Easier way to place lots of duplicated meshes?

adam

I'm looking for a Max script where I can feed it an object, then click on another object where the original one is placed, with its normals being used to orientate it properly.

Re: I have a lot of bolts to dress on something and doing it by hand is a pain. Can I have 1 bolt and just click around my object and have the bolts snap to it, facing the right direction based on its original XYZ?

Mangled Poly

adam wrote: »

I'm looking for a Max script where I can feed it an object, then click on another object where the original one is placed, with its normals being used to orientate it properly.

Re: I have a lot of bolts to dress on something and doing it by hand is a pain. Can I have 1 bolt and just click around my object and have the bolts snap to it, facing the right direction based on its original XYZ?

Advanced Painter
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/advanced-painter

Jesse Moody

Advanced Painter for me as well. I use it on almost all my high res things that require bolts and other pieces that I can't do with distribution along splines or other things.

You can also create splines or paths from the said objects loops or edges and converting that to a shape. Taking said bolt and using that new spline to copy the bolt along making each one an instance of the other and there you go.

Some times with this the rotation can be off so you go into one and select all verts or faces and rotate on local access until you have the right alignment and because all the others are instances they should all be aligned correctly.

Mark Dygert

If the scale of your objects is off when you paint with that script, its because it doesn't take non-uniform scale into account. You need to reset the transform/scale in the hierarchy tab. I also found the random scatter options kind of confusing.

I really like Niel Blevins Object Painter script. It also randomizes scale. For me it replaced advanced painter about a year ago. His spline painter script is a lot better too.
http://www.neilblevins.com/soulburnscripts/soulburnscripts.htm

adam

Thanks dudes! Both work great!

Firebert

anything like this for maya?

Ben Apuna

@Firebert:

greuh posted this script for Maya about a week ago:

http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=64101

I think that's what you're looking for.

Mark Dygert

Level tools for Maya has some placement scripts and a lot of pretty cool misc tools for building levels in Maya. I think it was rolled into the latest level tools. In some ways its slightly better.
http://www.vigville.com/forum_images/MayaLevelToolsImport.jpg
http://www.vigville.com/forum_images/MayaLevelToolsLayout.jpg
http://www.vigville.com/forum_images/MayaLevelToolsDisplay.jpg
Download: http://www.vigville.com/forum_images/Maya/LevelTools3.5_Install.zip

Firebert

sweet. thanks guys!

adam

Booya! I was able to get the bolts on here in about 3 minutes! AWESOME.

whipSwitch

not sure if that's what you used, but I downloaded the soulburn scripts after running across this thread last night, and he has ton of great stuff in there.

Mark Dygert

Pixar doesn't hire slouches...

He also has a wealth of awesome knowledge and articles on his site too.
I haven't ordered his "hard surface shading and texturing" DVD yet but it looks like it won't disappoint.

yiannisk

you can also try extracting an edge as a spline and use the spacing tool in max to do this real fast!

only catch with this is the alinement might be off depending on the surface.


another way is, use same as above, "extract shape" then assign it as a path to move on (path constraint) and take a snapshot of the animation. This way you will have much better control.

edit: you can assign more paths to make it on one go but it will make it trickier.