- If the model has a skeleton you can visualize it
- Animation can be controlled with slider now
- Added Glow Map support
- You can now toggle Bloom Effect(Before it wasn´t even there!)
- Textures are changeable on the fly(exprimental)
- Lights can be freely positioned now
- Lights can be seen as Lightbulbs in Scene if wanted
- made some slight changes to the ui(still far from final though)
Todo:
- Make different things tweakable(light strength,glow strength,glow radius, light distance etc.)
- More direct light positioning
- obj support(this is going to be funny)
- many more things i forgot or which still need to find their way into my brain
Some screens:
Bloom in action:
Bone Preview(older UI):
Standard View + Glow(this doesn´t belong there i just added a glowmap for testing):
Feel free to critizise(except the model itself, i don´t have much time to model atm and it´s not entirely made by me).
Worked on some sprite/ texture packing tools recently to improve my workflow with unity3D. Basically what it comes down to this time are some improvements for creating a Font tile atlas to use for a custom font Bitmap rendering system in Unity 3D. The problem with other free available tools that create a font atlas is that they only allow templates with font effects, not Photoshop designed font styles. Also other methods sometimes involve fonts to be placed within a grid so they can be parsed in sequence easier.
The idea of this tool box is to be used here at work, so I am working on this every now and then to add and improve some tools while fleshing out the overal UI and framework as its still at a early stage, not ready to be released in the public because I am to busy with work recently.
Just now learning maxscript here. We need to do an extrusion amount that we grab from an excel document, but we already have that figured out. The problem is that we can't get any extrusion amount working. Here's the code I'm testing, grabbed straight out of the listener when I did it through the gui.
max modify mode
modPanel.addModToSelection (Extrude ()) ui:on
$.modifiers[#Extrude].amount=43
Really simple, but it gives me an error message saying "amount" in undefined. I can't find any documentation on this at all! Help?
Just now learning maxscript here. We need to do an extrusion amount that we grab from an excel document, but we already have that figured out. The problem is that we can't get any extrusion amount working. Here's the code I'm testing, grabbed straight out of the listener when I did it through the gui.
max modify mode
modPanel.addModToSelection (Extrude ()) ui:on
$.modifiers[#Extrude].amount=43
Really simple, but it gives me an error message saying "amount" in undefined. I can't find any documentation on this at all! Help?
Is 'Extrude' even a modifier? I see it in the help, but not in my modifier list. All I see is 'Face Extrude' in 3ds 2009 here. Maybe try that?
I am having trouble running your tool. When I double click or drop an image onto ImageProcessor.exe, I get:
The image format is unrecognized.
at MS.Internal.HRESULT.Check(Int32 hr)
at System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapSource.UpdateCachedSettings()
at System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapSource.set_WicSourceHandle(BitmapSourceSafeMILHandle value)
at System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapFrameDecode.FinalizeCreation()
at System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapSource.CompleteDelayedCreation()
at System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapSource.get_PixelWidth()
at MS.Internal.AppModel.IconHelper.GetBestMatch(ReadOnlyCollection`1 frames, Int32 sysBitDepth, Int32 width, Int32 height)
at MS.Internal.AppModel.IconHelper.GetIconHandlesFromBitmapFrame(Object callingObj, BitmapFrame bf, IconHandle& largeIconHandle, IconHandle& smallIconHandle)
at System.Windows.Window.UpdateIcon()
at System.Windows.Window.SetupInitialState(Double requestedTop, Double requestedLeft, Double requestedWidth, Double requestedHeight)
at System.Windows.Window.CreateSourceWindowImpl()
at System.Windows.Window.ShowHelper(Object booleanBox)
at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter)
at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate callback, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter, Delegate catchHandler)
I tried bmp, jpg, tiff, png.
Any hints for a dummy?
Windows Vista SP1 64bit
Intel Xeon 2.33ghz
8GB RAM
NVidia Quadro FX 3450/4000 SDI
Renderhjs: That scatter script only works with the flower mesh, but I asked him if he could make it work with a custom mesh.
He said that he might write a stsndalone scatter script soon.
I did finish a mock up yesterday. Besides the simple collision check, the functionality and attractiveness(non existing at the moment) don't stand a chance to the default scatter that comes with max. But if there is interest I could try to add those standard scatter features and attractiveness, and custom requests.
i recently rewrote some parts of a script (i had permission) to scatter groups, too...
never found any online, but i think its too unpolished to be released, but maybe its an idea to expand yours?
Hehe, nice to know that you are interested.
The game is delayed with some weeks. We have to wait with the releases of the tools till the release of the game.
