Helium + SME feels good
I have some comments
· you cannot break wires sometimes, like bezier color(controllers related)
· if you try to wire two difusse colors, it should create a bezier_color controller automatically
· zoom about mouse point would be nice
· the names are duplicated and a litte confusing, groups would be nice,
· the script crashes when changing the color of a bezier_color
· and once the window is closed, the schematic view is lost
(perhaps saving them in a special helium controller inside global tracks? I dont know)
· you have to add materials one by one, this is time consuming
Thank you for sharing your work
P.D I’ve tried to install NodeJoe, already twice, and max crashes from the start. Right now I dont trust it for being comercial, even less for being unstable.
assuming that it is better is a subjetive opinion…
ok! only one example
YOU CAN SAVE THE TREE!
and that is very important.
and this…
a) Shader list
b) Parameterview in a seperat view
c) very good layout function
d) the max files works on other 3DSMAX versions without Nodejoe.
e) The BETA IS FOR FREE !
mfg
hot chip
Please thorsten hartmann, if you have something useful to say for Bercon’s SME say it. If not please post in the thread started for nodejoe in the main max forum, or somewhere else. In case you’ve missed the title of this thread, it is called “Schematic Material Editor Progress”, and it should stay focused on that and not divagate to useless disputes.
I’m just saying this is the wrong thread you put your ideas in, don’t get upset:)
P.S. Bercon, I can’t wait for the next update :bounce:
Yup, the Beta is free at the moment, but when it’s finished it’ll probably be commercial.
Dave
sorry for my statement here…
the sme script is very nice and helpful, no problem… And i hope that ideas can you use from nodejoe and the nodejoe developer can learn from your nice script. What i want is only answer of the question from user here (save tree!). Sorry… and in the future is the sme for free and nodejoe for money.
sorry for my simple english, in german is my word that i write not so hard.
mfg
hot chip
[font=Tahoma]Seems like a good idea. It probably wont make it to the next update but I’ll add it to my to-do list.
“* I like to have silders for the material overview.”
I’m not sure what you mean by sliders?
I mean window scroll bars (sliders)
If you have about 10 Matrials in a row main-window, mousewheel zooming makes the previews very small. A scrollbar would be very handy.
Yes, this is the main focus of the next update. Now that I’ve implemented different views (in the latest version) it is relativly easy to save them with max scenes. I’ll probably come up with this feature before Friday.
The biggest problem I’m facing right now is the way how I should handdle multiple views. To be flexible, SME would need to be able to show nodes from more than one view and I’m still not sure what would be the best way to handdle this.
Perhaps a view selector would be interesting.
- Like the existing SLOT[0]
View[+][0][/font][-]
or…
- A new menu entry [MultiViews]
[Settings] [Display] [MultiViews] [HELP]
eg.
[MultiViews]
[View 1]
[View 2]
[View 3]
[View 4]
– SME Beta Version 0.2.2 –
Download: http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~jylilamm/Resources/SME_Beta_0_2_2.rar
Release info:
– SME can be stored with max scene
– SME doesn’t reset when closed and reopened
Now your nicely laid out node trees wont go to waste. SME is stored on scripted custom attribute with max scenes which means that you can open these files even without SME just fine. However, if you feel like you don’t want SME saved with scenes just uncheck “Store with scene” checkbox under settings (this way SME doesn’t leave ANY trace on your max scenes).
[font=Tahoma]“I mean window scroll bars (sliders)”[/font]
Unfortunately I can’t implement sliders to SME since it would require them to be added on Helium.
“you cannot break wires sometimes, like bezier color(controllers related)”
This isn’t a bug. Once you assign controllers to any material or map track (animate your diffuse color using Auto Key for example or wire color node in SME) they CANNOT be deleted. This is 3ds max limitation and I can’t do anything about it.
“if you try to wire two difusse colors, it should create a bezier_color controller automatically”
AFAIK you can’t wire two input slots in Helium. The easiest way is to backwire either diffuse (with orignal value) and then connect newly created color to another diffuse.
“zoom about mouse point would be nice”
I might be able to simulate this, I’m not sure since Helium doesn’t really support it, but its not on top of my feature list for now.
“the names are duplicated and a litte confusing, groups would be nice”
You mean when using Shift+Drag to copy nodes? It shouldn’t create duplicates since I use maxscript function to make the names unique. I’ll see if I can find out whats the problem.
“the script crashes when changing the color of a bezier_color”
I managed to reproduce this only once. But after that it worked fine. Weird.
“you have to add materials one by one, this is time consuming”
Yeah, I’ll probably add some way to import whole medit to SME. This would also require ability to hide node trees with only roots visible so it’ll take some time to add it (otherwise SME would be too crowded).
Thx for support, bug reports and suggestions!
I meant the names like “diffuse_color” and “diffuse color” are a bit confussing, but I think it’s a matter of getting used to it.
now that SME is saved with the scene itself, it’s so comfortable to start using SME more and more. thank you.
nice job on saving the schematic in the scene!
(I know that is usually one of the more painful things)
That should please some people
“AFAIK you can’t wire two input slots in Helium. The easiest way is to backwire either diffuse (with orignal value) and then connect newly created color to another diffuse.”
Helium allows you to wire in as many things into a socket as you want.
You probably disconnect the old connection in ‘on connectionChanged’.
I would say that is a smart thing.
Allowing more then 1 node input can get very confusing on your end as the tools author.
But…if you are not to worried, then you can allow as many input connections as you want.
(Nothing in helium will break by allowing it)
I think that particular crash is because I wired a bezier_color to the slot meant for maps
I mean, it seams that SME is allowing this :
both materials were wired as “material #28” shows, but:
when SME window is closed and reopen, something weird happens as “material #26” shows.
– Unknown property: “value” in false
– Error occurred in colorpickerColor.changed(); filename: C:\3dsMax9\scripts\SME\smeDialog.ms; position: 11331
colorCont.value = smeOps.convertColor newVal rgba:true
– Frame:
– colorCont: false
– nodeID: 6
– newVal: (color 129 155 241)
>> MAXScript Rollout Handler Exception: – Unknown property: “value” in false <<
Is this plugin all write in maxscript?
Can’t when it is finish be traslate in sdk( it will be faster )?
it uses Helium, a plugin made by ‘kees’, a maxscript extension, that I think it allows schematic nodes
Well that is an interesting comment.
I’m not familiar with SME or NodeJoe in-depth (have not used them in production is what that means) but in my basic test, SME-Helium combo draws more nodes faster then NodeJoe, which claims to be entirely c++ and therefor claims on their website that it is more effecient and faster then a ‘fancy script’. I assume they are pocking fun at SME-Helium.
Panning a view with 100 nodes in SME-Helium was faster (significantly) then adding a 100 nodes in NodeJoe.
Both are betas so it seems fair to compare them that way.
So I think your statement that everything done 100% in c++ is always faster appears not to be true.
The drawing of nodes and wires in SME-Helium is done in c++ and in my tests a few hundred nodes is no problem at all (Number of in/out sockets does significantly impact such a test so I usually pick an average of 6 sockets per node)
Simple operations like setting a color or doing a few things when a connection is made or updating a material with some settings is really super fast to do in maxscript because it only requires a few commands to be sent.
You are not going to notice much of a difference if you do this via maxscript or via c++ and so I think SME will be fine for speed.
Are there any things you noticed to be slow in SME? you can always bring them up and I am sure there is something that can be done about it if it is actually SME causing it and not just max.