Hello all, this is my first post ever and very new to 3ds Maxscript and expressions. Any help is much appreciated.
I am currently trying to make a set of gears that are telescopic and eachpart needs to rotate opposite from eachother. I can get the objects to rotate the way I wantwith simple Z-rotation wire parameters and do a work around for the telescopicpart but I can’t seem to combine the two to work together. I’ve tried using amorph modifier to get the telescopic movements which works but doesn’t quiteget the effect I’m going for. Ideally I want to control the gears rotation and height with custom spinners made in the parameter editor. Here’s an image to explain what I’m trying to do. Thank you.
I dont understand why you would need to use a morph modifier. If you are expecting the rotation of one object to drive the counter rotation of the others, then why don’t you also just use that rotation to drive the position of the other objects?
You are already using wires (which i find hideous and would much rather use script or expression controllers), but you could wire the position of the gears to be driven by this rotation for example multiplying the rotation by 0.1 or some such.
Hey, Thanks for the advice. I’m not using a morpher modifier, I tired that as a method but it wasn’t working the way I wanted. I was able to get the counter rotation I wanted using the wire parameter, having the largest gear controlling the next and so on by just adding a minus to the rotation, (example, Z_Rotation on Gear1 and -Z_Rotation on Gear2, etc.)
Also, I did figure out to get the telescopic effect with the wire parameters by dividing the position using Z_position/2, Z_position/3, etc.
Like I said, I’m very new to scripts and expressions so if there is a better method to do this I would love to learn it. Thanks.