We must have the choice of exploding a group of objects that are, by default, cast into the virtual Group by Instancing. Decoratively, iif you change one you change all of the instances. This practice can greatly reduce the Geometry load of a scene. Useful in recreating the Acropolis's many columns.
But...
If for some artistic reason you need to change the Shader on an individual column, you must first, remove this geometry from the hierarchical instance or Group.
The ideal, is to be able to fetch one single item from an Instance, and make it the top node of a new hierarchy so that it may be Shaded as required or placed in a new group, or topologically modified.
Currently I find it impossible to fully extract/remove an instance member from the Instance.
Maya has the ability to do this 'explosion of an Instance' - or at least is did back in the A|W days.
David B Fisher

We must have the choice of exploding a group of objects that are, by default, cast into the virtual Group by Instancing. Decoratively, iif you change one you change all of the instances. This practice can greatly reduce the Geometry load of a scene. Useful in recreating the Acropolis's many columns.
But...
If for some artistic reason you need to change the Shader on an individual column, you must first, remove this geometry from the hierarchical instance or Group.
The ideal, is to be able to fetch one single item from an Instance, and make it the top node of a new hierarchy so that it may be Shaded as required or placed in a new group, or topologically modified.
Currently I find it impossible to fully extract/remove an instance member from the Instance.
Maya has the ability to do this 'explosion of an Instance' - or at least is did back in the A|W days.
David B Fisher

Hey there. Not using Stager daily, I stumbled upon an easy thing I hadn't noticed, and thought hints or clarification could help.

I saw collisions videos (jeanette's terrazzo chocolate), so I tried something quick.

I took items, pressed "collision", moved them around… nothing happened.

I lifted all, lifted down, added collision to the ground… still nothing.

THEN, I watched again a video and discovered that the collision toggle, HIDDEN under the selection icon, had to be toggled ON manually, OR press the C key.

I know collision is heavy computing and you don't want it mistakenly on with shouting fans BUT you need to help discover the process.

I thought about 2 things :
- when turning object collision on, turn selection collision on. (easy, but heavy)
- when turning object collision on, have an help popup with a small thumbnail showing the other side of the screen and the drop down menu :) (think about Lr or Ps in context help). And somehow display the C shortcut.

Thank you for all of us newbies :)

It would be great if you could setup a "scene" for each camera added.
For instance if you were able to have 10 objects but in the first camera you only show 5 objects and the other 5 are hidden; and vise versa for the second camera; also in the second camera; if you change the position of the objects this should be captures.

This will allow you to que render multiple scenes and objects all at once freeing up time. Having to be available to start each render is a bit of a pain when one has multiple projects to work on.