Heheh, well the first thing that comes to mind is a working mtlBrowser.browseFrom function, see here (the last reply): http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=446365
I don’t supposed it’d be possible to add drag’n’drop any other way that adding it to Helium directly, like separete UI element or something? Of course I could add mapbutton and materialbutton to top toolbar next to float/color values, however I think it’d be much integrated drag’n’drop to schematic view would be a lot better sollution.
– SME Beta Version 0.1.3 –
Download: http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~jylilamm/Resources/SME_Beta_0_1_3.rar
Release info:
- Support for Arch & Design (mi) material
- Support for custom script/expression controllers
- Fixed bug which caused math nodes input sockets get hidden
Now SME fully support RGBA colors that A&D material uses, the default color values used in SME are RGB, however if you connect such color to A&D material its automaticly converted to RGBA. This conversion is completely invisbile to user and also works another way around. If you import A&D material with animated colors they will show up as RGBA colors, which you can connect to any other material requiring RGB colors.
Basicly it creates invisbile converter nodes so original controller is never affected.
Please let me now if there are any other maps or materials that use RGBA colors and I’ll add support for them.
For all custom MR shaders I get:
–Runtime error: Couldn’t find a previously defined paramblock in “shadername”
With this line marked : local type = (classOf (getProperty shd i)) [size=2](under // [color=#fffffe]Returns materials/maps properties as array)[/color]
[/size]
Why?
I just ran into same problem myself. I’ll have to look into it but after initial tests I dont really know whats the problem. Some mental ray materials like “mental ray” and A&D work but SSS material for example dont. To make things even more complicated if you make Fast SSS material in medit and try to import it into sme it crashes, now if you ignore that error and attempt again it works! Looks like its another bug of max. Hopefully I can get around it somehow.
– SME Beta Version 0.1.3b –
Download: http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~jylilamm/Resources/SME_Beta_0_1_3b.rar
Release info:
- Fixed bug found with some mental ray materials which crashed SME
There is a bug with many mental ray materials which causes error, here is an expamle (type it in maxscript listener):
myMat = SSS_Fast_Material__mi()
getProperty myMat #theList
There is something wrong with properties #theList and #Shader_Version which both crash maxscript if you try to call them.
This last version seem to have fixed the errors I got.
I tried it with a bunch of different custom MR shaders.
Wow, can’t wait to test out ver 0.1.3 !
Thank you very much for having included support for A&D; also expression controlers are a big +
Now I’m working on improving the way sme handles controllers. This includes few new math nodes to convert floats to colors, better support for custom controllers and perhaps possibitily to disconnect controller from material by totally remaking the material. Here is a screenshot of the new controller dialog, I decided it works better integrated to SME window than as a seperate window.
how much is this production ready?
For me it works quite well!
Also, if you have to create a material that isn’t supported by SME just go ahead and do it the old way (standard material editor).
Also, if there’s a problem with SME, only it will crash, not the whole max. Worst case scenario is losing the material you’re working on. (you could backup the material in the max material editor from time to time if you have worries it might crash; but again, it feels pretty stable to me)
Give it a try, but be warned: you won’t go back:P