The alternatives are just not that simple or easy to use while in a fast development environment.
For someone like me that is not that intimate with anything besides maxscript, python (and getting closer to c#) switching to c++ is not that viable in my current development environment. Python in max is cool, but honestly it would not have been any better than maxscript for writing most of my latest tools it also has implementation issues. C# in other hand is great for developing tools in max, but it has its limitations as well as lack of updates, me and Andy T have found that we would not be able to completely replace our tools library here at Bethesta with c#, we have to find the right mix of c# and maxscript.
I am a maxscript lover, I find it that a lot of mxs haters often fail to see the importance of how easy mxs can be to a new user as well as its everyday use benefit.
In the end everyone will complain about what ever language they have to use…
i agree that the mxs is not a programming language today. and told it in my first post.
learning mxs doesn’t help you with understanding how ‘real’ languages work.
but there is no better way to know how max works than playing with maxscript. every max tools developer if he wants to be productive has to know maxscript.
As I sad before maxscript is pretty good for learning the basics of programming. Flow control, usage of variables etc… or at least you get a basic knowledge of thinking in statements and functions, so you will have something that you can compare to other languages, and you can learn how max exactly works under the hood (different type of values, like point3, point4, tm, ray, vectors… so the basic) These are the basics of further development in c++.
Even if you are an artist and not a certified programmer, you can make you own basic tools, that is a great fun to do with maxscript, because you immediately see the result, no need to compile, or set up a project just for this.
And I don’t think that maxscript is dead in all manner. You can expand it via c++, so if you know how to use c++, and you know the sdk as well, you can expand maxscript as well, like avguard extension has done it before.
So we should say that it is learning path, or at least a not so common way of learning.
At least mxs is better than MEL. Thanks god.
BTW, just curious.
What’s difference between PyMel and OpenMaya?
Aren’t they both just more pythonic implementation than Maya Python 1.0?
I would like to see, that python will replace maxscript. But it seems that python was only added as an alibi?
It seems that nothing happens, since the fist “integration” of python in max
At least mxs is better than MEL. Thanks god.
I’d agree.
However, mel is essentially, at this point, in maya for legacy reasons and not widely used by TA’s since python’s introduction (which was done pretty well in maya).
Hence why I say the more salient question would be ‘should mxs be a dead/legacy language’ at this point. We have an example where a competitor program has improved their ‘core’ (or most widely used) language. Max has had two bites at the cherry and it doesn’t seem to have gone so well.
Maya has a well integrated python, but 3dsmax gets only the simplest solution?!? :banghead:
I’m a big fan of mxs, but recently I’ve been porting a lot of my maxscript tools to c++… the initial overhead is quite high (creating a sdk project that compiles… navigating the win32 architecture) but boy does it shit over dotnet from a great height speed wise. I think now with a bit more experience there would be not much in it creating any interface using the sdk time wise compared to mxs + dotnet but with added performance benefits of the sdk and all those added low level win32 tweaks available too.
so having come back to maxscript to finish a project I abandoned because they replaced reactor(and a lot of my code became reduntant). I ask is 3ds max dead?
In my time away i taught myself photography, and C++ and can even decode the standard libraries without too much head scratching.
I find the whole area of max not a lot different to when I left in 2011. The whole community feels dusty, unused. A lot of the people that were gurus back then have left for maya, houdini
their site links are dead, the companies they used to work for gone.
Now I am not on facebook any more: are they all there?
As far as maxscript goes: its actually a breath of fresh air. Sure it gives you bad habits, sometimes, but it can do a lot because under the hood 3ds Max can do a lot. Its fast and intuitive, its no more forgiving than C++, LUA, Python, basic, C, C#, Java as they have their own rules.
Syntactically it is loose, but it still buggers you good and proper if you break the rules.
I’ve read a lot about OOP or POO : criticisms of the Object oriented approach. Most of the benefit of OOP I see is for large development organisations, and in really tight memory management. If you really wanted speed go for assembly or machine code (having learnt both previously and never used them again).
I’m not a professional programmer, so I don’t know the entire industry: I am a hobbyist. But making something cool in C++ is a lot more difficult than maxscript.
I guess I find maxscript is as alive as it used to be, I’m just concerned that 3ds Max is dead – neglected by autodesk.
The whole Media & Entertainment division could disappear from Autodesk, but 3ds max would not. It is the only application from Autodesk that is available in most if not all of their suites.
While perception can be reality, in this case I find it unfounded. Things like MCG would not be developed and improved every release since it was first released if it was dead. This is something completely new in the past 2 years, yet is getting constant improvements. There are various other areas like animation and rigging that are seeing new life after being dormant for years.
-Eric