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In this tutorial, you learn to create and manage State Sets.
Using State Sets, you can easily manage your scene to control the visibility of objects you want to render.
You can also control the state of the viewports. You can even control which Rendering Engine is to be used in a particular state.
Perhaps more importantly, light states and material application can also be recorded at a per-state level.
Ultimately, this facilitates your renderings as you can easily batch render different passes to accommodate the results you are aiming for.
Before you start planning your project, let's take a look at the scene named States-Sets_Start.max that you will be using.
You will also familiarize yourself with the State Sets UI before moving on to more complex operations.
The scene you will use is an animated first-person perspective.
It shows you as the main character entering a high-security vault.
The animation is set to 300 frames, or 10 seconds using an NTSC 30 fps signal.
The scene is composed of various objects, including meshes, lights and one animated camera.
The vault itself is composed of a set of objects grouped as a unit,
and instanced three times.
Apart from the mesh objects, there are 5 lights within each unit, with the left/right lights being instances of each other.
Looking at their properties in the Light Lister, Omni lights are set to cast shadows but the two spot lights on the walls are not.
Making changes to the lights in the Light Lister affects not only the displayed unit but the instanced units as well.
For now, leave the light properties unchanged and exit the Light Lister.
There's also a vault group in the back that includes the vault door, its support and the back wall.
To make selection easier, a selection set has been created to include all objects that make the core of the vault corridor.
This will be useful when you start creating State Sets.
Similarly, there are other objects contained in the scene such as an animated arm which also has its own selection set,
and also an animated security door made of the two sliding doors, in addition to a security panel.
The panel itself is made out of a screen and a frame that have both been parented to the left door so that they travel with it.
The screen itself is a simple plane object, which has very definite characteristics as you will learn later.
There is a selection set for the security door that also includes the frame and panel,
but there is also one more, almost redundant selection set to simplify the selection of the plane object separately.
Now that you have a quick overview of the scene, you'll take a basic look at the State Sets UI and manipulation.
From the Rendering menu, choose State Sets. A floater appears.
The main area of this floater is called the Tree View.
If it's the first time you've called it up, it's missing two components that you will always need.
So, you might as well display these two features before moving on.
The first is an Output element. Choose States > Render Outputs. A new UI element appears at the bottom of the floater.
This is where you define where you want to save your rendered outputs.
Notice that if you close the State Sets floater and reopen it, the Render Outputs element remains visible from now on.
You could close it again or simply use the Auto Hide feature if you need extra space, but usually, you just leave it there.
The other UI element that you may well need is the Compositor Link UI.
This is done through the Compositor menu.
This is a tool that you only need if you are planning to send your renders to Adobe After Effects.
As you will see later in this tutorial, there are certain advantages to doing so.
Once you have those two UI elements displayed, they will remain there from session to session until you manually close them.
Next you take a basic look at the State Sets section.
By default, you start with only one available State Set named State01.
We will come back to the concept of Objects Sets later in the tutorial, for now, let's concentrate on State Sets.
To the right of the State Set label is a Record button.
This is arguably the most important icon in the Tree view as it enables you to record changes in a scene.
As you enable record mode, the icon turns red. This means that most changes that you bring to the scene now get recorded.
For example, double-click the left door in the camera view. This selects the left door and all its children.
Hide the Selection, and then exit Record mode when done.
Notice the little green arrow icon next to the State01 state set. This indicates that this particular state set is active.
Click the green arrow icon to disable it. Notice that the left door reappears.
Create a New State Set by clicking the Add New State icon. A new state set labeled State02 gets created.
Turn on Record mode on the new state set,
and then hide the vault from view by right-clicking the Front Viewport and choosing Hide Selected.
Disable Record mode when done.
Switch back and forth between the two state sets.
Notice that not only the visibility of objects has been recorded, but also the state of active viewports.
The Camera view is active in one state while the Front view is active in another.
Be aware that while many actions get recorded, others are not.
For example, make sure State01 is active, where you see all objects except the left door.
Click the Record button on that scene state.
Create an object in the scene and then disable Record mode.
Now switch to State02 as active state set. Notice that the newly created object is still visible.
So whereas you can record actions such as object visibility, material application, rendering engines and light properties, …
keep in mind that other actions such as object or material creation, or even object transforms are not recorded.
Delete the newly created object before moving on.
To rename a State Set, you first highlight it and then click on it one more time.
This is often referred to as a "slow double-click".
If you prefer a conventional double-click action, then you can change that under States > Options > Configuration.
In the Tree View panel, set the Rename on double-click option to true.
Save the Configuration to exit the dialog.
The icons to the left of the State Sets labels control the status of the state set itself.
The first icon is an Enable toggle for the state set. When it's off, activating the state set has no more effect on the scene.
The second icon, in the shape of a teapot is more interesting and is referred to as a Render Output toggle.
With this, you can still manipulate the state set as you have learned but you can prevent it from rendering.
This can be useful if you've already rendered a particular state set, and you do not wish to re-render it again.
Finally, you can delete a state set simply by highlighting it and hitting the Delete key on the keyboard.
Delete the two state sets you have created and then create a new default one.
In the next movie, you start creating State Sets as you plan the batch render of this scene.