Layers In 3ds max.

During practical 3 Steve showed us the use of layers.
 The three weeks before that even with my non complex shapes I had made great use of freeze and hide.
the selecting the parts to freeze or to hide could some times be tidius and i also found groups not very help full because you need to break the group down to edit a component and then there is no way of automaticly regrouping if I am not mistaken. Then came layers.

Layers are a very usefull tool helping you keep your workspace neet and tidy and speeding up you projects and giving you clear managment of you components.

Here is a picture of my Necron destroyer and the Layers. Maybe in the animation prosess I will decide I need to break them down into more layers that is also easy. 

Now I can freeze and hide in logical groups.

I create a Layer for the body, the torso, each hand, head and staff.
I also created layers for:

• The Light and Floor (for display and rendering purposes only)
• My gravity controler.
• My Rotation Camera and Camera path.
• My smoke partcle system.

My final animation will have 1 necron lord, 3 destroyers, wrecked dreadnaught and the enviroment, up till now layers were good practice in the final scene with all of the above combined it will becaume a nesesity.


A few things to have in mind with layers.

• When you create a new object 3d max add the object to the active layer (marked with a tick).
• You can easily move it to another layer if you change your mind by selecting the objects you want to move, select the layer you want them to move into as active and then press the "+" symbol on the layer managment window.
• You can select to hide a object with in a layer individualy, if you do remember to turn it visible again before you move or scale the components in the layer because the object will be unafected if you don't.
• If you are creating shapes that dont show up on screen check your active layer is not set to hide.