I would like to make a film for presenting a micro-technology process in the fabrication of a laser diode chip. It is my first Blender project and I am wondering how I should organize the scenes.
The process is a succession of many steps which occur successively at the surface of the component : deposition of a layer of material (silicon, photoresist, silica, nitride, …), etching of a part of this layer (leaving holes in the layer), deposition of the next layer of material, etching of a part of that layer, …
Shall I create a new scene for every new deposition and etching ? Or shall I use only one scene and place the different elements in a hidden layer and make them appear/disappear successively ?
Generally speaking, when shall I want to add another scene ? as soon as a few elements change or only when the majority of the environment changes ?
I typically use scenes to hold complex objects in a group. Then I have a master scene that I dupligroup them into via an Empty This allows for easy manipulation of a single bulk object. But beware, 2.5 has a scene reference bug that can cause all kinds of head aches when you take that approach. If you are working 2.49 it works fine.
Decide what version of blender to use first. Then put some test together and find out what works best for you.
Another reason to use multiple scene is for compositing your final.
sounds like it is one scene. A Scene is like one location that you do filming in. Since you want to show all the action happening to that one chip, and I assume the camera stays pretty much on that one chip, then that is the scene. You want to animate the materials and pop objects in and out of the scene to show the progress of the etching.