Subtitles of the Movie

One of the most important aspects in 3D is scene management, and the most important thing in scene management is how you manage your scene in terms of naming your objects. For example, in this scene I have a simple table, a carpet, a few cups, and a vase. Now, you can see none of my objects are named. This one's called Curve 01, Teapot 05, Teapot 03, Circle 01, and so on. Now, this can be really, really a problem in the future for me, because if I'm trying to add more objects to this scene and if I'm trying to add some light, some cameras, and some extra detail in terms of geometry in this scene, this can be very, very time consuming in terms of managing my scene. So, first and most important thing in 3D is, whenever you make something, an object of any kind, be it you know, a simple 2D object, or 3D object, or even like lights, or cameras, or anything, name them. That's extremely, extremely important. No one is going to come and tell you why did you name your objects, it's always going to be a good thing that you name your objects. It organizes your work and it makes you a better person at 3D. Now, the way you can name is pretty simple. I can just click on this and just select over here, and give it whatever name I want. But what I'm trying to say is, make sure you name it right at the get-go, so, the moment you make an object. So, for example, if I go here and make a Sphere, the first thing I want to do is, I want to name it. OK? So, that's very, very important. Certain other ways you can rename objects in Max are by going to the Tools, Rename, Objects, right over here. Now, let me open a simple file, so let's open 0301. This is the file we used in the Mirror movie. So, you can see right now I have some bones over here, I have left upper leg, L underscore Upper Leg, L underscore Knee, L underscore Ankle, L underscore Ball, and L underscore Toe. I'll just mirror them on this side and give them a different color, and you can see that the names are different. L underscore Upper Leg 01, 01, over here Knee 01, so what I want this to be is R underscore Ankle, or R underscore Ball of the foot, and so on. So, there's a very nice little tool in Max called Rename Objects, so what I'm going to do is select this entire hierarchy by double-clicking, go to Tools, Rename Objects. Like, in this case, the reason I selected it, because it's a hierarchy because they're in a parent-child relationship. If not, you could also go to the Select by Name dialog box, which we will talk about in the next movie. So, let's go double-click, it selects everything, Tools, Rename Objects. This is a really, really handy tool. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to turn off Base Name, I'm going to say Prefix R, Remove first one digit; that means it's going to get rid of the L, Remove last two digits, and I'm going to say Rename, and it's done. So, let's close this, and let's check. So, if I click on this one right now you can see R Upper Leg, R Knee, R Ankle, R Ball, and R Toe. So, a really, really nice and handy tool, but again, keep in mind that the moment you make any object in Max name it. It's extremely important to name objects otherwise you can have a scene where you may have 200 or 300 objects and it can be Box 01, Box 02, and suddenly it can be Box 255, and you shouldn't be in a situation trying to figure out what is Box 255, and especially if you're sharing your files with someone, it can be very, very problematic for some other person who's trying to open your files. So, in Scene Management, it's extremely important, and the first step toward that is name your objects.