I’m not sure if this is something for maxscript or not, but I want to be able to animate the checkbox for an object (actually a group) for “Visible to Camera” in the Properties dialog. I don’t want to use a visibility track, since I need the shadows to be persistent. My only other solution for the moment would be creating two setups/scenes, render them individually (one with visible on, one off), then comp them. Gotta be a better way. Ideas?
Through MaxScript you can set the visibility to camera with: $.primaryVisibility = off and $[size=1].primaryVisibility = off then you can animate this.[/size]
Hope this helps.
thanks!
- but how do I actually animate it without call-back scripts etc? I realize I can probably somehow link it to an on/off controller, or a boolean controller – but I’m a little lost in those areas. I’d like to just animate it via keys/curve editor. the reference manual is a little vague.
Can you explain more precisely what do you try to obtain as an end result? Maybe a sample case scenario might help.
case is such:
it’s an animation of an interior condo suite, but the camera is starting from an aerial shot. I want All the “aerial” items (ceiling, light fixtures etc) to cast shadows etc properly in the aerial shot, but obviously not be visible. The camera then comes down through the ceiling and does the normal fly through.
We’re rendering with Brazil, and I don’t want to have to adjust all the lights to make two scenes without the aerial stuff, and I don’t want to comp – but it’s an option. The path that the camera takes allows for an opportune time to turn on the aerial stuff.
Thanks for helpin me.
I don’t think you need any scripting for that. I am not sure if you can animate the Visible to camera property but the easy way I to do it is to have 2 similar files, one ehich has the elements not visible to camera and you would render the frames from the beginning of the shot to the frame previous of the one you want to change the visibility of the elements, then from the second file you ould render the rest of the animation and join them in Combustion, AE etc. You can even do this with Max using scene states.
I hope I made some sense.
Anton.
shame it can’t be animated…If I figure out a way, I’ll post it here. Comp is likely what we’ll do, and is what we’ve done in the past.
You can use callbacks for it but I tihnk it’s much easier to use Scene States or duplicate your scene. My 2 cents.