I am having trouble running your tool. When I double click or drop an image onto ImageProcessor.exe, I get:
The image format is unrecognized.
at MS.Internal.HRESULT.Check(Int32 hr)
at System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapSource.UpdateCachedSettings()
at System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapSource.set_WicSourceHandle(BitmapSourceSafeMILHandle value)
at System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapFrameDecode.FinalizeCreation()
at System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapSource.CompleteDelayedCreation()
at System.Windows.Media.Imaging.BitmapSource.get_PixelWidth()
at MS.Internal.AppModel.IconHelper.GetBestMatch(ReadOnlyCollection`1 frames, Int32 sysBitDepth, Int32 width, Int32 height)
at MS.Internal.AppModel.IconHelper.GetIconHandlesFromBitmapFrame(Object callingObj, BitmapFrame bf, IconHandle& largeIconHandle, IconHandle& smallIconHandle)
at System.Windows.Window.UpdateIcon()
at System.Windows.Window.SetupInitialState(Double requestedTop, Double requestedLeft, Double requestedWidth, Double requestedHeight)
at System.Windows.Window.CreateSourceWindowImpl()
at System.Windows.Window.ShowHelper(Object booleanBox)
at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.InternalRealCall(Delegate callback, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter)
at System.Windows.Threading.ExceptionWrapper.TryCatchWhen(Object source, Delegate callback, Object args, Boolean isSingleParameter, Delegate catchHandler)
I tried bmp, jpg, tiff, png.
Any hints for a dummy?
Windows Vista SP1 64bit
Intel Xeon 2.33ghz
8GB RAM
NVidia Quadro FX 3450/4000 SDI
looks like your vista doesnt like the imageviewer
have you tried installing updates? (including sp2)
bitmapsource doesnt have anything todo with loading but displaying images
i assume it loaded correctly
yeah mov sucks but the plugin is really nice i guess. i did hair some weeks ago and it's a pain in the ass to do it by hand but is i see, your plugin is just for modo, right?
maybe upload the video to youtube, downloading a mov file and even playing it back under windows can be a hassle.
Thanks for the feedback, not sure why I used .mov ..
Mp4 seems popular, what do you reckon would make a good format for the feature preview and training material ?
yeah mov sucks but the plugin is really nice i guess. i did hair some weeks ago and it's a pain in the ass to do it by hand but is i see, your plugin is just for modo, right?
Cheers, ye modo only.
I'd make one for maya, but something tells me developing commercial plugs for autodesk products is more trouble than its worth.
I also have a maya plugin that textures the hair quickly, might release it for free who knows ..
as usual, my "tech" work is pretty simplistic, but here's what i'm doing.
It's a tool which takes single segmented lines and builds geometry around them, as well as UVs, fitting them to a texture with some wire and a turnbuckle on it.
I made this because doing all the wires on all the planes in the game i'm working on would be ridiculously boring.
It needs tweaking (cables are currently extremely fat so that they can be seen properly in the video, that's of course tweakable, and need to reposition some parts of the turnbuckles to make them line up nicely with the wires)
Oh and i need to make a GUI for it to batch through a selection of lines, and have a tickbox for whether or not we want turnbuckles on either end.
A animated GIF or SWF to sprite sheet converter to convert traditional animation formats to iPhone and platform independent friendly sprite sheet. Frames can be cropped to all of the frames transparency bounds.
A sprite extraction tool, this tool can detect pixel island also known as blobs based on pixels that connect with non transparent values. It even handles smooth 8bit alpha values just fine and saves each extracted blob as a separate PNG file.
A sprite packer using a bin algorithm that packs sprites into a sprite sheet with a minimal waste use. Coordinates of the individual sprites are stored in a table so that a game engine can extract the right items with the right sizes out of the total sprite sheet.
That is very very cool Render. I personally don't think I'd have to use it for anything, but I know alot of people will love you for this. I wouldn't be surprised if Adobe wants to hire you on or something. Or has Autodesk contacted you at all?
been working on some tools for my Ultima inspired tile based game in Unity....
- export tiles max script from max to FBX and render 2D sprites to be used in the map editor
- bake script to automatically bake lightmaps for a set of tiles for a section of the map
- wrote the map editor in Qt/C++. Tiles are organized by tilesets (e.g. wall, floors, etc). I can rotate tiles and paint them. Next step is to add 3 layers - floors, main objects (e.g. walls), props (barrels, torches, other deco)
- load the map in Unity (Boo) and move around with the cursor keys
Next steps are to add some lighting and smooth animation when you move around in unity. Also I need to add tile properties "blocks movement" and "blocks sight".
been working on some tools for my Ultima inspired tile based game in Unity....
- export tiles max script from max to FBX and render 2D sprites to be used in the map editor
- bake script to automatically bake lightmaps for a set of tiles for a section of the map
- wrote the map editor in Qt/C++. Tiles are organized by tilesets (e.g. wall, ...
extremely cool mLichy, love some of the details of the app. Been working as well on some clipboard transferring tools (just bitmaps and text strings).
