Hi guys,
I got a request recently from an animator, who wanted a way to be able to manipulate the look of an object in the viewport, and animate that manipulation, without actually changing the material or geometry of that object. Something along the lines of a slider or spinner that would change the way that object was rendered in the viewport.
My initial thoughts went along the lines of manipulating the .visibility of the objects, but it’s not ideal because
a) it makes the objects hard to see
b) if the objects are already semi-transparent due to their material, it looks weird
c) there’s a limited number of “levels of visibility”, especially if it should be clear “at a glance” what the object’s state is.
Ideally, I’d want to be able to manipulate the viewport render into adding a color “on top”, a bit like xview does, but it’s not something I’ve ever delved into before – some Googling didn’t get me anywhere, so I ended up here.
How would you guys go about it?
Bonus info: The scenes sometimes have thousands of objects, so performance could be an issue. We’re talking about maybe 4-5 difference “states” that an object can have.
do you want to change materials only or the object shape as well?
Lookup app data manager (i think its called) from snowball studios, it could show you the way.
-Johan
It’s named AppDisplay and it’s here if you need it:
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/appdisplay
but I would think of something simpler like a multi material and a material modifier to control the current material id. You can connect your slider / spinner to the spinner in the material modifier. No need for scripting at all unless you want to automate the process.
Thanks everyone for your suggestions,
I suppose using a multimaterial or otherwise manipulating the material might be the easiest way to go about it.
The animated scene is eventually exported to a game engine that cares about the “assigned material” information, so there are a few issues, but I could “reset” the assigned material prior to export easily enough.
I guess I went and overcomplicated things a little there, heh.