heellooo ppl,
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was working on a system, where i have control curves, which i want to use to drive the morphers on a head. now i can wire them directly. but my problem is, i want the curve to be moving in a restricted space of 25 and -25 in X and Y and yet still make it drive the morpher values from -150 to 150 (i set this on the global params of the morpher) … how can i do this ?
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is it possible to (autokey) animate the control curves in (25 to -25, in X, Y space ) and yet have the corresponding keys put on the morpher also , automatically ? this i want b’se even if the control curves are deleted, the morpher carries the keys (b’se they were keyed automatically) thereby reducing loss due to human errors…
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one more thing…say i have a custom attribute on the control curves, how do i write expressions ( and where do it write it ? ) which will do something > say like if the CA’s value is more than 40 , i want another object’s CA’s value to be 20 ?? i mean how and where can i write independant and interactive (realtime) expressions to do various things > (adjust custom attribute values or set keys or toggle things visibility etc) , apart from only manipulating translate or rotate or scale values ? all i know is u can write float scripts which actually r meant to be used to manipulate only T , R or S values… or am i missing something ?
this thing has been bothering me since many adays… i’ve not been able to get to write these independant expressions!! i hope any answers to my questions wud benefit all max users… n yes, i’m new to max script…
rgds,
i’m guessing you’re using the motion panel to assign your controllers… it only shows transforms
in the track view / curve editor / dope sheet you have a complete list of every objects’ available controller, you can apply an expression or script to most of them by just right clicking and clicking assign controller
materials, base object parameters, modifiers, custom attributes are all shown in there
you mentioned toggling visibility… this not possible through expressions in max as the hide/unhide doesn’t have a controller really, you need to use a script with some checks to do this
if you have an animated custom attribute that’s supposed to drive a morpher, just select the object with the attribute on it, right click in the viewport, click wire parameter. now in the menu that pop’s up navigate to your custom attribute, then click the object with the morpher, navigate to the morph channel you want to wire… the parameter wire dialog appears with a default expression already filled in. if you want to scale the values from 25 to 150 just add “6 * ” to the default expression
nr 2 is possible with a script, but it might slow things down quite a bit… parameter wiring is made for this kind of stuff and i don’t really see where human error comes into play here.
hi Aearon,
thanx for the replies… yes, i figured it out this morning, about the track view. now i can assign the controllers on any thing…
actually i’m trying to accomplish this : have few shapes (circles in rectangles ) which will be used to drive the morph target’s values. so animators can animate with ease. then i can link two or more morph targets into each circle… so say for 40 targts, they need to animate only 10 shapes. gives more control to animate.
but there is one problem that if the morpher is linked to the shapes, they r not open to being manipulated directly from the modify tab… b’se they r wired to the shapes. so when the animator animates, the shapes get the keys… but by mistake if the shapes r deleted, the animation keys r lost ! so i came across this. u can try this. select the mesh with morpher, wire its morph target 1 to a shape’s pos.X and do a 2way wiring. say connect. when u autokey the shape, it gets the keys but also the morpher ! << so now i have keys on my shape and the morpher too… i’m kinda safe even if the shape is deleted.
but my problem now is … the above automatic keying on morpher works only if the wiring is 2way, and that too, if the morpher drives the wire to the shape, not the inverse !! apart from this, i want my shape (moves 25 to -25 range in x, y > limited by using float limit) to effect the mopher target’s range of -200 to 200 … (default is 0 to 100)… so how can i do that ?
like u said, i have tried putting “*6” inthe expression… .but this makes my shape snap to while movig it. and say u moved the shape to +25 in X, and again when u select it to move, it snaps back to 0 and then snaps to the mouse position… and more over the “*6” thing doesnt work… b’se here the morpher is the primary driver… it somehow refuses to take the “*6”…resulting that the morpher value go up to 25 only
hope i’m clear…
rgds,