Merging Scenes

You can combine objects in any number of Softimage scenes by merging them. When you merge a scene into the current scene, it is automatically loaded as a model. This ensures that the names of objects being merged into the scene are preserved — because each model maintains its own namespace, there is no need to append prefixes to ensure that object names are unique. For more information, see Models.

When you merge one scene into another, light associations are not updated automatically. If you have inclusive or exclusive lights, you should modify their lists of associated objects to get the effect you want. For more information about light associations, see Using Selective Lights.

To merge a scene into the current scene

Open a Softimage scene.
Choose File Merge from the main menu.
In the browser that appears, locate and select the Softimage scene that you want to merge, then click OK.

If you don't want the elements of the merged scene to be a separate model, you can "unparent" the model's children using either the Cut button on the Constrain panel or by dragging and dropping their nodes in the explorer, then deleting the model node.

To merge a Softimage scene by dragging and dropping

Press the Ctrl key as you drag and drop a Softimage scene (*.scn) file from the Softimage browser or a Windows Explorer onto the background of a 3D view to merge it as a model with the current scene.

NoteYou cannot drag and drop scenes from external windows on Linux systems.

Image Clipsand Merged Scenes

When you merge a Softimage scene into another scene using File Merge, the default is to share image clips. This means that if any image clips (for example, textures) on any model(s) in the merged scene are the same as clips that are already in the current scene, then the existing clips are automatically reused. This prevents unnecessary image clips from accumulating in your scene.

The rules for sharing image sources/clips are as follows:

For all model types, identical image sources are always shared.
Two clips are considered to be the same if they share the same image source and the same parameter values. Animated parameters are ignored.
Local models will not share clips that are already used by, and therefore locked by, referenced models.
Referenced models will only share clips that are already used and locked by other referenced models, or clips that are currently unused.

In some situations, you might not want to automatically share image clips. For example, you might have animated the clip parameters differently and you want to keep the different animations. In these cases, you can use the MergeScenecommand in the script editor to specify 0 for the ShareOptions parameter. For example in VBScript:

ImportModel filename.emdl, , True, , , 0

For more information about the syntax of the ImportModel command and other ShareOptions values, see ImportModel in the SDK Guide.

For more information about image clips and sources, see Managing Image Sources & Clips.

Simulation Environments and Merged Scenes

When you merge scenes, you may end up with multiple simulation environments. To merge these into a single environment, see Merging Multiple Environments.