[REQ] Red Alert! Missing stuff + Replacing Objects

Skatter Feature Requests
1

Hi Thomas,

I’m always moving stuff around and purging my models. I frequently loose skatter objects on purge (it didn’t use to happen before, but suddenly it’s happening a lot, I don’t know why). I also group/ungroup skatter surfaces or clipping areas while I model and reorganize the model.

Skatter notifies me of these changes and prompts me to reselect objects, but as they simply disappear from list, when I pick them, I never know if I’m picking the same objects or if they are getting the same Skatter properties.

Can the UI change for this and the object’s names, instead of disappearing from list, are shown red or greyed out?

Maybe a button for reloading/repicking/replace them for others would be available which would allow us to perform those actions.

NOTE; Replacing an object for another while keeping the same properties would be very useful, either if these objects are missing or not.

If, in the other hand, we didn’t want the objects anymore, we would simply erase the red entry.

Right now, as it is, I’m loosing too much time searching for objects and setting them up from scratch again so I’m sure they will work.

I know I sound a sloppy modeller, but the thing is that I’m no archviz artist, I’m an architect and my model is multipurposed so I have to iterate through design, manage model and scenes for construction docs, presentations and render and it takes a huge effort to make all this fit together.

Thanks in advance,

João

1 Like
2

Good idea ! That would be a good feature.

I also faced the problem of missing components when I purge my models …

3

Added to my todo list!

1 Like
4

Nice! Thanks.

5

i had the same problem, but i have a work around.

i copy every component used by skatter to a layer called “dummy”, then i turn off the layer, this way the objects will not disappear with a purge, and every time i want to add or remove components, i simply turn on and of the layer.

hope it helps

6

Thanks Filipe,

That’s what I do too, but apparently I always mess something up with skatter. The messing up process tends to be related with the arch design process.

I should figure out a way to render my buildings without having to design them… :smiley:

Design brings all kind of pain while rendering is just about great things!

Thanks again for your support… and I’ll try paying more attention to my layering. Even so I think that Skatter used to save my proxies and models at the origin of the model, hidden… I’ve got some there, in my Skatter objects layer, but most proxies are missing.

I’m thinking Tig’s purge is too strong and purges proxy boxes… might it be it? Will try when I have the time.

7

Name groups for skatter with Modelname_skat orso, then you know you need to keep those.

8

This happens only when you load a preset from the library, to prevent purging the objects.

Otherwise, as you need to pick the objects from the model (so there is at least one copy), I assumed this is not necessary.

9

That sort of explains it. I usually save my setups as presets or actually have the base models in the model.

The thing is that, render only is useful for having a clean model that can be presented in arch drawings too. In those cases my skattered objects are not there. They are usually hidden inside a layer. I can’t understand why they disappeared from that layer.