I’d love to see a really in-depth coverage of scripting particle flow. So much of it seems to be not completely documented, and yet I know that you can do some amazing things with it. Also, I think it would tie in with the matrix training very nicely with things like controlling velocoty, direction, and testing for collisions with other objects.
And I’m with Galagast on delving into the SDK. It seems like the next logical step when you’ve got a pretty good handle on scripting, but I really don’t know where to start because, coming from the art side of things, I don’t have any formal programming experience.
And I’m with Galagast on delving into the SDK. It seems like the next logical step when you’ve got a pretty good handle on scripting, but I really don’t know where to start because, coming from the art side of things, I don’t have any formal programming experience.
im also with this – the next place i want to be going is the sdk, and anything to ease the transition would be great
mark
I second that notion! An SDK dvd would be fantastic
Yep, I too would love an SDK dvd.
Guys, guys, please stay on topic. The question was “What should MAXSCRIPT Advanced 2 DVD contain”.
The SDK is a completely different area of Max and would not be part of the MXS Advanced series.
Aw shucks. Fair enough.
Personally, I’d like more information on one (or both) of two things, A) creating more impressive special effects, and B) making better, faster and more stable production enhancing tools for the art team.
I’m thinking that “A” would cover pFlow, handling large numbers of objects, object interaction, scripted controllers, scripted render effects, and whatever other cool stuff you deal with at Frantic every day. A couple years ago Laszlo scripted this really amazing growing vine effect that actually deformed with the object it was growing around. I believe he created either a custom scripted object or modifier to create the effect. I had the chance to see it in action as I was doing some freelance for Frantic, and I’d really like to get a better idea of how to create things like that.
Item “B” would include per scene and per object data storage and retrieval, custom attributes, scripted plugins and modifiers, modifying and enhancing existing Max tools (such as the UV editor), painlessly upgrading existing scripts without breaking the pipeline, general script organization, interactive rollouts and dialog boxes, optimizations, speed improvements, etc. I work at a game developer and there’s a lot of need for making every stage of the art pipeline as fast and effecient as possible. That includes a lot of little improvements to modeling, uv’ing, texturing, and animation, as well as needing to store a lot of data for a scene and individual objects that will be exported and used in the game.
If I come up with specific examples of the things I’ve mentioned, I’ll post them. I guess overall, I’d like to see examples of solutions to real-world production issues of the type that film and game TD’s run up against every day.
Ah, sorry, I thought they were interrelated – conceptually at least.
About maxscript, not really sure, but I’d like a chapter on how to use the debugger effectively.
Well, they are related in a way yes, but MAXScript is scripting language hosted by 3dsmax to allow users to expand upon and use its features in ways not necassarily thought of by the features original designers. This is similar to other script languages like MEL, Javascript, Python, TCL and so on.
The SDK is a toolkit designed to allow developers and indeed end users to create new complied plugins for 3dsmax that expand its core features with wholy new systems or additions to old ones. For instance, if the source code for a controller in 3dsmax was provided in the SDK and you found a bug with that controller, or you wished to add new features to that controller, you could take that source code, alter/fix it and compile your own new controller to replace the old one. Also, with the SDK when you write a plugin you can expose its functionality with new commands to MAXScript and you can even write plugins for MAX that only add new MAXScript commands, there are plugins of this sort available as I remember from Larry Minton (Autodesk) and also John Burnette (Blizzard).
Yep, as Bobo says, were talking about MAXScript DVDs here and it would be good to hear what people feel they most need on that topic alone for now ;). If there really is a very large need for a SDK DVD then we could consider it. If you really would like such a DVD, please create a separate topic in this area of CG Talk and let me know what it would do for you, and also how much you’d be prepared to pay for it. It may in the end have a tiny market, so we may have to charge more for it to make it viable. Anyway, for now, back to MAXScript…
Cheers
Well, armed with the new math skills I learnt from The Matrix: Explained DVD, I decided to go back and revise an old Particle Flow project I started a few years back. The goal was to create a spline based vortex system. One that could be animated and the vortex would form a nice stable system around it, with a little bit of random behaviour thrown in.
http://www.christopher-thomas.net/alpha/vortex.mov
Anyway, that first system was not too successfull, it used a large number of force spacewarps all spaced along the spline, and the main issue was getting them all to work in concert and be controlable (they didn’t, they were’nt…). This new system uses Orbaz’s Box#3 for Particle Flow, and with it I’ve built 3 new custom Operators for PFlow.
Centrifugal Force
Axial Suction
Upward Suction
And all three work together to produce the vortex you can see here. The system uses mostly vector math, and the DVD really helped me in that respect. Also, kudos to Box#3, its a great system. I put this new system together in little over a day, and even though its totally custom, it still calculates faster than my original multi spacewarp cludge.
Cheers