Project Setup/Management and Quality Assurance for Small Business
by Anselm v. Seherr - Thoß, Germany


d) XRefMaterials: If the materials are final for rendering create a basic scene with simple primitives (spheres e.g.) which have the same name as their material and save that scene. In the final rendering scene load only XRef Materials. Which point to the material master scene and the object containing the right material.

All that XRef and XRefMaterial stuff is basicly for quality assurance. So that every rendering artists loads EXACTLY THE SAME material which was declared as final from the customer. I allready had render scenes with 3 different states of a material allready declared as finalized L that´s something you can be untroubled by if you use referenced models and materials so you have ONE SINGLE scene with the final model and all other scenes use this one single scene as reference.


It´s even possible to nest XRefs! So create an XRef scene with all XRefs in it having XRef Materials allready applied.

e) Make use of the PointCache: Download the PointCache2 for free at: hhttp://maxplugins.de/max8.php?search=&sort=Author

What PointCache basicly does is to record vertex positions in a certain interval. So if you have a poly object which is animated final. Put a PointCache modifier on top, set a new record file (saves a *.pc2 external file to the harddrive), set the right frame range and click “Disable modifier below”. That will switch off all modifiers below the PointCache in the stack. Dublicate the mesh, copy/paste the PointCache and delete all modifiers below that. Now you have a final animated mesh without all the helpers/bones/shapes and stuff which is barely uninteresting to shader and render guys. So that helps to keep a scene clear. With PointCahe2 you can even reanimate the animation range scale simply by recording an animation and setting different start and end frames at the Custom Rage Playback Type then. Pretty cool! Again create XRefs then ;) I even made it to cache Particle Flows in conection with the Mesher Compound Object! That is to avoid that any render node doesn´t have a special force or plugin you used. So to say just another small step to minimize the error rate on rendertime… (And we all know that a project can really SUCKS!!!!! during that last third or so of a project).

f) Using the knowledge provided on the net: There are literally TONS of great scripts around on the net. Just crawl scriptspot.com or CGTalk.com just to name two sources of inspiration and tools.

I use the AEARON scripts especially the incremental save script but slightly modified lately.
You can downoad the pack at www.aearon.de.

The rule of cool is “Dei pro nobis sunt, quis contra nos?”
That´s latin and means “The Gods are with us, who´s against us?”

All the “bigger” artists in the industry have websites providing usefull information and tutorials. Learn from them by heart or CGArena.com is here with cool tutorials, and useful information.

As I mentioned I use the aearon script package.At the incremental save settings you can define if you wanna have file comments similar to the summary info from above.


If you save incremental you can add file comments in that window.


If you save incremental the script will create an “old versions” directory where the last file will be moved to. Further more the script adds important informations like saving time, computer name, artist mnemonic, file comments and date.

That’s a file from the “old versions” directory. It´s named like this:
*file name*_*saving date*_*saving time*_*computername*_*artist mnemonic*


How to teach the windows explorer to display file comments we already covered:



The computer name and artist mnemonic are important for TDs to reproduce errors that might occur only on certain mashines. And if you know who did it you can go straight to that artist and ask for information about what happened last.

So finally artists get organized, money for nothing and chicks for free!!! Once i started getting organized  my complexion cleared up, i lost weight, even my teeth got brighter :-)


About the Author: Behind the synonym PsychoSilence hides the german freelance Particle, Shading and PostProduction artist Anselm von Seherr – Thoß. He took part in the production of serveral music videos and image films as well as tv commercials.

The 24 years old hobby DJ is located at Hannover/Germany. When he´s not burried under production pressure he likes visiting metalcore concerts or hardcore raves.

Related Links

Anselm von Seherr website - www.3delicious.de