I am planning to recreate an old temple scene I did a loooong time ago. Not just to redeem myself, but also because I just cannot wait to try out my more recent style in a 3D environment. On top of that, I am planning of loading it all into the Unreal Development Kit, to get some handson experience that is also partly meant as an “investment in skill” for my own little company (that, mind you, is nothing impressive. Yet :P).
Anyways, on to the actual question; for this temple, I wish to create a forest to accompany it. However, since it is a major hassle to just model all the trees by hand, I want to make a batch of building blocks that can then be joined together which will, hopefully, lead to a diverse and less stress inducing forest. To join these building blocks together, I would like to make a maxscript that serves as a treegenerator by picking up a random set of premade models and puts them in place (I want to make cartoonesk pinetrees that look a little like this: 
).
The idea is that the script must at least be able to perform the following tasks:
-pick a certain amount of layers (several layers of “branches” on top of each other) and position these layers on top of each other so that they connect with each other (x axis position I presume, the precise distances between each layer increases as the tree gets broader towards the bottom)
-place the necessary building blocks for each layer, taken randomly from a set of textured models.
-place a trunk beneath the lowest layer to finish it.
-Collapse them all and weld the vertices together.
Wannahaves would include a seperate parameter in which I can easily adjust the amount of levels. Having the script generate a certain number of trees and place them in a grid would also be nice.
Now, with all these specifics, how difficult would that script be to make? I have to admit that I am not exactly well versed in programming and have yet to touch Maxscript. I remember reading somewhere around here that a generator wasnt that hard to build and this one is essentially a level below that.
Sounds like it wouldn’t be a particularly hard script for someone with at least a moderate knowledge of maxscript. However if you’ve never used MXS, then I’d say you are probably going to stumble quite a bit until you get your bearings.
That said, if you are interested in learning maxscript, then I’d say it’s not a bad project to tackle, but do know that there WILL be some headaches along the way.
Thanks, its good to know that that which I picked as my potential first maxscript is not of extreme difficulty. This means that pursuing this particular feature is not going to end up a lost cause. That being said, do you happen to know some places where I can get at least a basic understanding of Maxscript?