- [Man] In the last movie, we saw the basics
of the layer explorer.
Now let's talk about object and layer display properties.
Each object and each layer has attributes
to control their display.
The object or layer display properties can be accessed
from the quad menu.
For example, I can open up this fixtures layer
that we created in the previous movie
and select some objects such as a lamp frame
and then right click to go into the quad menu.
From here, I can choose display properties
and toggle some properties such as, let's try display
as box.
Once I execute that the object is displayed
as a box and because it was a member
of a group all the other group members accepted
that change as well.
Not all of the display properties are available directly
from that quad menu.
You may need to go into the properties window.
I'll select that lamp frame object
and right click and go into object properties.
So that's just found here at the bottom properties.
And from within here on the left are the display properties.
And we see, for example, display as box
and that's enabled, we can turn that back off again
and click okay and that attribute has been set
for all the members of the group once again.
The most direct way to control display properties is
either from the columns here in the explorer
or from the display panel it's over in the command panel.
Here it is display panel, activate that.
And we want to scroll down to the bottom here
to the display properties rollout.
And maybe I can turn display as box back on again,
click on that and again, all the members
of the group accepted that change.
Okay, I can turn that back off again.
The display property that I find I need to change most
of the time, is this one down here.
Show frozen in gray.
By default, a frozen object will render
in a flat gray color with no material or textures.
We can see that if we freeze this fixtures layer
go ahead and click on the little snowflake icon.
And now all those objects are frozen and displayed in gray.
Well, I want the frozen objects to render normally
in the view port.
So let's make that happen.
I'll unfreeze that layer once again
and then select some member of the layer
and back in the display properties,
like a disable show frozen in gray,
and because all those objects are members of a group,
they all accepted that change.
So if I freeze the layer now,
we don't see the objects displayed in gray.
They're displayed with their textures and materials.
There's actually a better way to set up display properties
for many objects in a layer
because objects can inherit display properties
from their enclosing layer.
In a complicated scene with many objects,
it's helpful to set display properties per layer
and have those options propagate
to all the enclosed objects.
But by default, with the standard 3ds Max preferences
all new objects display properties are by object,
meaning they don't inherit from their layer.
So let's change this.
I'm going to unfreeze the layer
and then select one of the objects.
Right click on it.
And in the lower left, I've got an option
that says By layer, go ahead and activate that.
And again, because it's a member of a group,
all the other group members accepted that change.
Now, if you notice the icons over here
in the explore column are different.
So here in the renderable column
instead of seeing a teapot, we see a little layer icon.
So that means that, that property is being inherited
from the enclosing layer.
Okay, so now any changes we make
to the layer properties will propagate to these objects.
I'll select that fixtures layer,
right click, go into its properties
and disable show frozen in gray.
Click okay, and now if we freeze
that fixtures layer the objects are not displayed in gray.
The objects are inheriting that property
from the enclosing layer, which is fixtures.
If you want all new scene objects
to automatically inherit the layer properties,
you can set that up in the preferences,
go to customize, preferences.
And in the general tab
under layer default in the lower right, we have a switch.
we can enable.
Default to By layer for new nodes.
Turn that on and click okay.
And now any objects that you create
will automatically inherit the display properties
from their enclosing layer.
That preference doesn't change any objects
that already exist in the scene.
You'll need to set those up as we saw a moment ago,
by setting their property to By layer in the quad menu
that's how to set display properties for objects and layers.