From the course: 3ds Max 2022 Essential Training

Collecting objects in groups - 3ds Max Tutorial

From the course: 3ds Max 2022 Essential Training

Start my 1-month free trial

Collecting objects in groups

“

- [Instructor] When you wish to select and or manipulate multiple objects as a unit, you can collect the objects into a group. Groups also help to declutter the scene explore by reducing the number of objects listed at the root level. I'll create a group from the three parts of this light fixture. And I can select them in the view ports by drawing a rectangle around them because I frozen all of the other objects in the scene. We'll talk more about hiding and freezing objects in layers later. For now, we can see in the scene explorer that lamp cord, lamp frame, and lamp glass are selected. Go into the main max menus to group, choose group, and give it a name. And I do recommend leaving the word group in the name of the group just to make it easier to identify in the list. I'll call this lamp group 001, and click okay. Now they're all grouped together. And we can see that there's a hierarchy here in the scene explorer. I'll click off of those objects and then select any one of them to select all of them. And now if I choose the move tool and click and drag, I'm moving all of those objects at once. I'll undo that with Control + Z. If I need to select the individual objects, I can open up the group, go back to the menus and choose group, open, and then I can click on an individual object and move it separately from the other objects in the group. Once again, undo that with Control + Z. I know that it's an open group when I see these pink brackets around all the objects. Click on that pink bracket to select the group but not the members. The individual members of the group don't light up because they're not actually selected. We can see that in the scene explorer too. Lamp group 001 is selected but lamp cord frame and glass are not selected. And yet, I can still move all those objects as a unit. Click and drag, and I'm moving the group even though the individual members are not selected. Again, undo that with Control + Z. The fact that I can select the group without selecting its members indicates that the group itself is an object. It's a container for objects but that container itself is not visible in the view ports unless the group is open. Another way of saying that is that a group is an invisible transform node. A node is some entity in the scene such as an object, a material or an animation controller. A transform node is an object that has a position rotation and scale. To close an open group, simply select any member of that group or the group itself, go back to the menus and choose group close. If you want to destroy the group, select any member of the group, go back to the menu and choose group on group. I'm not going to do that now so I'll just click off of the menu. But if I did that, the group itself would be destroyed. Alright, that's the basics of using groups. And as I mentioned, groups are very helpful to declutter the scene explorer or the outliner view. So for example, I can create a group for these pergola objects. I can select pergola crossbeam 001. And let's view that in the perspective view and I'll right click to activate the perspective view. And press the Z key to zoom out. and then orbit or tumble with Alt and middle mouse button. That's a single cross beam. Back in the scene explorer, I'll scroll down all the way down to the last crossbeam, number 102. Hold down the shift key to select all of those contiguous objects and choose group group and give it the name pergola cross beam group. Click okay, and now we've just reduced the clutter here because we can collapse that group. We can continue that process by selecting all of the beams. Go to group group, call this one pergola beam group. Click okay, collapse that group, and then finally, we've got these columns. Shift + Select all of those. And once again, group those, call it pergola column group, and click okay. Click on the viewport to de-select everything and scroll around to observe the results. We've substantially reduced the amount of clutter and the pergola beam column and cross beam groups are listed here in alphabetical order. That's how to work with groups to create them, open and close them and use them to declutter the scene explorer.

Contents