Ha, nice one ! In my case I use greenshot for my desktop screenshots. Pretty much the same but I have more options. File format, automatic save inside the folder I want, and so on.
There is also a portable version !
Just wanted to say the "Maya Python for Games and Film" book is indeed amazing and worth checking out, even for those who already know a thing or two. As a learner, I appreciate how it's written and the clarity of the examples. Get it!
Hyperdesktop saves to a folder, has partial screenshots and instant annotations but more importantly immediately uploads to imgur.com and pastes the link in your clipboard.
Is Hyperdesktop images only? No video? I looked on their website but its pretty barebones.
That's the point. You want it to be lightweight so you can have it always running from startup. Anytime I need a portion of the screen posted, I just hit CTRL+Shift+4 and I get a cursor to frame my shot. It also lets you choose formats, compression and keeps track of the Hyperlinks even after you cleared your clip-board.
For video:
LICEcap goes a step further and gives you the necessary extra tools for recording .GIFs. It lets you set the frame rate and size and gives you a pre-roll to get everything ready. very handy. Imgur compresses gifs, so I prefer to upload to min.us.
I've been modeling the Halo 4 BR and posting to the WAYWO thread with .GIFs like this:
These are some really nice tools to show stuff off on Polycount.
I have something similar to this in ShoeBox and its a flickr upload tool but its not yet in the public release.
Unlike all the other tools you can just use the clipboard of Win / OSX and click on the tool to upload it right away, once its uploaded it copies the URL to the clipboard right away and open the image in a browser tab.
What I don't like with all the other tools is the extra layer of interaction needed for getting what you want in the first place, like right click to get a menu with another button that copies the path actually to the clipboard.
That's cool. It's several more steps if you want to crop, though.
I like the 1-click Clipboard Uploading feature, that is something I haven't seen yet, and I've been looking. Hyper Desktop lets you upload with drag and drop when you open the program from its tray Icon. What is flickr embedding like? How about Adobe Airs Resource use?
I'll try to upload a new public version this weekend with the flickr upload added, then you can try it yourself in terms of usability and performance.
That's cool. It's several more steps if you want to crop, though.
True, especially when using print screen for the whole screen - but then I often fire up a new document in PS which is open the whole time crop it there and copy it back to the clipboard and then click on the tool.
Regardless of that though its a time cutter and I do see myself more often screens to bugs or email at work whenever an additional screen helps people understanding complicated matters better, because its almost effortless.
I feel like this kind of stuff should be implemented into the OS. Its so helpful to be able to send quickly recordably screencapture .GIFs to people. If only they weren't limited to 256 color and so heavy-weight in size.
I have something similar to this in ShoeBox and its a flickr upload tool but its not yet in the public release.
Unlike all the other tools you can just use the clipboard of Win / OSX and click on the tool to upload it right away, once its uploaded it copies the URL to the clipboard right away and open the image in a browser tab.
What I don't like with all the other tools is the extra layer of interaction needed for getting what you want in the first place, like right click to get a menu with another button that copies the path actually to the clipboard.
O that sounds awesome render. Been playing around with a Maya screenshot script (sort of like Grabviewport except stripped down) and I think I'm going to try and implement something like that (most likely Dropbox though) with an option for opening in Photoshop or uploading it.
updated to version 1.30 of the public ShoeBox build http://renderhjs.net/shoebox/
the website got a overhaul with a better documentation on the very specific detail and some better overview pictures for each tool.
*other new additions* in this release
[URL="file:///C:/Users/renderhjs/Documents/GIT/ShoeBox/website/extractSWF.htm"]Extract SWF BETA[/URL]:
converting a SWF animation to a spritesheet and animation XML data. This is still a early stage but I thought it might be nice to have a look at for some people at least.
[URL="file:///C:/Users/renderhjs/Documents/GIT/ShoeBox/website/extractTiles.htm"]Extract Tiles[/URL]
Generates a TMX (tiled map format) and a tilebank based on a screenshot of a tile based game.