At some point your UI gets cluttered, maybe some quick clear shortcut or button to clear the collection, or a way to save a session and export it to useful data for example: archived ZIP / rar, image collage (for modeling, reference view), formated text snippets document.
Impressive, how about a possibility that you can save all the images on the same time to a folder? Would be great when you are looking for reference pictures on the net and you want to save them out at the end.
Yeah, I have Clear Text/Files under the top menu button. Then you can also rightclick/remove like I showed.
Also, you can set the buffer size, so if u only want to see 2 Images/Links, it will remove the oldest image/link as u add new ones.
I just fixed up my Image Preview window, so u can resize it now, and I setup the mouse wheel to scale/zoom the images. So it works like the Windows Image Preview, except mine handles PSDs, TGAs, DDS, Raw, HDR, ect
Impressive, how about a possibility that you can save all the images on the same time to a folder? Would be great when you are looking for reference pictures on the net and you want to save them out at the en
Thanks, yeah I could do that easy enough. Maybe a menu option, or just Right Click -> Save All Images. I could have it ask for a folder location at first, then store that info for later. But of course make it easy enough to change the folder location later.
I made an image preview window, then decided to make it more like the Windows one. You can Zoom/Pan/Rotate the image. Rotating doesn't save the like that though.
I also added a Save All Files option, and it saves/loads the folder on UI load/close.
haha. yeah I know... this weekend for sure!
I realized the screens I could take so far all included copyrighted textures I borrowed from a couple of games for pre-viz. I spent the last evenings making a few proper tiles with my own textures.
been working on a reverse SWF motion / graphics grabber
What this script does is reading a dropped SWF (can be AS1, AS2, AS3, scripted or not - just anything) and extract all used visual elements, store them in a packed sprite sheet and save the tweens in a XML list.
Because I analyse every single frame and compare it with the previous frame (state of all elements and their properties) I can even detect animations that are scripted. The only tricky areas will be masks, 3D transforms or Engine written (e.g games) SWF movies as I don't even want to support such scenarios. What I plan supporting is just animations with:
translation x,y
rotation (with gimbal lock / 360 flip fix)
scaleX, scaleY
alpha
cascaded hierarchy (and conversion to 1 hierarchy)
one animator at work gave me one of his Raving Rabid animations
Next is some batching, to merge graphics and elements that move in one group anyway, that should reduce the sprites and tweens. Target platforms could be html5(iPhone, iPad), Unity3D, Cocos2D or anything that can handle tweens (using any tweening engine) and sprite sheets.
Replies
- If the model has a skeleton you can visualize it
- Animation can be controlled with slider now
- Added Glow Map support
- You can now toggle Bloom Effect(Before it wasn´t even there!)
- Textures are changeable on the fly(exprimental)
- Lights can be freely positioned now
- Lights can be seen as Lightbulbs in Scene if wanted
- made some slight changes to the ui(still far from final though)
Todo:
- Make different things tweakable(light strength,glow strength,glow radius, light distance etc.)
- More direct light positioning
- obj support(this is going to be funny)
- many more things i forgot or which still need to find their way into my brain
Some screens:
Bloom in action:
Bone Preview(older UI):
Standard View + Glow(this doesn´t belong there i just added a glowmap for testing):
Feel free to critizise(except the model itself, i don´t have much time to model atm and it´s not entirely made by me).
http://norman3d.com/MaxScriptManager/
The idea of this tool box is to be used here at work, so I am working on this every now and then to add and improve some tools while fleshing out the overal UI and framework as its still at a early stage, not ready to be released in the public because I am to busy with work recently.
Is 'Extrude' even a modifier? I see it in the help, but not in my modifier list. All I see is 'Face Extrude' in 3ds 2009 here. Maybe try that?
ah, gottcha. Maxscript help didn't mention that :shifty:
have you tried not using the modifier name, something like:
$.modifiers[1].amount = 43
I've run into problems in the past trying to use modifier names.
EDIT:
Also try it this way maybe:
ext = Extrude()
addModifier $ ext
ext.amount = 43
Good to hear! The Listener is unreliable a lot of the time...
I am having trouble running your tool. When I double click or drop an image onto ImageProcessor.exe, I get:
I tried bmp, jpg, tiff, png.
Any hints for a dummy?
Windows Vista SP1 64bit
Intel Xeon 2.33ghz
8GB RAM
NVidia Quadro FX 3450/4000 SDI
He said that he might write a stsndalone scatter script soon.
folk.ntnu.no/havardsc/scripts/simpleScatter.ms
never found any online, but i think its too unpolished to be released, but maybe its an idea to expand yours?
