[Closed] Animating IsHidden

Our hardware– and doesn’t have to be new or expensive, viewport rendering, active shade (actually pretty useless thing, fortunately) make those methods obsolete, if ever it was really usable.

the method didn’t support gw.getviewportDIB() or active shade
it’s just for rendering

The main drawback of frame-by-frame animation rendering is the lack of sound rendering capabilities. I don’t know why MZ needs to lighten the viewport (or camera view), but usually (at least in my experience) we need it in heavy cinematic scenes. But in this case, the sound is very important for the animation preview.

That is what we are doing all time when we open Max or any 3d app/editor – if we changing something.

Changing some animated object state to hidden can improve performance while making it invisible will not.

Animating visibility is not demanding – will not have much influence on viewport performance.

What I thought author problem here is (but really I don’t know if there’s any):

-If we have some obj. with demanding animation, and it will become invisible but still influence performance – while we animate other things .

I would suggest to stop that obj. animation at the time it become invisible and thought we exploring ways to do that.
There are more ways , but…
But who cares, he made the decision…
And he said in first post that he decided so

Here is another approach using .isHidden and node visibility, which should allow you to do hide/unhide objects y viewports and when rendering.

You need to be careful with the memory footprint.

(

	VisibilityTrackDeff = attributes VisibilityTrack
	(
		parameters main rollout:params
		(
			rendering type:#integer ui:rb_render   animatable:false default:1
			visible   type:#boolean ui:chk_visible animatable:true  default:true
		)
		
		rollout params "Parameters"
		(
			groupbox     gb          "Rendering" width:136 height:58
			radiobuttons rb_render   ""        pos:[22,24] labels:#("Enable in Viewport", "Enable in Renderer")
			checkbox     chk_visible "Visible" pos:[16,74] checked:true
			
			on rb_render changed arg do
			(
				for j in (getclassinstances emptyModifier) where j.name == "Visibility" do j.rendering = arg
				completeredraw()
			)
			
			on chk_visible changed arg do completeredraw()
		)
		
		on create do
		(
			visible.controller = boolean_float()
		)
	)
	
	fn AddVisibilityModifier obj =
	(
		mdf = emptyModifier name:"Visibility"
		custattributes.add mdf VisibilityTrackDeff
		
		ctrl = float_script()
		ctrl.addnode   "obj" obj
		ctrl.addobject "modifier" mdf
		ctrl.addobject "visible"  mdf.visible.controller
		
		scr  = "if (modifier.enabled == true) then"         + "\n"
		scr += "("                                          + "\n"
		scr += "	if (modifier.rendering == 1) then"      + "\n"
		scr += "	("                                      + "\n"
		scr += "		obj.ishidden = visible.value == 0"  + "\n"
		scr += "		1.0"                                + "\n"
		scr += "	)else("                                 + "\n"
		scr += "		obj.ishidden = false"               + "\n"
		scr += "		visible.value"                      + "\n"
		scr += "	)"                                      + "\n"
		scr += ")else("                                     + "\n"
		scr += "	obj.ishidden = false"                   + "\n"
		scr += "	1.0"                                    + "\n"
		scr +=")"
		
		ctrl.setexpression scr
		
		obj.visibility = on
		obj.visibility.controller = ctrl
		
		addmodifier obj mdf
		
		return mdf
	)
	
	/* Test Scene -------------------- */
	delete objects
	
	obj = teapot segs:64
	AddVisibilityModifier obj
	
	with animate on
	(
		for j = 1 to 100 by 5 do
		(
			at time j obj.modifiers[1].visible = (random 1 100 < 50)
		)
	)
	
)

Additionally, you could also use the node’s .boxmode instead of the .ishidden property, which would solve many issues.

Great Idea! you always have new idea, I told you!

Me? I didn’t!

I got “illegal self-reference in controller script”

This is same approach with scripted animation plugin, which works in max 2019 and above:

plugin FloatController IsHiddenController
name:"IsHidden Controller"
usePBValidity:false
classID:#(0xc1dbcd7, 0x70ecb08b)
(	
	local getting = false
	
	parameters pblock rollout:params
	(
		valueController type:#maxobject subAnim:true
		ownerMonitor type:#maxobject
	)
	rollout params "FloatController Test Parameters"
	(
		Spinner offset_value "Offset Value:" range:[0, 1e9, 40]
	)
	on getValue do 
	(
		val = if valueController.value == 0 then 0 else 1
		if classof ownerMonitor == NodeMonitor and isvalidnode (owner = ownerMonitor.node) and getting == false do
		(
			getting = true
			owner.isnodehidden = if val == 0 then true else false
			getting = false
		)
		val
	)
	on setValue val relVal commit do 
	(
		val = if val == 0 then 0 else 1
		SetControllerValue valueController val commit #absolute
	)	
	on create do
	(
		valueController = NewDefaultFloatController()
		isLeaf=true
	)
)

delete objects
obj = teapot isselected:true
obj.visibility = cnt = IsHiddenController()
cnt.isKeyable = true
cnt.isleaf = false
cnt.ownerMonitor = nodemonitor node:obj

with animate on
(
	at time 50 obj.visibility.controller.value = 0
)

I don’t get any error from Max 2014 to 2021, however hiding/unhiding the nodes this way may lead to instability.

I tried animating 1500 objects in viewport and rendering without problems.

Doesn’t even the provided sample scene run or did you do something different?