Mac 2 PC url
This is more what I use or made for work where we have PC and mac computers and sharing locations of files is usually a mess. This tool converts or opens mac and or PC paths or generates them on booth platforms.
I also extended the Animation to Sheet tool to export PNG sequences for After Effects use (There is a template for that in the settings). Unlike other solutions it supports full scripted animations in AVM1 and AVM2 movies (AS1, AS2, AS3- pretty much anything with a .swf ending).
The FlickR uploader in particular works like this. It's quite simple, either drag a PNG, JPG, GIF image on the droplet or copy a image to your clipboard and click on the bucket.
Okay so first time posting here. I've started to become more interested in MAXScript and other stuff like this. But I'm a total n00b so let's start off nice and simple.
I created a joystick controller creator/manager. The creation is a pretty standard affair and doesn't stray too far from Rick Stirling's tutorial in terms of the process and flow.
The main thing I wanted to add was an easier method for user to hook-up their wire parameters for the morph targets. The way you do it in Max is kinda dumb in terms of the actions and over-complex if you're wanting something pretty standard. So here the user can select a valid circle controller and mesh and wire them up using a simple drop-down menu and button.
It handles normalisation automatically for the user.
There are other bits and bobs you can see. The only thing it does that isn't shown is the ability to create the actual joysticks faster. You can do this by creating standard planes in the viewport of different size, when one is selected and you press create it will then create a joystick based on the plane's location and size. It will also take it's name and, depending on if the plane has any length or width segments, be a square or other size.
Any feedback/pointers would be great. I can't display the code/release the MAXScript until I've handed in some uni work that this is attached to. Once it's handed in I'll be re-writing the whole thing and put it up here/on my site.
Any comments or crit you can give would be super useful though.
Alright... I am going to break the mold and post some Zbrush scripts! Pretty basic compared to most of these guys
It takes your currently masked geometry and duplicates it WITHIN the same Subtool. Similar to 3dsMax duplicate to element. It works with a fully masked element or partially masked geometry.
There are lots of ways to do this but no 1-click solution so I made this. I was placing 4-5 different spikes all over a creature. I didn't want 100 Subtools to manage and wanted to duplicate different ones as I went. This is saved as a Macro for now but is part of a larger toolset I have been working on.
So, I was looking at scriptspot and found a peculiar experimental feature in Max 2012's Nitrous Viewport that I didn't know existed. Realtime Reflections!
Via Maxscript you have access to an additional ".DynamicReflectionEnabled" options in the Viewportsettings interface. Using that you can have dynamic reflections between objects. It's a bit buggy, and tends to fail [on older hardware]
Now get this to run at higher than 6 FPS on a machine like mine and ship it in the next cryengine update. :poly124:
EDIT: on second thought, it's less special than I thought. On further inspection, It lookst like they are Live RTTing a cube map at the objects pivot for the reflections. Only really works well with spheres. Nothing special, cryengine already has something similar, still interesting though! :thumbup:
Here I'm showing how the tool imports meshes from UDK to 3dsMax with a click. I'll speed up the import process later on.
Also selecting an object in 3dsMax will select the equivalent in Unreal!
darthwilson: That's coming along very nicely. Great idea with the hair morphs, too
Because why the hell not? Still amazes me that Unity doesn't have a vertex paint tool built in... Just the first day of development, so it still needs some work before it's fully cooked.
At the moment it's got the basic stuff you'd expect, like visual brush radius, brush strength, color preview, falloff curves, interactive brush resize/strength.
Looking good Lotekk, the more unity tools the better.
Do you plan on releasing it?
Yeah, it needs a bit more time in the oven to polish it up a bit and clean up some functionality (and some annoying backend stuff), but I definitely intend to release it into the wild in some form.
