Many nodes in Zookeeper come with a rollout and parameter structure configured for best workflow. However, in some cases you might want to modify this layout by removing certain parameters and rollouts, renaming them, changing their order, or changing a parameter's rollout.

Zookeeper provides a special mechanism for doing so, however, it must be used with knowledge. This article will show you how to change the layout of nodes manually. It is possible to do this in two ways- through editing an XML file or through the Zookeeper UI. UI approach is simpler, but it will not allow you to do as much as XML editing. We will start with the easier part first:

Through Zookeeper's UI

First thing you need to do is go to Zookeeper's Configuration dialog (located under Main Menu->Options). Under General tab set "Allow parameter layout modification" to true. This will turn on parameter layout editing and you should now be able to do the following for most schematic nodes:

• Rename individual parameters by double-clicking them (for example, try creating a 'Sphere' object and renaming its 'Radius' parameter to 'Size')
• Rename individual rollouts (for example, create 'Sphere' object and rename 'Parameters' rollout to 'Properties')
• Change a parameter's control type, minimum/maximum values, default value, and default collapse state (right click on a parameter and change any appropriate settings)
• Ignore one or more parameters by index (Create a sphere object, right click 'Radius', select 'Ignore Entity...' and then press Ignore. Likewise, to ignore a range of parameters, right-click on 'Slice-On', select 'Ignore Entity...', select 'Ignore by Index' and type in 2-5. All parameters indexed 2 through 5 will be removed.)
• Ignore one or more parameters using a Regular Expressions name filter (repeat the steps above but instead of selecting 'By Index' use the 'By name' option and enter something like 'to' to ignore all parameters containing 'to' in their name.
• Ignore rollouts by name or index (same deal as above, but with rollouts)
• Move parameters between rollouts (You can drag and drop a parameter from one rollout to another, for example from 'RGB Level' Cellular.Output to Cellular.Coords. Note that parameters can only be dragged within the same node and not all rollouts can be dropped in)
• Create new rollouts (Right click on a node, and select 'Add Blank Child' to add a new rollout. You can then drag parameters into it)
• Drop parameters with controls onto other parameters to add multiple controls to a parameter. (Drag a parameter that contains a spinner onto another parameter. The spinner should appear in the second parameter)

XML Configuration

Zookeeper stores all of the modified layout information in a XML file usually located under:

C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2010 - (32/64)bit\enu\plugcfg\Zookeeper\EntityLayout.xml

This path might be different on your operating system. You can effectovely reset any changes you did to the node rollout (through UI or text) by deleting this file. Zookeeper will automatically create a new file next time you make layout changes.

The structure of the XML file is not very trivial at first. The best way to make changes by hand is to do them through the UI first and then modify the XML file in a text editor to suit your needs. The basic idea is that for each modified node a special <Entity /> XML node is created. This node identifies the type it tries to change by its class and name.

Inside the entity we have any nested rollouts and parameters as sub-nodes also called <Entity />. There you have attributes such as 'Rename', 'Control', and many other attributes changeable through the UI.