Instance connections overview?

[Anonymous]

Is there some way to overview instance connections in 3ds max?

I'm thinking of something like Slate Material Editor, which could show what are the dependencies of objects, modifiers, etc.

An example for this could be: for example having a ProBoolean, consisting of A,B,C,D,E elemenst, and I'd like to create a copy of it, but have the C,D,E elements as instances with the other ProBoolean's operands, but A and B as copied.

Is this possible, or I have to recreate the new ProBoolean Object from scratch?

Or it would be nice to extract the base of an object which was copied as a Reference.

These are just some examples. I think the dependencies in 3ds Max can be complex, but I can't see any way to organize them properly. I think there are some functions like "Show dependencies", but is that all?

I hope there is some interface for this, maybe I've just overlooked it the whole time.

[Swordslayer]

There's schematic view, if you have baseobject checked selecting the main object will highlight all the other identical baseobjects (for example, here Box012 is a copy unlike the others so its baseobject is not highlighted):

ProBooleans, partly due to them being 3rd-party solution, don't support much of this, the new Booleans do, though.

As for extracting the baseobject/modified object, you can do that via trackview, check for example this post from the tips&tricks thread.

[Anonymous]

Very nice, I didn't know this feature! Thanks, this will come in handy! 🙂

I've started to look into that. By any chance, is it also capable of modify the objects' references, I mean, not just see the wiring between them, but rewire some parameters somehow? 

Or this interface is just for display, and the objects' connections can be modified the traditional way?

[Swordslayer]

It's pretty limited, you can link, wire parameters and stuff like that, but that's about it:

And there were no changes since max 6, if you feel like it could be useful, give your vote to the Scene Node Editor idea if you haven't done so yet.

[Anonymous]

That's nice! Thanks for the intro! 🙂