Hi Guys
Anyone interested in writing a ‘Grease Pencil Script’ like the one Maya has called the ‘poor man’s grease pencil’, or something. Brilliant for roughing out Poses and your Lines of Action before animating. Pixar also used its own version for the incredible’s.
This will be brilliant!
Thanks
Yup I’ll take a look at it.
i don´t have any expirience with maya, could u discripe it a little bit more??
greetz TGM
You can write to the screen in Max with gw but I have never had good luck with it. If I remember right MEL had a bit better hendling on this. Bobo might correct me on this as I haven’t tried using it in Max 7 or 8 but I know that my scripts that I set up in Max 6 still don’t work overly well.
Any clue as to what the tool in Maya that you are using does? Does it draw open GL renders to the screen?
Jason Schleiffer wrote that tool. It uses Maya’s pencil tool (to draw lines as objects) and links it to a frame number. You can then edit what drawing corresponds to what framenumber.
It sure would be handy to have in MAX. I was about to mail Autodesk the other day with some suggestions to ease up MAX as an animator’s tool and the grease pencil was one of them.
Maybe Bobo or Jason can join in on the conversation??
This is my first test:
http://www.scriptspot.com/bobo/mxs7/PencilTool/Bobo_s Tools-PencilTool.mcr
This one paints strokes to the viewport while in selection mode (which might be a bad idea, but I wanted to keep the interactivity of the scene behind it). So you should go to Paint Selection mode (the last in the selection tool flyout, or press Q multiple times).
You can set any color, use colors from the preset palette, delete all strokes or delete the last stroke. The drawing is registered as redraw view callback, too, so after you stop drawing, you can pan/zoom/orbit or work on your objects and the drawing will persist as long as the tool is open.
If you close the tool and open it again, the last drawing will be shown again and you can continue drawing. The data will be saved with the MAX file, so you can open a file, start the tool and continue working.
Options to delete a specific (not just the last) stroke could be added later. Same with changing the color of an existing stroke.
Next will be storing a painting per frame, onion skinning and animation playback…
Hey how about that I have it working. It isn’t drawing at my mouse yet which is odd as it is only in the screen Y axis that it is backwards. Very cool. I’ll post it if I get it all working.
Sounds cool, man! I invited Jason, hope he drops around. Bobo had his PM list full, so couldn’t invite him.
Keep us posted, Paul!
Well here it is…
http://paulneale.com/scripts/PEN_whiteBoard.zip
Drop in the macro in 3dsMax8\UI\macroScripts and add it to your fav quad, button bar or menu and have fun.
Oh sorry John:( I beat you to it.
Don’t worry about it Paul – i’m getting used to it