customizeable save as... and export option preferences

Yozora

Hi, I'm wondering if theres a way to limit the number of options you can "save as" or "export" to in all programs, but mainly photoshop/max/maya...

This aint really a "problem", its just a few seconds of annoyance a day, but it would be nice if someone knew how to do it

Basically the only formats I ever use are tga, jpg, png and psd. I want to avoid having to scan the list of useless formats every time I want to save a new thing (like IFF, EPS etc)

Same applies to max, I only use obj mainly and occasionally smd, fbx, and ase... I know its kinda silly but it sometimes takes me at least 2 sec to find the obj even though I know its position in the list Also I would like to set obj as the default export type instead of FBX.

cptincognito

Well, with maya and photoshop you should set up scripts to do that stuff. Maya has mel, you can create a custom save dialog that just has the options you use (plus other handy things). With photoshop, you can set up save actions that can edit, so for example when working on your psd, and want to save out a tga for your game, you don't have to open a dialog, you just hit a custom hotkey and it's done.

renderhjs

isnt photoshop always letting you only craete actions for writing to a specific path. As far as I know its impossible in PS to quickly setup writing a dynamic filename with a fixed filetype and setting.
Thats something that always bothered me about PS. One way certainly would be using Jscript to extend photoshop and write Javascript within Photoshop that does what you want.

as for max and maya,- booth have ini or settings files- change or delete some of their enties and you will see less filetypes to choose from when saving or exporting.

Yozora

yea photoshop actions limit to a specific path but the good thing (or bad) is that it saves the file in the same directory as the psd is in. Good if you want it there of course but bad if you want to save all "wips" to a seperate wip folder for example... and I'll need a seperate action for each file type, but I guess I'd prefer having 3 seperate hotkeys for saving rather than scrolling through that list of useless formats all the time.
But then another annoyance pops up, photoshop keeps adding a "copy" at the end of the filename all the time... and the option to "save as a copy" is greyed out so I cant even disable it. Theres a warning that says "File must be saved as a copy with this selection".


And about those ini files (for 3d max), I found the one in appdata and several others in the 3d max program folder but none of them have anything about any export options except the default directory for exports.

renderhjs

when using maxscript and saving files,- maxscript will automaticly handle the filetype depending on the filename extention you pass though the command.
So in other words it will export (with optional no dialogues) your model right away to your preferred target url.
Next to that you could add a little interface (choose URL,- with only filetype OBJ for example) hit save and you are done.

I am sure the same could be archived with Maya and Mel or Python.

As for photoshop with CS4 (though even before possible but more difficult) you can now quickly scratch togehter some scripts to do a little bit more as those actions in photoshop itself.
In cs4 you can now create custom interface panels (with or without having flash) and either write Javascript to control Photoshop (any command that is accessable within photosop- hidden or not it doesnt matter).
Here is a link about it:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10058815-1.html

gavku

...this may help you in regards to ps.

http://home.insightbb.com/~jamestaylor/

cptincognito

Damn, just wrote my own TGA quick export, only to find this way more awesome vPSDTGA back here. Well, live and learn. That's a great link.

Yozora

Bit late with "discovering" how to do this but for anyone else that was wondering, I found a script to export to obj using the mesh name to the same folder the current max file is in without navigating the export dialog (yes I realize its probably very simple and you all knew it anyway but no one actually showed exactly how its done for us noobs );


macroScript ExportObj
category:"whatever"
toolTip:"Export Obj"
buttontext:"Obj"
(
if (superclassof $ == geometryclass) then
(
selectionName = $.name
selectionName as string
extension = ".obj"
fullName = maxFilepath + selectionName + extension
exportFile fullname selectedOnly:true
)
)

I also made a ASE, SMD and FBX version and put it into a seperate quad menu - now I dont have to ever see the export dialog again wohoo.

renderhjs

I like to dumb temporary things on my desktop,- might have a look into that if maxscript provides that path as well. Thanks for posting though it inspired me to add some features to my export script.

Rob Galanakis

renderhjs wrote: »

I like to dumb temporary things on my desktop,- might have a look into that if maxscript provides that path as well. Thanks for posting though it inspired me to add some features to my export script.

Take the script posted above, and replace "maxFilePath" with

("C:/Documents and Settings/" + sysInfo.username + "/Desktop/")

That should save to your desktop instead of the current file folder.

renderhjs

on US windows systems yes,- is there a propper way to find out what "C:/Documents and Settings/" actually is on the users OS within maxscript?

Rob Galanakis

I don't understand the question.

sysInfo.username will return your username... so if yours were 'renderhjs' your desktop folder should be:
"C:/Documents and Settings/renderhjs/Desktop/"
Obviously this is for Windows (I don't think Max runs on other OS?), but US or wherever shouldn't matter.

renderhjs

no for example in german its
c:\dokumente und einstellungen/renderhjs/desktop
and other Windows languages different as well- so I was wondering if that part could be determined.
The other thing is that not everyone installs windows on Drive C:\ - and vista so I assume uses a way different folder structure.

Rob Galanakis

I think the closest you can get is with sysinfo.tempdir, which will give you something like "C:\DOCUME~1\RGALAN~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\"

I'm sure there is a way in .NET to get this sort of information, it'd be worthwhile to ask on cgtalk.