Turn on xrefs at rendertime

[Neilg]

I've got a scene with an unholy number of xrefs in which spend nearly all their time turned off so I can use the file. Switching them on takes a full 10-15 minutes and I was wondering if there is a script or something which can do this after I press render...

All I ever do with them is spend ages turning them on, click render, then turn them off again to save the file. If enabling them can be done in the file which is sent to render it'd save me so much time.

Any ideas if this is possible?

[YoyoBoy]

You could have a separate file that is only cameras and lights and X-Refs that you use for rendering. That worked well for me on a recent project.

[Neilg]

Thats what I do have. The problem is that enabling the xrefs takes forever, and opening the file if the xrefs are enabled takes forever - I think it's an indexing issue due to the number of objects.
At the moment the only way to manage it is keeping the xrefs turned off until just before I render, but thats a 20 minute wait in total to turn them on and off. I'm doing other stuff while I wait, but i'd like to stop having to deal with it.

[YoyoBoy]

Maybe it would help to have all your X-Ref set to "Display as Box?"

[Neilg]

no dice, having them not visible doesnt help either. The only way to speed it up to have them disabled which is whats making me think it's an indexing issue

I'm thinking my only option might be to go through the xref's and collapse as many objects to one as possible.

[YoyoBoy]

There's gotta be a way to turn them on with scripting.

[Neilg]

If only backburner had them listed I could send it with them off, then switch them on there and restart the job...

someones going to tell me deadline can do this now, arent they?

[cgrant3d]

Personally I'd recommend cleaning up / attaching objects because if enabling xrefs takes that long then you might just be moving the problem to a render time issue... For attaching objects QuickCollapse is the fastest script - http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/sc...quick-collapse).

If for some reason you really need to force enable xrefs at render time then here's a quick script to do it. Just put it in the "pre-render" script section

unhide-all-xrefscenes.zip

[Neilg]

Excellent, thank you! I'll do a huge clean up now and use the script too
That script will still come in handy because nitrous has broken the display part of xrefs for me - even if i check visible off, they're still visible so at least with this I can keep them off in other jobs to help with display performance.

[MoonDoggie]

RPManager can do this easily

[MoonDoggie]

It is scriptable though, if that's the only option you have currently. Shoot me a PM if you need something, I can do it real quick.