Which is the best way to manage scene states?

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hi all,
I’ve a scene with many cameras and I’d like to create different lighting scenario and object&material properties.

To be more clear I’ll do some examples.
I’d like to render cam 1, 5 and 6 with a midday sun position and positioning a person in a room
Then render cam 2, 3 , 4 and 7 with a dusk sun position, with artificial lights on, some emissive materials with improved emissive power and a person in another room.

What’s the best way to achieve this without creating different files or something too complicated?
Thanks in advance

2

Even if one project handles everything, classification will be necessary.

I think Collection, ViewLayer, and Scene are functions to solve this.
Each use is slightly different, and it will be helpful to make good use of the characteristics. :thinking:

3

Maybe Renderset could be the best option. :man_shrugging:

4

A scene state is a View Layer.
So, what can be modified without creating another scene is limited to View Layer properties visible in View Layer tab and collections exclusions from View Layer.

Objects (persons or lights) may be in collections that can be excluded from a View Layer.

For Cycles, different lightings from lights and emissive materials can be in Light Groups, without requiring to add more View Layers.
But you can not have multiple worlds rendered for one View Layer.
There is only one World per scene. It can be animated or overridden by another world in a different View Layer.

EEVEE is more restricted in terms of View Layer Properties.
But a world can still be animated. Lights can be in different collections.
For material changes, collections can be duplicated.

Basically, that can be one scene using two view layers as render layers. But because there is only one Compositing applied to scene ; that implies to animate it, switching look, according to camera switching.
And that may correspond to render unnecessary passes per frame.
Using two scenes may look like complicating file ; but that results in less compositing work and less animation. Switching of looks according to cameras may be perfectly handled by a switching of scene strips, in a third scene for montage in VSE.

You just need to make specific to scene what is different, and keep what is not in collections linked to both scenes.

To me, for that example, that looks simpler to have 3 scenes with 1 View Layer each, than 1 scene with 2 View Layers.

That easily can be one file. But if you use assets from libraries in other files ; you can use library overrides on them. Using serval files, for that purpose, limits changes to minimum required. It lowers memory consumption.

If you are working alone, are the one who has the final say and will not render anything before being sure ; that is not annoying to use several scenes in one file, unless they are very big.
If you are working in team, know that somebody will ask for retakes and will render a lot of tests ; that is preferable to multiply passes and overridable things.

5

Your question is a perfect setup question for easystate.
If you want to go vanilla Blender, the above advice will suffice.
Look on Blendermarket (soon to be: Superhive).
I have found it interesting but not for rendering, yet. Edit: Better said, I have been taking advantage of scene state saving, not for rendering. But the camera controls are stellar.
Robert

6

@oo_1942 , @zeauro , @jcfnav , @UnCommonGrafx
Thank you for your tips.

More detailing… :slight_smile:
I’m using Cycles and Photographer addon.
Probably the ViewLayer feature is my friend…I’ll study it in depth to check if it will work as I’d like.
EasyState seems good but I’d like to understand if it will work together with Photographer addon…it’s too useful for me managing multiple cameras and settings.

7

Definitely works with photographer.

8

I usually use linked scenes for that kind of thing. One scene per camera.

9

Photographer doesn’t seem to have much trouble with other Addons. :thinking:
If you have any problems or questions, please leave your comments on the link below.
They give good feedback.

10

Thank you, I did and I discovered a Photographer feature I wasn’t aware and it’s perfect for my needs.
I think that the Photographer ViewLayers manager and per Camera world override are the perfect features to do what I’m looking for.
It still to manage the strength emissive material property but I think I could solve easy duplicating the objects and its material.
EDIT: I’ve seen that using ViewLayers I can easily have a single object data with 2 materials, one for each ViewLayer. Nice… I think I’ve everything I need.
Now I have to port what I’ve tested in a simple scene to my working scene, that is much more complex.

11

renderset is easily the best way to manage scene states in my experience.