I know it sounds round-about... but here's my reasoning.
Maybe there's a better way.
First -- this is all just me, so I've tried to set it up so my workflow can have lots of back-and-forth. Also, I'm a software guy, so expressions are smooothe and delicious to me.
The thing is, I've got my one 3d virtual set (ok, it's a space station, are you happy??
), and several scenes to render in and around it. As I work on the whole piece, I go back and forth adding lights, tweaking animation curves, modifying textures and positions.
And about once a day I start a full render, either at night or when I leave for the day job. And-- cool! it gets every one of my segments in one fell swoop, with all the latest lighting and such.
So that's why I don't want to have a handful of separate scene files. I'd have to keep reimporting stuff in unpredictable ways.
Though hmmm perhaps scripting could address all that...
But so far the master graph editor been very good to me.
