8

Using Layers to Organize a Scene 705
render the furniture, you can turn off that layer’s
Renderable property.
Note: When you link an AutoCAD file into
3ds Max, any layers that are frozen (and all objects
that reside on these layers) are not imported.
Note: Objects can be hidden and frozen on a
per-object basis; however, an object residing on
ahiddenorfrozenlayerwill
always adopt the
hide/freeze state of its layer.
Tip: If you set lights’ render control to ByLayer (in
the General panel of the Preferences dialog) , you
canusetheRendercolumnintheLayerManager
toquicklyturnlightsonoroffinyourscene.
Layers can help organize the contents of a scene.
Layer-Object Relationships
The Layer Manager (page 3–706) displays layers,
as well as their associated objects. This makes it
very easy to organize, and make changes to objects
in a scene. With the Layer Manager, you can
adjust property settings at either the layer level, or
individually for each object. Each property can
be toggled b etween var ious states, including the
ByLayer state (page 3–1014) .Whenanobject’s
property is set to ByLayer, the object inherits that
setting from the layer it is associated with.
Note: TheHideandFreezestatesofanobject
cannot be set to ByObject. Objects
can be hidden
or frozen on a per-object basis; however, they wil l
always follow the behavior of their layer when it is
hidden or frozen.
S pecia l L a y er 0
When you beg in a new scene, 3ds Max creates
aspeciallayernamed
0(default) .Bydefault,
objects on layer 0 have their visibility settings on,
renderability is on, and viewport display is set.
Yo u c a n’ t d e l e t e o r r e n a m e l a y e r 0 .
If you haven’t created any layers, 3ds Max places
objects you create on layer 0 by default. After you
create objects, you can reassign them to different
layers, including those residing on layer 0.
Display Proper ties
In the Layer Properties dialog (page 3–711) ,you
can specify layer visibility individually for each
viewport. Ifyoudon’twanttodisplayacertain
layer , you can hide that layer . 3ds Max hides
thelayerintheviewport,butnotinanyoutput
rendered image of the scene.
Note: For hidden geometry to render, Render
HiddenGeometrymustbeturnedoninthe
Render Scene dialog > Common Parameters
rollout (page 3–27)
.
You can specify layers to display objects
shaded
(page 3–774)
,in w ireframe mode (page 3–1128) ,
as a
bounding box (page 3–1013) ,oraswhatever
is set on the
Viewport Propertie s menu (page
3–774)
. Using this method, you can have different
objects displayed differently in the same scene.
Yo u c a n d i s p l a y l a y e r s i n
See-Through mode .
See-Through mode temporarily displays selected
objects in translucent form so you can see through
them without applying special materials. You can
toggle See-Through mode for all objects per layer.