- [Tutor] To load an external reference into a Max scene
go to the File menu, to Reference.
You'll see, you've got a couple options here,
XRef Objects and XRef Scene.
We need to choose XRef Objects,
that's going to give us a lot more flexibility.
Click on that, and the XRef Objects dialogue opens up.
And we see that I've already got some external references
in this current primary scene.
And it kind of looks like chair_xref is selected
but that's a fake out,
it's highlighted but it's not actually selected.
You need to actually click on something,
so it's displayed in blue
and that means it's actually selected in the list here.
And when something is selected in that list,
down at the bottom, we can see a list of all of the entities
that are in that scene file.
An entity is an object or a material
or an animation controller,
also known as an animation track.
Before creating a new reference
and loading in a new XRef scene,
we very importantly need to change the options over here,
because we cannot change them
once the external reference record has been created.
We can't go back in here and change that up.
So really importantly,
before we create an external reference we need
to change these options.
But notice they're grayed out.
And the reason they're grayed out is
because I have something selected here.
In order to access these controls
for the next reference we're going to create.
We need to make sure that nothing is selected in this list.
So I can just go down to the bottom here
and click in an empty area.
And now nothing is selected, we see nothing listed down here
and these controls are now available.
There's some presets up here, for example, Static Assets.
If we choose that it's going to change up the options
down here.
Well, I prefer to set the options manually.
I want to choose which scene entities are going
to be externally referenced and which ones are going
to be merged into the current scene.
And generally, in a case, such as the vines model,
I want everything to be externally referenced.
So here we see Tracks, that refers to animation.
I'll set that to XRef.
There's no animation in that scene file,
but just for the sake of example,
I'm going to choose XRef.
And then for Modifiers,
which are effects applied onto to models,
again, I want those to be externally referenced.
So if I have a modifier in the original reference scene
that's going to be referenced into the current scene.
I'm not going to create a duplicate
of that modifier in the current primary scene.
And over here we see Materials and Manipulators.
I don't want want to merge materials,
that is, I don't want to make a new copy
of the material in the current primary scene.
And likewise, I don't want to merge manipulators.
Manipulators are gizmos on the screen.
We can, for example, create a slider in the view port,
again I don't want to create a new copy
of that in my current primary scene.
In this case with Tracks, Modifiers, both set to XRef
and Merge Materials and Merge Manipulators both turned off,
we're essentially XReffing everything in the scene
that were about to bring in.
And that's the same as the preset Scene/Animated Assets.
That means we're going to externally reference
the entire scene.
With those settings, I can go up here to the toolbar
and click on the button on the far left,
Create XRef Record from File.
And then navigate to where your file is located.
In my case, it's in my scenes folder,
in my sub folder xrefs,
and I very strongly recommend that you only link
to files that are in your current project,
otherwise you can run into trouble later
or Max actually can't find those XRefs.
So it's down here at the bottom, vines_xref.
Click open, and that'll take a moment to load
because again it's 130 megabytes in size.
And now we see we've got some lovely vines here
on our pergola.
It's currently selected,
so if I want to I can click on nothing to deselect that.
Back in the XRef Objects dialogue,
if we select vines_xref, we can see all the entities
that have been externally referenced
including all these objects,
and there are some controllers here too.
There should be a material in there somewhere
and there it is.
All right, so we've got that externally referenced in.
To remove an XRef, you'll select it in the list here,
and then you can go up here and click on the X button
and that will delete it from the scene.
And you'll need to do that if you need to make major changes
to that external reference.
So that's kind of a problem with Max.
Actually, it's not kind of a problem, it is a major problem.
3ds Max has known issues updating changes to Xrefs,
and you may encounter serious problems.
Changes to externally referenced scenes
will not be recognized if you load the primary scene.
So if I go and change vines_xref,
and for example, add or remove something to it
the next time I open this primary scene
those changes will not be reflected.
And even if you click on this update button
or if you enable automatic update
it's still not going to work.
3ds Max will not respect changes made to the XRef Scene.
So again, that's kind of a big problem with 3ds Max XRefs.
If you do need to make changes,
you'll need to remove the XRef
from your primary scene first, then save the primary scene.
Then open your externally referenced scene,
make your changes and save that XRef Scene.
Then reopen your primary scene
and recreate the reference from scratch.
And in that process, you will lose any changes
that you've made in your primary scene.
So it does have a lot of issues, it's kind of a big pain
but unfortunately you need to follow that process exactly,
or you risk corrupting the XRef data in the primary scene.
Because there's actually information in this primary scene
about the data in the externally referenced scene.
And if you make changes to the XRef
then that data in the primary scene is not valid anymore.
And that will actually corrupt the primary scene,
you'll have problems, you'll get ghostly objects
in your scene, and those will be placeholders
for XRef data that no longer exists.
However, if the changes to your XRef are very minor,
you may and I repeat, may be able to update those changes.
Instead of using the update button here,
what you would want to do in the case of a changed XRef,
is right click on it and from the Context menu,
you can actually choose to browse.
Go to File, Browse and actually force the file
to be reloaded in its entirety.
That doesn't always work, but you can try it.
Basically, if you make major changes
you are going to have to delete the XRef, make the changes
and then load the XRef back in again,
there's really no way around that.
We've added our vines,
so we can close the XRef Objects window.
And now I'll save a new version of the primary scene.
Go to the File menu and choose Save As.
And I'll create a new file,
I'll call it 03_15_create_xref_finished, and click save.
So now I've got a new version.
Let's check this out in Windows Explorer.
Now minimize 3ds Max, here's my project folder.
So the original file, 03_15_create_xref, 4.6 megabytes.
The new scene I just created 03_15_create_xref_finished,
4.9 megabytes.
I've only increased the disc size by 300 kilobytes or so.
But I've referenced in 130 megabytes of model data,
here in the xrefs folder,
vines_xref is almost 130 megabytes.
So I've added just a few kilobytes of data
to my overall disc footprint.
I've externally referenced almost 130 megabytes
of model data.
So I could create many, many versions of that primary scene
and it would barely impact my disc usage at all.
By using XRefs the impact on disc space is negligible.
And that's how to create an XRef Record
from an external file.