So more news coming up
check it out:
MaxScript Project Manager
Hehe, nice to know that you are interested.
The game is delayed with some weeks. We have to wait with the releases of the tools till the release of the game.
looks like your vista doesnt like the imageviewer
have you tried installing updates? (including sp2)
bitmapsource doesnt have anything todo with loading but displaying images
i assume it loaded correctly
Next hoping to start writing indepth tutorial videos, etc ..
See video below, how this hair was created in 6min (timelapsed to 2min)
[ame]
Thanks for the feedback, not sure why I used .mov ..
Mp4 seems popular, what do you reckon would make a good format for the feature preview and training material ?
Cheers, ye modo only.
I'd make one for maya, but something tells me developing commercial plugs for autodesk products is more trouble than its worth.
I also have a maya plugin that textures the hair quickly, might release it for free who knows ..
[ame]
Talon: That's rad! Mind if I ask what technique you used for this?
http://www.farfarer.com/blog/2011/07/25/dynamic-ambient-lighting-in-unity/
very nice. love the other unity stuff as well on your blog
Cheers Maph, Yes already used this for this character :
It's a tool which takes single segmented lines and builds geometry around them, as well as UVs, fitting them to a texture with some wire and a turnbuckle on it.
I made this because doing all the wires on all the planes in the game i'm working on would be ridiculously boring.
[ame]
It needs tweaking (cables are currently extremely fat so that they can be seen properly in the video, that's of course tweakable, and need to reposition some parts of the turnbuckles to make them line up nicely with the wires)
Oh and i need to make a GUI for it to batch through a selection of lines, and have a tickbox for whether or not we want turnbuckles on either end.
too bad...
Is this just for straight lines or can it handle rounded splines too?
And can it work with more complex geo? (actual model on the ends and a cylinder for the wire)
[ame]
It has now 3 sprite tools that I use at my work:
- export tiles max script from max to FBX and render 2D sprites to be used in the map editor
- bake script to automatically bake lightmaps for a set of tiles for a section of the map
- wrote the map editor in Qt/C++. Tiles are organized by tilesets (e.g. wall, floors, etc). I can rotate tiles and paint them. Next step is to add 3 layers - floors, main objects (e.g. walls), props (barrels, torches, other deco)
- load the map in Unity (Boo) and move around with the cursor keys
Next steps are to add some lighting and smooth animation when you move around in unity. Also I need to add tile properties "blocks movement" and "blocks sight".
http://vimeo.com/27563388
At some point your UI gets cluttered, maybe some quick clear shortcut or button to clear the collection, or a way to save a session and export it to useful data for example: archived ZIP / rar, image collage (for modeling, reference view), formated text snippets document.
Also, you can set the buffer size, so if u only want to see 2 Images/Links, it will remove the oldest image/link as u add new ones.
I just fixed up my Image Preview window, so u can resize it now, and I setup the mouse wheel to scale/zoom the images. So it works like the Windows Image Preview, except mine handles PSDs, TGAs, DDS, Raw, HDR, ect
Thanks, yeah I could do that easy enough. Maybe a menu option, or just Right Click -> Save All Images. I could have it ask for a folder location at first, then store that info for later. But of course make it easy enough to change the folder location later.
I made an image preview window, then decided to make it more like the Windows one. You can Zoom/Pan/Rotate the image. Rotating doesn't save the like that though.
I also added a Save All Files option, and it saves/loads the folder on UI load/close.
http://vimeo.com/27605212
haha. yeah I know... this weekend for sure!
I realized the screens I could take so far all included copyrighted textures I borrowed from a couple of games for pre-viz. I spent the last evenings making a few proper tiles with my own textures.
What this script does is reading a dropped SWF (can be AS1, AS2, AS3, scripted or not - just anything) and extract all used visual elements, store them in a packed sprite sheet and save the tweens in a XML list.
Because I analyse every single frame and compare it with the previous frame (state of all elements and their properties) I can even detect animations that are scripted. The only tricky areas will be masks, 3D transforms or Engine written (e.g games) SWF movies as I don't even want to support such scenarios. What I plan supporting is just animations with:
- translation x,y
- rotation (with gimbal lock / 360 flip fix)
- scaleX, scaleY
- alpha
- cascaded hierarchy (and conversion to 1 hierarchy)
one animator at work gave me one of his Raving Rabid animationsNext is some batching, to merge graphics and elements that move in one group anyway, that should reduce the sprites and tweens. Target platforms could be html5(iPhone, iPad), Unity3D, Cocos2D or anything that can handle tweens (using any tweening engine) and sprite sheets.
on a related note, Adobe has a similar but more restricted tool in the pipeline:
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/08/adobe-edge-beta-brings-flash-style-design-to-html5.ars
I guess my focus is more on UI and Game development hence sprite sheets and simplified data output.