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406 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects
Objects in a scene can be XRefs, created and maintained
by other users.
XRef Objects
File menu > XRef Objects
Externally referenced objects, XRef objects ,appear
in your current scene, but are actually referenced
from external 3ds Max files.
As a result, the
source objects are protected from
modifications you make to the XRef objects.
Updates or changes made to the source objects
arealsoupdatedinthetargetfilewheretheXRef
appears.
An XRef object appears like any other object in
your scene. However, depending on your XRef
settings, modifiers and manipulators applied to
yoursourceobjectmightormightnotbeavailable
to change. If you selected XRef or Ignore in the
Modifiers group of the
XRef Objects dialog (page
3–408)
, the only entry in the modifier stack will be
“XRef Object.” You can add additional modifiers to
the objec t, but you cannot access the ori ginal ones
unless you merge the XRef object into the scene.
However, if you merge the objects into the target
scene, you can edit them in the stack. However,
changes that you make to the modifier stack in the
target file have no effect in the source file.
Note: TheXRefbehaviorofworld-spacemodifiers
is different than the object-space modifiers. If you
add a world-space modifier and use the XRef or
Ignore options, the world-space modifiers will be
separatedfromtheXRefobjectandappearonthe
top of the modifier list.
Similarly, manipulators in your source file will be
treated depend ing on the Merge Manipulators
setting in the XRef Objects dialog.
Objects in a scene can be XRefs from other scenes. They can
be transformed and positioned in the scene as desired.
When an XRef object is loaded into the t arget
file from the source file, it can ha ve an XRef
material assigned to it. When the object is loaded
into the target s cene, you can either merge the
materialinformationoryoucanmaintainitasa
live connection with the source file.
Note: BothobjectsandmaterialsareXRefed
based on their names. Names are case-sensitive.
Changing the name of an object or material in