hi !
i was reading this book called “Stop Staring ! facial modeling and animation done right”
it one of the excellent book for facial animation. must buy book for the animator. Author Jason osipa has taken Maya as example but the same principle can be applied in any 3d application
well while reading the book i came across with the comand called ” clamp” which can be use to limit the value of the slider between min and max . with the help of this expression he had use various Blend shapes (morphs) in one slider.
Can we use the same command in max ? or is there any command in max which work same as clamp ?
I’ve spent the whole day searching for this very same answer, or a suitable workaround. No luck just yet…
Ironically, this search is what put that book in my hands – I was looking for the same function, and wasn’t even aware how much of this that author had already covered. Unfortunately, the one thing I couldn’t figure out on my own is the one thing he doesn’t tell us…
Hi guys,
i stumbled upon the problem, too when I started building a facial rig. Paul Neale posted a MAX 6 version of such sliders that relies on custom scripted Attributes and scripted position controllers. For comfortable use, I recommend going to his site (www.paulneale.com) and download his MAX scripts. They are great. The discreet forum thread is http://support.discreet.com/webboard/wbpx.dll/read?145040,15e#145040
I based my version (see attachment) on his one plus there are two neat little features. You can resize the area of the slider by changing width and length of the rectangle surrounding it and you can just clone it via select and move. You dont have to go into any scripting. Downside of my version is that I have the impression that it is a little bit slower than Paul’s version. But look by yourself and tell me if they are useful for your facial setups !
Oh, I forgot to say… the name of the control point in any slider has to start with “CTRL”. A little bit complicated but maybe some of the more experienced scripters here can come up with a more elegant solution. I would be very happy…
Your setup is perfect! :bounce:
I spent several days now trying to create exactly that (with the position list, script controller, and IF statements forcing the point helper back into range using width/2 as it’s limit), but I couldn’t get the parent references to work.
The logic was there, but I just couldn’t make it happen.
I love that renaming the rectangles doesn’t break the script, by the way. And, I would have prefixed the control points with CTRL anyway.
Anyway, I can’t get to that threat on the discreet board, nor find Paul’s version in the script section of his website, so I’m just going to declare that yours is better.
The possibly easier solution you’re looking for might be Boris Petrov’s Joystick Manipulator, found on ScriptSpot. Very simple to set up, but probably harder to work with.
Glad that you like it or that I could deliver the little missing point to your script.
If you still want to check out Pauls Version do a search on “facial rig” in the MAX discreet forum. It should show up then. Maybe the link I posted last time was broken.
I have tried out Bobo’s joystick manipulator before, too. But as I have made bad experiences with Manips in MAX 4 I am not a big fan of them. Apart from that, I don’t like the fact that the manipulators are cluttering up all your viewport. I rather want to have a clean interface that I can hide by just “moving it away”. But anyways, Bobos script is very nice, as are all of his scripts. Props out !
Keep us updated how you do your rig, APLevitz ! It will still take me some time to do mine.
It may take me a while as well.
I started to jump right in with every morph target I could think of, then realized how arrogant that was. I’ve got a book right in front of me, distilling the experience of someone who does more facial animation in a week than I’ve done in my life, and I’m trying to jump ahead of it? Yikes.
I need to get through the book, learn the theory behind his control scheme, and at least work through a few excercises with it before I even think about trying to innovate on this approach.
(And, just to keep me honest, let me add that I’m currently on page 57)
hey relief7 , thats the controller i was desperately looking for , thanx,
hmm joystic is manipulator does work ,but as u said its clutters viewport.
well APLevitz the book is awesome. It has really helped me in maitaining the flow my model .