Better way to turn on/off "part of my display"

[jnealand]

With the addition of the whole house model, it seems even more critical to get an easier way to turn on/off the check for part of my display.  For instance - I do not want my whole house model to include my static items that are turned on and stay on for the most part all night.  Such items as my tune to sign, nativity, big wreath on the side of the house, inflateables, etc.  I have all those items in a model called static map with a bunch of single channel one color strings and using individual start channels.  By using this model I can turn these items on using nutcracker, but I sure do not need to have random effects on them like I use with the whole house model.  So I have to go thru all my models and turn off the part of my display so that they are not included with the whole house model.  After whole house model is created I have to back and turn them all on so I can see them in the preview and know that they have not been forgotten in each sequence I create.  It has gotten easier to turn them off with right clicking on the item in the preview window, but it is still necessary to go to every model and use modify to add it back to the display.  I have had to do that several times so far and anticipate that I will be doing it again since I have now realized that item placement in the preview can be more sensitive now that we have the whole house  thing since some of the effects like sweeps, pinwheels, circles bouncing will not look right on the actual display if I do not have them positioned realatively close to their real position.  A simple dropdown list like the one used to pick display elements in the nutcracker window would be great.

[msiebri]

So, reading between the lines here.  Can I use the whole house model to create a partial whole house model by turning off some models?  For instance, I would like to create a model of my roofline together (30 different single line models) to do things like pinwheel on it, but I want my arches running something different.  Can I do this?

Martin

[jnealand]

I turn off all non rgb items in the preview before I click on the create wholehouse model.  That way I only get the RGB elements and those are the only things that will be effected when I use that model.  Creating a wholehouse model grabs all items that have "part of my display" checked.  At least that is how I understand it and how it has been working for me.  There is no reason you could not uncheck the part of my display on everything that is not roof oriented.  Just name as roof model and then you could also make up one for the yard items or one for the 1st floor items, etc.  You just have to keep modifying all the models so that only the items you want together have the part of my display checked.  It is a great tool in my opinion.

[sean]

you are both correct.

you can make multiple whole house models.

One has everything
another has only eaves and arches
.etc.
Only those models that were used to take snapshot of house and create model will be visible.

[dpitts]

I started working on "Model Groups" but got side tracked on OpenGL support. Whe nI finally start sequencing I will most likely finish "Model Groups"