that is possible in Studio.