I’ve recently switched from Maya to Max for my new job, and the lack of proper GUI for MentalRay shaders in Max is quite disturbing.
The main thing that is missing is a “dropdownlist” for things like blendmodes or other lists that need names for easy use.
(The “group” command and multiple line “string” might be needed too and a way to dim certain controls maybe.)
I’ve learned that you can write a Max shader and use the “imrShaderTranslation” class with Paramblocks to auto”switch” to a MR shader at render time.
That means you’d have to make a Max version of every MR shader you wanted the better gui for. Not a very good solution for third party shaders.
If there is a way of overriding a gui in Max and creating a custom control maybe someone could make a plugin that read the MentalRay shaders .mi file (a text file) and looked for a certain “keyword” and overrided that parameter GUI with the custom control.
Something like:
control "space" "integer" (
"uiName" "Space",
"value" 1,
"range" 0 4
#"dropdownlist" "items: #("int", "obj", "world", "cam", "screen")"
)
A # would likely be necessary in front of the keyword or else the shader would give errors in Max since this would be something of a hack.
If this is possible all you had to do for enhanced gui was to edit the .mi file with the needed keyword and you would get the better ui.
What do you think? Anyone feels this would be fun trying?
I know I would be greatful and most likely every one else that uses MentalRay.