Hiding background partitions etc

[Andi Farhall]

My particular workflow is to always hide background partitions for both geometry and lights and to explicitly set visibility of all partitions, and I do this as i feel it gives me a more secure control over what shows up in renders. I currently experiencing some scenes which use a much more relaxed approach to object visibility and whilst i wrestle with them i'm contemplating making some suggestions to my superiors, but thought it wise to garner some opinions here, just in case i'm completey wrong....

cheers,

Andi.

...........................................................................

http://www.hackneyeffects.com/

https://vimeo.com/user4174293

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andi-farhall/b/496/b21

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord_hackney/
http://spylon.tumblr.com/
------------------------------------------------------------

[Dan Yargici]

Hi Andi.

I agree with you %100000.  Working any other way is asking for trouble IMO.

DAN

[Peter Agg]

Yep, you're entirely correct on this one - don't let them try to tell you otherwise. :)

[Stefan Andersson]

+10000 it's the way to go.

Regards

Stefan

-- Sent from a phone booth in purgatory

[Martin Chatterjee]

That's the only sane way to work as far as I'm concerned...

Cheers, Martin 

--
       Martin Chatterjee
 
[ Freelance Technical Director ]
[   http://www.chatterjee.de   ]

[ https://vimeo.com/chatterjee ] 

[pet...@skynet.be]

yes and no.

 

hiding the default partitions for geo and lights is common practice – almost an absolute rule afaic for lighting/rendering scenes. (it’s  inexcusable not to do this in production scenes for rendering with more than a handful of passes)

every newly added object gets hidden by default – which is great for not messing up an existing setup, but not so user friendly to work in the scene – for layout and modeling in particular.

To accommodate this - you can keep the default pass with both (or just the geometry one) on “no effect”  - so it’s easy to work in the default pass - just make sure to never render it.

 

However, I am strongly opposed to explicitly setting visibility (= using “show members”) on all or most partitions – as I’ve seen some people do. This will unhide hidden objects and is almost guaranteed to cause trouble at some point. If an object was hidden, manually or otherwise, it should stay so by default – so use “no effect on members” on pretty much every partition other than the default one.

This way – if you have a scene with plenty of passes – and then hide an object  – it will be hidden in all passes. To hide it only for this pass, just drop it in the default partition. Very intuitive.

 

Only exceptionally should partitions force visibility with “show members” – and only for the very purpose of unhiding hidden objects – and I’d put something in the name of that partition to make this very clear (“unhide” or “show all” or ...)

 

I’m also not a big fan of display overrides on partitions – such as setting the wireframe color – as the override doesn’t let you change other display settings such as putting an object to hidden line or shaded or so - it's just more trouble than it’s worth.

 

 

if you have a clearly defined workflow / pipeline /departments you can be more heavy handed with the overrides and partitions – especially in scenes for lighting. But if you have a more organic or freestyle workflow – switching back and forth between different tasks, from modeling to rendering, in the same scene, shared among people – then there is a fine line to thread, being properly organized in scenes while keeping them unintuitive for all to work in.

[Adam Seeley]

Well you know my take on it....

Any other workflow unless it's script driven is asking for trouble.

Adam

---------------------
Yoyo Digital Ltd.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/adamseeleyuk

https://vimeo.com/adamseeley

---

From: Andi Farhall <hac...@outlook.com>
To: "soft...@listproc.autodesk.com" <soft...@listproc.autodesk.com>
Sent: Tuesday, 21 May 2013, 10:38

Subject: Hiding background partitions etc

[Simon Reeves]

I agree with the last reply.

I never force show, I like to hide objects themselves (or groups)and for that to propagate though the passes (temporarily). 

That's how I've taught the new soft users at work! And after a day they can see the massive benefits of that workflow and the pass system. 

Simon Reeves

Analog

London, UK

[Adam Seeley]

Funny, I'm almost opposite...

I get very uncomfortable (physically uneasy) dealing with "no effect" partitions floating around containing a mix of hidden and unhidden objects, especially in large scenes, I need everything locked down and explicit.

I'll normally have a working/Default pass where I set visibilty properties locally on objects so I can throw stuff around but I like to know when it needs rendering again it will actually get rendered.

Can't push the case for well named partitions & passes enough, it's always worth the time.

I also stack all the cutlery in the dishwasher strictly by type so my ocd tendencies probably show through a bit.

 Adam

---------------------
Yoyo Digital Ltd.
07956 976 245
http://www.linkedin.com/in/adamseeleyuk

https://vimeo.com/adamseeley

---

From: "pet...@skynet.be" <pet...@skynet.be>
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Sent: Tuesday, 21 May 2013, 12:14
Subject: Re: Hiding background partitions etc

[Gareth Bell]

I'll second that. Especially the cutlery stacking bit.

