There are a multitude of plugins, scripts, and general workflow methodologies, which help to optimize scenes, however, there is no native centralized tool to accomplish this. Therefore, I recommend the creation of a "Scene Optimization Management" panel (SOM), which utilizes a dashboard to help a user identify potential issues within a scene and provide a multitude of options for the user to optimize their scene to meet particular production goals.
This management panel should contain the following:
- Dashboard - This interface would function on several levels; provide a general overview of the scene, display general statistics such as polygon counts, object numbers, xrefs, materials, etc., display potential issues based on stock and user generated criteria (drop menu). This would also display stats based on specific object, group or layer selections.
- Asset Management Tool – This would be a significant overhaul of the current tool. This should allow remapping, searching, copying of assets from one location to another, file format change (JPG to TGA for instance), file scaling (scale to binary multiples or scale from 2048 to 512 for instance), gamma adjustments, support for all assets other than just images (Proxies, Xrefs, Containers, etc.), sorting by columns.
- Wizard based optimization – This would be a wizard oriented tool which walks the user through various questions to help optimize a scene based on user defined criteria. This wizard tool could also create “batch presets”, which can be saved by the user for later use.
- Integrate the Scene Converter functionality
- Maxscript/Python/.Net/MCG integration – This would allow for users to create their own custom tools to meet specific production need.
- Render to texture integration – This should support both bitmap and procedural rendering
- Batch Processing integrated into 3ds max command or core – This functionality would allow a user to batch process scenes without opening 3ds max. Perhaps this could be integrated into the 3ds max Asset Library Tool.