Updating Scenes

Your scenes contain the animation sequences you are working with, which allows you to manipulate them and their associated files to achieve the desired effect.

You can:

Move a scene
Rename a scene
Change a scene's priority
Change a scene's stage
Change the sequence of a scene
Clear scenes from Control Center
Copy an exposure sheet to another scene
Send scenes to the render queue

When you create a scene, it and its associated files are stored on one drive. If you find you are running out of space, you can move a scene to another drive. However, you can consolidate all the scenes for a particular job in a single directory allowing you to find related information quickly. You may also want to file your scenes in specific directories, creating a customized directory system. The Move command lets you move scene data from one file system to another.

Before you move a scene's data:

Make sure no one else is currently using the scene's data. Failure to do this may result in file corruption and loss of your work.
Wait until everyone is offline. This ensures no one can open the data files while you move them.

As you work on your scenes, their nature and contents may change and the name you gave the scene when you began the project may no longer reflect its contents. In this case, you can rename the scene to more accurately reflect its contents.

Before you rename a scene:

Make sure no one else is currently using the scene.

Failure to do this may result in file corruption and loss of your work.

Wait until everyone is offline. This ensures no one can open the scene while you rename it.

You can change the scene's priority level in the processing queue. Increasing a scene's priority lets the system process it before other scenes in the processing queue.

Use the Choose New Priority dialog box to change a scene's rendering and vectorization queue priority. The priority is set using a sliding scale where 0 is the highest priority and 10 is the lowest. If a scene has already been sent to the queue changing the priority at this point will not affect its priority in the queue. Changes will only be applied next time it is sent to the queue. To change a scene's priority after it's been sent to the queue, use the Change Priority button in the Queue window.

For example, If scene B comes before scene A in the queue, you can change the scene's priority so that scene A will be processed first.

The Change Stage command allows you to change the approval stage name of a selected scene that is in Manual approval mode. You can also create customized approval stages that reflect the approval process in your production environment.

A scene's stage is a method of tracking its progress in your production; the scene's current stage does not stop you from advancing the scene to other stages.

Changing a scene's stage and making manual approvals allows you to assign and change a scene's approval stages to keep track of its current status. For example, if you have a scene whose drawings are being scanned, you will mark it as the Scan stage. After you begin adding colour to these line drawings, you can change the scene's stage to Paint. If the selected scene has an automatic approval policy, the Change Stage command will be inactive in the Scene menu. To change a scene's stage, you must ensure that the approval policy is set to Manual.

You can change the sequence of scenes in your job, which affects the order in which the scenes appear in the job throughout the system. You can place a scene anywhere in the Scenes list or you can sort them alphanumerically.

If you must restart a scene from scratch, you can completely erase a scene's exposure sheet. When you clear a scene, you delete all exposure sheet database information and reset the scene as if it were completely new. You are only deleting the files from the database; the Control Center module does not actually delete any image files (drawings, scan, final frames). If you have questions concerning the contents of a scene, you should contact the technical director responsible for the scene in question.

If you must clear a scene from the Control Center module, make sure no one else is currently using the scene's data. If you clear a scene that someone else is working on at that moment, you run the risk of corrupting the files and losing work.

If you must clear a scene, you should wait until everyone is offline to ensure that no one can open the data files while you clear them from the Control Center module.

When you have two scenes with similar exposure sheet information, instead of entering the information twice, you can:

1. Enter the information for one exposure sheet.
2. Copy it to the other scene.
3. Modify the second exposure sheet as needed.

The Copy command lets you copy an existing exposure sheet from one scene into another scene. You can then modify the copied exposure sheet using Harmony Stage.

When you are ready to send a set of scenes for rendering, you can use the Send to Rendering command. This command allows you to send one or more scenes for rendering to the Batch Processing machine.

You can also use Harmony Stageto render scenes, but since you must open each scene individually in Harmony Stage, you can only send one scene to render at a time.