Temporarily disable offset controllers

[tbusseyA33GU]

I have just discovered the wonderful world of the offset controller. I think it's going to be incredibly useful, but unless I'm missing something, help docs are a little sparse.

I'll set out what I'm doing in case I've got it wrong from the outset

Create and animation on an object
Make a load of unique copies (so they're all animated)
apply the offset controller to them all together
adjust the parameters in timing and offset 'modifier'

I've put the last bit in inverted commas as it doesn't seem to behave in the same way as normal moifiers. 

What I'd love is an easy way of disabling any effect of the controller in viewport in order that I can see just the effect of the base animation. Turning off the 'modifier' doesn't seem to do this.

Also, adjusting the parameters in the timing and offset modifier seems to change all the objects it was originally applied to. This is a good thing (for this task) and I assume it's because the controller is instanced (even though the objects aren't) Is there any way of 

A) viewing/selecting all objects with the instanced controller
B) making instances of the controller unique 

TIA

[Noren2]

The easiest way to see the base animation is probably to set the delay to zero. 

As for selecting all in the same offset group: The controllers and modifiers don't seem to be "officially" instanced. You probably could do something with maxscript, but (with the wisdom of hindsight) it's probably best to put the objects in a selection set or separate layer from the start.

Making unique: Select the object(s) in question and use "delete offset controllers" from the menu. This will leave the modifier, albeit without effect, so you'll have to delete that if you want to assign a new one. So you probably also could turn the modifier off with "delete offset controllers" and apply them anew and the result should be as before because of the modifier. 

  Splitting the group is probably not possible, you'll have to delete the existing controllers (or at least the ones of the objects that should be in a different group) and modifiers and assign a new offset.

Feels like a great tool that wasn't really polished/finished (max2023).

[MartinBeh]

The "magic" is not in the modifiers but in the controllers. I believe the modifiers are just a convenient way to adjust the controller properties, they do not really do anything themselves (e.g. you can delete them from one of the objects and the offset animation is still in place).

I might be wrong but I do not think there is any real instancing going on here either; all the Offset controllers have some internal mechanism to talk to each other so they all share the same offsets, delays etc.

Regarding quickly disabling the effect: You should be able to simply set all the Offset values to neutral, i.e. set start and delay to zero, length to the original length.

Maybe one can use the Presets for that?

[MartinBeh]

And yes, the documentation on that feature is very "light". Probably the best source is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia79iwCehCI

[Noren2]

Just a warning that this can break your scene with more complex or nested controllers. Suddenly got a file save error on autosave that I could trace back to the offset controllers. Not to mention that it takes forever to apply them with a high number of objects (long load and update time to list the available controllers, even selection is sluggish) and there is no name based filter in the selection list, either.

I wouldn't use this except for straight-forward scenarios.