[Closed] Maxscript Tool Wishlist

Quick question I had rather than starting a brand new thread for it.

When creating a geoPlugin how do you properly reference itself?
Rather than selection[1]

because not in all cases is that geo selected.

such as

on buildMesh do
(
    --build mesh function
     
    --?-- this.node.material = undefined
)

Here is a tool idea.

It would be a tool that would make it easy for users to place garbage and random junk along the corners of buildings and curbs.

The idea:

1. The user would define a collection of objects they wanted duplicated everywhere.
2. The user would then define the object in which they would want the collection distributed.
3. They would run a script which would sample every polygon in the targeted ground plane finding polys which face north on the Z axis but whom also have neighboring polygons based on an angle threshold (similar to smoothing group) As an example it would look at two polygons and if those polygons angle of difference was within a specific range, maybe 60 – 90 degrees then the script would collect that edge. It would then duplicate the collection objects starting from that edge and outward along the face until it reaches a specific stopping distance.

I’d love to hear the communities thought on this idea. It would sure bee an interesting tool.

where is a challenge? everything looks straightforward.
the most interesting part of the task is to find convex and concave verts/edges, and compute their convexity…
i made a tool many years ago that colored vertices based on their convexity. dust in corners and fire on sharp edges… it was awesome!

I guess things that may be a challenge to me, arent a challenge for you considering you have done nearly everything in max already at some point.

I think this would be a fun tool to create. It would be a worthy thread for everyone to learn things from I’m sure. If anyone else is interested in this idea let me know and ill start chipping away at the idea.

On a side node you mentioned making manipulators. Do you have any examples of something along those lines. I don’t see the upside to making them over geo plugins like you said.

It seems like it could be a fun script to create. I’m going to go ahead and start a thread on this and see what the end result ends up being.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=7574303#post7574303

i have another cool and challenging idea…
bake out-off-range animation
it could be super useful because there is no this kind built-in thing in the max. it will be perfect to have it as a Track View context menu action.

if you tried to use it you have to know that the utility doesn’t work right. therefore i’m not talking about a silly tool. max has them enough. i want to make the smart one.

See, I didn’t know that

When creating a geoPlugin how do you properly reference itself?
I do not believe using the

selection[1]

is the best way to do it. It doesn’t work properly. As an example if I instance a node and change the newly selected one, the instanced one doesn’t know to change or update itself since its using selection[1] to reference itself.

Not in all cases is that geo selected.

such as

on buildMesh do
(
    --build mesh function
     
    --?-- this.node.material = undefined
)