in-viewport status display with maxscript?

thomasp

hi,

i'm looking to improve my modelling workflow a bit and am wondering if it's possible to use maxscript to show a heads up display in the viewport if certain modifiers in the stack are selected (editable poly object & edit poly mod in this case).
what i want it to do is read out the status of certain functions from the rollout and display if they are toggled or not directly in the view.

reason for that is that it just takes a bit to look up in the UI which coordinate system i'm in, if there are any constraints active, the soft selection status and so on, especially when i'm using expert mode like i prefer to do most of the time. see below for a picture to explain my point.



i suppose this must be possible using maxscript, however my forum and web-searches haven't turned up much. are there any scripts/frameworks out there i could use as a starting point? perhaps this stuff has even been done before? i'd like to get an implementation up and running that works in a performance-sensible way, nothing over-engineered that has loads of gimmicks and want's to make coffee.
and it's meant as purely a status display, not as clickable icons (which would get in the way when modelling).

thanks!
(cross-posted to cgtalk)

renderhjs

sounds interesting,- if I would have time I´d even give it a try

I found something on bobo´s site:

MeshDetails is a Mesh Info script for 3ds max 4. It will let you
Display Vertex Index, Face Index and MatIds in the viewport
Show MatIDs per Face or in Chunks
Display data for current selection only

found @: http://www.scriptspot.com/bobo/mxs4/
the download link for the scriptsource: http://www.scriptspot.com/bobo/mxs4/meshdetails/MeshDetails021.ms


some other related script I found:
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/screenedge-ui-0

you might dig into manipulators in the maxscript reference:
http://www.kxcad.net/autodesk/Autodesk_MAXScript_Reference_9/Scripted_Manipulators.htm
under
http://www.kxcad.net/autodesk/Autodesk_MAXScript_Reference_9/Interface_simpleManip.htm
I scratched this:

<void>addGizmoText <string>text <point3>position <integer>flags <point3>unselColor <point3>selColor

This creates a gizmo that is text on the screen. Note that text cannot be hit-tested or grabbed by the mouse. It is used for display purposes only.

that might be interesting- though I haven´t really read the whole context

thomasp

cheers man, i had seen some of the stuff you linked to and took a look at the rest but it seems the method to do this is to use the fairly low-level gw.* functions that are listed under viewport drawing methods in the maxscript reference.

they don't work for me out of the box yet tho, seems these open a new can of worms in regards to certain inconsistencies between OGL-, maxtreme- and D3D viewports. *sigh* i seem to have a talent to expose the dark and smelly corners of maxscript everytime i glance over it. *sigh*

CrazyButcher

welcome to hell
but the legacy/inconsistencies and so on can be very frustrating when working with max sdk/script stuff. BITE!

renderhjs

yes you are right, in fact you need to redraw it every frame. I found this snipped on another forum:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-285095.html

unRegisterRedrawViewsCallback showObjectNames
fn showObjectNames=
(
gw.setTransform(Matrix3 1)
for o in objects where not o.isHidden do
(
gw.text o.pos (o.name) color:yellow
gw.text (o.pos+[0,0,-2]) (o.pos as string) color:yellow
) 
gw.enlargeUpdateRect #whole
gw.updateScreen()
)
registerRedrawViewsCallback showObjectNames
showObjectNames()

the more difficult part might be to align it to the camera perspective- so on perspective, camera and propably user view

thomasp

solved! well in a way. r&d guy at work i pitched this to came up with something better. sadly this means that i will not be able to share it.
but i was assured that using the gw.* functionality does indeed have quite the effect on performance so this might have been a dead end anyway.