Parameter collection and wiring question

Cthogua

I was wondering if anyone knows (in Max 7) how to wire an entire collection of parameters to a single custom attribute (slider) in a way that offsets the values already in the parameters.

Thanks
James Ball

FatAssasin

Can you give a more specific example of what you're trying to do? Maybe even post a scene file and describe the end result you're trying to achieve.

You can have one slider drive multiple parameters, but what do you mean by, "offsets the values already in the parameters"

KDR_11k

He probably means that he has one value at .5, one at 1 and one at 0 and he wants a slider that will add an equal amount to each value, e.g. if the slider is at .2 that would mean the values would be .7, 1.2 and .2.

FatAssasin

Another thing I'm curious about, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you wouldn't normally wire a slider to the parameters in a Parameter Collector. You'd wire directly to the original parameters being collected, right?

If all you want to do is move all the parameter spinners in the PC up or down by a certain amount, aren't there options already built in to let you do that? Sorry, I don't use the PC much.

Cthogua

Yeah, KDR was right...I found a solution though, it's probably not the quickest one, but it seems to work.

I'm trying to set up a tank tread so it can be animated using one slider that is attached to something in the scene (and not associated with some script) What I ended up doing is creating a spline as a path for the treads, putting all the treads on the path, deleteing the keyframes that have it animated and wiring a slider added to a dummy to control the % along path for each of the treads. The laborous part is that I have to do that by hand for each one, and figure out an offset for each treads position along the curve to add to the wiring expression...Once I figured out a good offset value though it was just a matter of addition.

If I knew any MaxScript I could probably automate that but, it not really that big of a deal.

James Ball

e_x

Is this tank translating in world space at all? Or is this for some sort of cycle? If it is translating in max, you could setup a wiring parameter that says when the tank "moves forward" have the treads follow the path. You could also do the same things for the tank going backwards and turning left and right without much trouble. And then you could animate the spine if you needed to have the tank run over anything since the treads would be following that path.

Since all the treads are seperate though, this might take alot of time setting everything up for each tread piece. Wouldn't have the need for the slider though since it would all be automated.

Cthogua

Thats not a bad idea, its just that we need separate controls for each of the tracks and that might be difficult with it automated like that. When a tank pivots, the track that it pivots on bearly moves, while the otheside does the work (its for military training "courseware" for tank crew so it needs to be reasonably accurate)

James Ball