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Zookeeper provides a powerful mechanism for maintaining and managing different states of the scene you're working on. These states can be used extensively to help you improve your workflow and allow you to do things otherwise not possible in 3dsmax.

For example, state sets can be used as a rebust render pass management system. They can also be used to maintain different user interface and views of your scene and be able to quickly jump between them. States can be accessed through tree-views.

The basic way to explain state sets is to think of them as objects which record changes to your scene. The basic workflow is as follows:

1. You add a new state
2. You press the red 'record' button to start recording changes
3. You make some changes to the scene using standard 3dsmax GUI (ie. change render resolution in render dialog or hide a node in viewport) or inside Zookeeper
4. You press the 'record' button again to finish recording
5. The state will now list which changes it detected which you can adjust by expanding it and changing its child values
6. You can then either switch the state on or off by toggling the arrow button of the same state icon
7. - or - you can switch to another state by pressing on its arrow button

Note that you can only have one state active at a time or you can turn off all states to return the scene to condition in which it was before recording was done.

To start using state sets right click in an empty area of a tree view (or at the filter bar) and select Manage State Sets option. You should see a master state item with a blank 'State01' item underneath it.

Master State

Master state is a root node that contains all of your scene states. It can be used to perform global operation on states such as rendering all of them at the same time (right click > Render All States) or adding new states.

To add a new state:

• Right click on master state item > Add New State
• - or - Click the 'Add New State' button to the right of Master State text.

Child States

Each item directly underneath the master state is called a child state. These are individual objects that you will be dealing with when tracking changes in your scene.

As described previously, you can record changes using the red round button to the right of a child state or you can toggle it on or off by pressing the arrow button.

Once you have recorded some changes the state will contain child items nested underneath it. Expand the child state item to see these changes and adjust them to modify the state.

Nested Child States

You can nest a child state under another child state thus making it part of that state. For example, consider a scene where you have hidden an object in one state and changed render resolution in another state. If you nest the first state under the second the second state will now to both - hide the object and change the render resolution. First state will no longer be listed as a child state (it is, indeed, now a grandchild).

To nest one state under another:

1. Select the state to be nested
2. Drag and drop it onto another state to make it nested under that state

State Order

An important thing to note is that states are always applied in the order that they appear in the view from top to bottom. This means that if you have three states doing three different things when the state is applied the first sub-state will be applied first, then second, and then the third. This order will always be followed.

To re-order states:

1. Select the state you'd like to reorder
2. Drag it right above or below the state you want to follow or precede it. Then drop the state onto the green divider line that appears.