I have been looking at quick ways to swap between multiple bitmaps/texmaps in the material editor without having to use 3rd party software or IFL’s…
Basically you load four different textures into the slots and animate the ‘Map Number’ to select the different slot…
The route I’m looking at is by extending the ‘Mix’ texmap as a scripted plugin. I have it working in the viewport with the below script, (a little hacky I think), it works when rendering single frames but it doesn’t work when rendering sequences…which stumps me !!
Any ideas as to why not would be appreciated. This is a learning project for me…
plugin textureMap MapSwap
name:"MapSwap"
classID:#(0x7f14579d, 0x5caf6eb8)
extends:Mix
replaceUI:true
(
parameters main rollout:params
(
MapNumber type:#integer default:1 ui:map_num animatable:true
DColor1 type:#texturemap ui:map1
DColor2 type:#texturemap ui:map2
DColor3 type:#texturemap ui:map3
DColor4 type:#texturemap ui:map4
on MapNumber get val do
(
case MapNumber of
(
1: delegate.map1 = Dcolor1
2: delegate.map1 = Dcolor2
3: delegate.map1 = Dcolor3
4: delegate.map1 = Dcolor4
)
val
)
)--end Params
rollout params "Dalmatian Map Parameters"
(
spinner map_num "Map Number" range:[1,4,1] align:#left fieldwidth:40
mapbutton map1 "Base Color" align:#center width:220
mapbutton map2 "Base Color" align:#center width:220
mapbutton map3 "Base Color" align:#center width:220
mapbutton map4 "Base Color" align:#center width:220
)--end rollout
)--end plugin
When this happens, it is useful to ask yourself “Does the renderer “know” what is happening?”.
Please take a look at this thread:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=98&t=684033
and specifically post #5.
Your case might be similar.
You will have to make sure the property you are changing is actually considered changeable by the renderer, otherwise it might be getting ignored.
Thanks for that Bobo, an enlightening thread. This I think is what is happening, but according to the Maxscript help I thought I would be getting a different, working, result.
A get handler can be supplied for any of the parameters in the block and it will be called whenever the parameter value is retrieved. This will occur when the user interface updates itself, a script accesses the parameter, a viewport is redraw, a render occurs.
Especially the bit about ‘a render occurs’, I am using a get handler on an animated track that exists in the material and therefore the trackview – I thought the fact that the track was animated would make the renderer look at the ‘get’ part of the script and therefore change the bitmap property. Obviously I’m off track here because it isn’t working…
I looked at changing the TexMap by looking at the MixAmount value of the material. A value that the Renderer does expect to change but that didn’t seem to want to play…
Any pointers on where to go with this would be appreciated.
I am not saying the get handler is not being called, only that POSSIBLY the renderer is not expecting a map track to change to a new map value in the middle of rendering. I assume it evaluates the existing map assignments on the first frame of rendering and then keeps these values because there is no way (other than scripting) for a map assignment to change in the middle of rendering, and the design of the rendering pipeline predates scripting…
So most of your code works, but you cannot swap a map during rendering. You will have to use a method that DOES include having multiple maps to start with and just SHOWING one of them. For example, changing the MixAmount of the Mix Map between 0 and 100% will switch to the first or the second map. But since you want more than two, it might get difficult to find a good candidate to extend.
Use a Composite Map and animate opacity, in 2009. In 2008 or earlier you will need to use nested maps to get what you want. Nesting MixMaps where map #1 is a bitmap and #2 is another MixMap should get you want you want. Then just animate the mix amount per level as needed.
Also, I would reccommend creating a unique class id for the plugin (by calling genClassID() from the maxscript listener), and changing your naming to something specific to your tool instead of just using what was in the Dalmatian Scripted Plugin sample.
-Eric
Thanks Bobo I understand what you are saying thanks for the help…
Pixel Monkey – I agree …I read Bobo’s reply at work and while bathing my son at home thought that the Composite map would be another way to look at it but your post beat me to it. odd how the head works.
and actually probably easier to pop the opacity of every other map to zero apart from the required map so I shall give that ago. Originally thought it would be good to have a little non-linear interface within max to control the fading of multiple textures…but I shall save that for another post.
and changing your naming to something specific to your tool instead of just using what was in the Dalmatian Scripted Plugin sample
again I agree, sometimes the quickest way to get something up and going is Ctrl C followed by Ctrl V.
cheers fellas for the pointers.
Would it not just be easier to do this in After Effects or Fusion first then just load in an IFL?
Or… you could create a script that makes 2 IFLs depending on what you’ve animated and it just creates one mix map which mixes between to the 2 materials but the IFL allows you to have multiple maps. E.g.
IFl 1
img_A_01
img_A_01
img_A_01
img_A_01
img_A_01
img_A_01
img_A_01
img_A_01
img_A_01
img_A_01
img_C_01
img_C_01
img_C_01
img_C_01
img_C_01
img_C_01
img_C_01
img_C_01
img_C_01
img_C_01
IFL B
img_B_01
img_B_01
img_B_01
img_B_01
img_B_01
img_B_01
img_B_01
img_B_01
img_B_01
img_B_01
img_B_01
img_B_01
img_B_01
img_B_01
img_B_01
img_D_01
img_D_01
img_D_01
img_D_01
img_D_01
img_D_01
img_D_01
So you could animate the mix and from img_a_01 to img_b_01 then mix back to img_c_01 and then mix back to img_D_01.
Hope that makes sense!
I did this on a recent project, I was streaming maps off the drives for hundreds of maps. I wrote a custom scripted textureMap to handle it. I’m using a callback
callbacks.addScript #preRenderFrame "callUpdatePinkyTex2()" id:#preRenderPinky
that calls the update on the textureMap and loads in the correct one. The scripted textureMap stored an array of map paths to use and choose the correct one based on an animated integer value.
If you don’t have to do a lot of them you can use the tried and true method of animating a material modifier and setting up a multiSub material. This worked great until we had hundreds of maps on a character that were all switching and there was no way you could scrub the viewport and we had to be able to see them.
It all worked great in production, we actualy had a custom scritped modifier and material talking to one another so the animator could just pick which maps they wanted out of a dotNet listview.
Dave,
Would it not just be easier to do this in After Effects or Fusion first then just load in an IFL?
Combustion is the easiest method as it’s a live link between Max – But this all came about because we are animating a frog and it has several facial expressions all governed by texmap. Look left / right / blink etc. and for whatever reason we are doing it in Max. I’ve been banging away at Maxscript for some time with good results ( for me at least ) and this looked like a good ‘learning’ opportunity to delve into more Maxscript as I’ve never tried to do a Material before.
Swapping between multiple maps in Max has never been great once you go over two maps, you need to start adding sub maps or MultiMaterials etc and it’s generally better to have the control there in front of you in the package you are using.
Paul,
The only thing not working with the script I’ve done is that the renderer isn’t updating – can I use a callback to force it to update as you have done?
Thanks again guys.