From LightWiki

LayersMC is a plugin written by Mike Green for managing scenes. You can group any items in LightWave together so they are easier to select and manipulate. There are 3 tabs. Items can only belong to one layer per tab, with the exception of the Select tab, which is for making hotkeyable selection sets.

Contents 1 Installation 2 Bottom Menu 2.1 Layer Menu 2.1.1 Hotkey Menu 3 Selection Buttons 4 Display Tab 5 Render Tab 6 Select Tab

Installation

There are two plugins which come with LayersMC. The first is the main LayersMC.ls Master Plugin interface, and the second is a MGOpenLayersGN.ls Generic Plugin for opening the master panel for use in a menu or hotkeyed. I hotkey it to '8' so i can easily open the panel. Open the Plugin Editor by pressing alt-f11 and click the Add Plugins button. Browse to where you saved the two plugins and select them then click 'Okay'. You can then use the Hotkey Editor and Menu Editor to place the MGOpenLayersGN.ls anywhere in the interface.

Bottom Menu

This has 4 buttons.

• ? - clicking the button next to this will show a short help list for the Panel.
• + to Lyr - Add the item(s) currently selected to the currently selected layer. If they are already in another layer, they will be removed from that layer (unless this is a selection layer, in which case
• - to Lyr - Remove the item(s) currently selected from all layers.
• Layer - Brings up a menu for changing layer properties.

Layer Menu

This is made up of the following items.

• Create new layer- Creates a new layer in the current tab.
• Rename Layer - Renames the currently selected layers.
• View contents of layer - Opens a panel which shows the items in the currently selected layers. You can individual items in this panel, or select them and remove them from the layer.
• Find layer of selected item - This tells you which layer the currently selected item is in.
• Choose instance name - When you have multiple LayersMC panels in the Master Plugin Panel you can identify them with this.
• Edit item selection hotkeys - When the LayersMC panel is in focus (selected) you can use hotkeys to select the items in a layer. This panel allows you to set the hotkeys you wish to assign to layers.

Hotkey Menu

This allows you to assign a hotkey to select a layer's items of a specific type (since you can only select items of one type at a time in Layout. You select the hotkey, tab name, layer, and item type and click Assign to assign the hotkey. When you click an item in the list at the top, the buttons below will change to that hotkey assignment. The LayersMC panel must be the one in focus (selected) for the hotkeys to work. I assign a hot key '8' to open the LayersMC panel so all I do is hit '8' then the layer hotkey to immediately select that layer's items.

• Clear layer items from scene - Does exactly that.
• Delete selected layers - Removes the layers from the list without clearing the items in the layers.
• Copy selected layers - Copies the layers into a buffer so you can copy them into another layer tab.
• Copy All Layers - As above but copies all the layers.
• Paste layers - Pastes the layers and their content lists into the current tab.
• Save selected layers - Saves the layers to disk to allow the user to backup their layer settings.
• Save all layers - As above but with all layers.
• Load layers - Allows the user to load saved layers.

Selection Buttons

At the side of each tab are O,B,L, and C buttons. These stand for Objects, Bones, Lights and Cameras respectively. By selecting one or more layers, and clicking these buttons, the items belonging to those layers of that type will be selected. You can assign hotkeys to these in the Hotkey editor.

Display Tab

The layers in this tab allow you to group objects in accordance to how they should be displayed in layout. By selecting one or more layers and clicking a button on the left, you can set how they are drawn in the viewport. Hide, BBox, Wire, Face, Shade(d), and Text(ured) buttons set the items to their respective display mode. If the items are lights, bones or cameras, Hide will hide them, whilst the other buttons will reveal them again. The Lock button will toggle viewport locking for the items in the layers.

Render Tab

This functions like the Display tab, but allows you to set the render options (Unseen by rays, Unseen by Camera, Matte, Cast Shadow, Recieve Shadow, Self Shadow) for the items.

Select Tab

This tab is for making selection sets which can then be hotkey assigned for quicker interaction.