topic Re: Grouped Objects not supported in Layer Explorer? in 3ds Max Forum

Grouped Objects not supported in Layer Explorer?

cslyT3MN9 — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 22:40:41 GMT

Hi there,
After a preliminary search, I didn't find an answer to this, so hopefully this hasn't been asked before.

I am working with a fairly large scene, in which it is to my advantage to have some objects grouped together, so that I can collapse things in my Scene Explorer to be able to clearly see what is in the scene. For instance, I created a chair, and every piece of the chair is modeled individually and then grouped, so I can move the whole chair around easily.

Now my scene is large enough for me to want to use layers as well, but when I try moving a grouped object from my Scene explorer to a new layer in the Layer Explorer, indeed it works, however the hierarchy of the group is lost in the Layer Explorer, making a long mess of objects group nulls. It doesn't matter that much, as the function of the Layers is handy when I need them, however I'm just wondering why groups wouldn't work in the Layer Explorer too?

Any help would be appreciated.

Re: Grouped Objects not supported in Layer Explorer?

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 01:23:43 GMT

Were you able to work out what was causing this? I am having the same issue as well and do not want to see the grouped elements in the Layer Explorer unless i open or ungroup the group.

Re: Grouped Objects not supported in Layer Explorer?

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Jun 2018 01:31:52 GMT

nvm, after a bit of playing i worked it out by playing with the Display Toolbar. Turning off Display Geometry and Shapes allows me just to see the group and not the objects contained within.

Re: Grouped Objects not supported in Layer Explorer?

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 22:50:26 GMT

Whilst you found a way to work around the issue, what you did there is not a proper solution as that hides ALL geometry and shapes.

3DS needs a way to collapse groups in the layer manager & not show their contents unless specified.

Re: Grouped Objects not supported in Layer Explorer?

Anonymous — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 09:41:45 GMT

Agreed. However, what you can do is to configure Advanced filter in a way so only goups are getting displayed. And you can toggle it with a single click:

EDIT: OK, i realized it`s the same like solo (Alt+Group Icon click) the Group property.

Configure Advanced Filter

Re: Grouped Objects not supported in Layer Explorer?

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 20:00:31 GMT

What worked for me was simply selecting sort by Hierarchy

Re: Grouped Objects not supported in Layer Explorer?

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Jun 2020 00:03:26 GMT

Thanks for the try but that switches over from layer names to object names. This is not the option I'm looking for.

I'm looking for a solution for production in a team environment when you often have 10+ layers with specific names.

If I have 10 groups of 10 objects, I'd much prefer an option to see only 10 object names in the layer manager rather than 100!

It would also be a requirement to see all the other objects that are not group. So solo'ing them as a previous user posted would not work.

Re: Grouped Objects not supported in Layer Explorer?

Ijustcant — Fri, 05 Feb 2021 12:32:28 GMT

Quite a late reply, but I am experiencing the same problem here.

Some objects in the Layer Explorer are displayed properly as groups and others - like separate objects.

While trying to figure this out, I noticed that the problematic groups consisted of elements which belonged to different layers. I transferred all of them on the same layer (I made it the Active layer), then Ungroup > Group, but the problem is still there