---

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] on behalf of Adam Seeley [adam_...@yahoo.com]
Sent: 21 May 2013 12:48
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com

[Peter Agg]

"I'll normally have a working/Default pass where I set visibilty properties locally on objects so I can throw stuff around but I like to know when it needs rendering again it will actually get rendered."

Same with me, being able to go to a 'clean' default_pass to deal with general scene issues is always handy - I want to be able to hide/un-hide in there to my heart's content and know that when I submit back to the farm, all my passes will be ok.

[Andi Farhall]

I always have a pass i call "tech" specifically for fiddling with stuff outside of the constraints of forced visibility. For me, forced is the way to go as I often find when picking up other peoples scenes there can be visibility conflicts between passes, so the forced thing is in response to that really. Naturally if it's only ever your scenes you deal with then it's personal preference but I prefer to remove as many variables as possible when working with stuff for a number of people.

I think I've got room to make a few suggestions to the chaps around me now given the responses here

cheers,

A>

...........................................................................

http://www.hackneyeffects.com/

https://vimeo.com/user4174293

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andi-farhall/b/496/b21

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord_hackney/
http://spylon.tumblr.com/
------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: pete...@googlemail.com
Date: Tue, 21 May 2013 12:52:52 +0100

Subject: Re: Hiding background partitions etc

To: adam_...@yahoo.com; soft...@listproc.autodesk.com

[pet...@skynet.be]

> Funny, I'm almost opposite...

 

Arrgghhh.

 

Oh well – any system has its weaknesses. Indeed in the one I use, if you go and mess around, debugging, and hide some objects temporarily, and forget to unhide them, they will not be forced back to be visible. That can be inconvenient.

An advantage of my approach is you can just branch select a model (or models) and assign them to a partition or create a new one – and objects that are supposed to be hidden will remain so.

In an “everything locked down” approach – I hope feeding the passes and partitions is also fairly automated (with named groups within models?) so every kind of object goes to it’s dedicated partition?

So how do you handle visibility animation? That gets screwed on “show members” partitions doesn’t it?

> I get very uncomfortable (physically uneasy) dealing with "no effect" partitions floating around containing a mix of hidden and unhidden objects, especially in large scenes, I need everything locked down and explicit.
> I'll normally have a working/Default pass where I set visibilty properties locally on objects so I can throw stuff around but I like to know when it needs rendering again it will actually get rendered.
> Can't push the case for well named partitions & passes enough, it's always worth the time.

> I also stack all the cutlery in the dishwasher strictly by type so my ocd tendencies probably show through a bit.

For me, the dishwasher is like Tetris. If there’s a hole left, I’ll cram something in it.

[Andi Farhall]

The "naming stuff properly" chat is actually ahead of the visibility one.... 

animated visibility would be a special case where no effect would be appropriate. 

...........................................................................

http://www.hackneyeffects.com/

https://vimeo.com/user4174293

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/andi-farhall/b/496/b21

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lord_hackney/
http://spylon.tumblr.com/
------------------------------------------------------------

---

From: pet...@skynet.be
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com

Subject: Re: Hiding background partitions etc

Date: Tue, 21 May 2013 14:32:28 +0200

[Peter Agg]

"So how do you handle visibility animation? That gets screwed on “show members” partitions doesn’t it?"

Animating visibility is something on my 'don't do this' list anyway, so no problems on that account!

[Ed Harriss]

I could not agree more.

 

Like many others I do leave the “default pass” alone for modeling and other misc. tasks though.

 

Ed

 

 

From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Andi Farhall
Sent: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 5:38 AM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Hiding background partitions etc

 

My particular workflow is to always hide background partitions for both geometry and lights and to explicitly set visibility of all partitions, and I do this as i feel it gives me a more secure control over what shows up in renders. I currently experiencing some scenes which use a much more relaxed approach to object visibility and whilst i wrestle with them i'm contemplating making some suggestions to my superiors, but thought it wise to garner some opinions here, just in case i'm completey wrong....

 

cheers,

 

Andi.

 

[Adam Seeley]

There's an exception to any rule...

..apart from always keeping your Background Partition hidden.. no exceptions.

A.

 

---------------------
Yoyo Digital Ltd.
07956 976 245
http://www.linkedin.com/in/adamseeleyuk

https://vimeo.com/adamseeley

---

From: Peter Agg <pete...@googlemail.com>
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Sent: Tuesday, 21 May 2013, 13:51