Spent a bit more time this weekend working on it. Key thing was trying to keep it intuitive (and vaguely wysiwyg):
That's awesome, TekK. I made a really simple Unity shader that blends textures based on vertex colors, but I've been painting them in 3dsmax. What technique are you using to get the hard edges between the textures?
That's awesome, TekK. I made a really simple Unity shader that blends textures based on vertex colors, but I've been painting them in 3dsmax. What technique are you using to get the hard edges between the textures?
Cheers man. For the blends I just made a simple demo shader that uses the red channel to blend between two textures, while the green channel controls the sharpness of the transition via pow(). I don't have the shader on me at the moment, but it's basically along the lines of
o.Albedo = saturate(lerp(tex1, tex2, pow(IN.color.r, IN.color.g * 20) * 4);
//you can play with the constants to tweak
Here I'm showing how the tool imports meshes from UDK to 3dsMax with a click. I'll speed up the import process later on.
Also selecting an object in 3dsMax will select the equivalent in Unreal!
Holy shit! That would completely change my whole workflow. I apologise for being an annoying prick, but do you have any ETA on this? A tool like this is something I've been dreaming of.
Holy shit! That would completely change my whole workflow. I apologise for being an annoying prick, but do you have any ETA on this? A tool like this is something I've been dreaming of.
hey glad you like it!
I've been working on it the last couple of days. Improving performance a lot and implementing instancing. When you clone an object in 3dsMax it will appear automatically in Unreal as well!
Not sure about an eta. I'm pretty busy nowadays. All I can say is it's probably going to be sooner rather than later.
Some people over at the official UDK forums are staying away from the FBX exporter for animations because it doesn't support exporting several animations at once, at least it doesn't in Maya. I had this old, horrendous, MEL script lying around for exporting several animations from the timeline, with ActorX, and have extended it to support FBX now.
I love how Maya 2012 totally breaks the script UI layout.
Axtended
[vv]39988568[/vv]
I recorded a session where I animated a scene and exported it, first couple of minutes and the last minute are relevant for the exporter.
trying to get rather simple car physics in Unity3D where I can customize the center of weight, wheel sizes and offsets as well as a basic body collision box.
a friend told me that the wheel collider is rather slow on mobile devices, I want to know and hence this prototype to see if it will do fine with 4 or more of them on a screen.
a friend told me that the wheel collider is rather slow on mobile devices
I would imagine it might be, since it's pretty much an abstraction layer for a fair amount of physx stuff. For mobile you might be better off doing a much simpler wheel/movement model. Though I should try throwing my car prototype thing onto my android tonight to see how it handles.
So am working on a new Zbrush plugin that you can store Ztools that you commonly use to quickly load again on your next session. Sorta like a "Recent Files" thing. I find it incredibly annoying to be constantly browsing for stuff.
I have it basically working but I wanted some feedback from you guys. From a useability standpoint do you think I should have it as a menu in the Tools Palette where its near most of the stuff you use or bundled together in the Plugin Menu with my other stuff? I can't decide.
Something else that has got me puzzled is that I have the button that displays the stored ZTool's name change when you store a new Tool.... BUT it only works as a script. When I compile it to the plugin it just makes a duplicate button with the new Tool's name. On the next launch it does change to the new name but I am not sure if that is good enough. I am trying to think if there is something else I can do or I should just leave it as that.
The most logical choice would to have it inside the tool palette, or at least as a subpalette.
Your plug store only one mesh or more ? A remove button next to the load button could be cool to remove a tool.
Thanks for your input. I agree. I think it makes most sense to have it in the tool palette. The thing that is giving me pause is that if I make a SubPallet it goes at the very bottom of all the other menus. Also, I believe you have to have a Tool already selected to activate the other menus in the Tool pallet. With all that stuff in mind I feel like the Plugin menu is closer/easier? I am torn.
I would love to have it below the other Save/Load stuff but I don't think its possible. I know I have seen other plugins do it I just dont know how.
I think I am going to have 3 or 5 slots to store meshes. There is just one now to test it. What I have working now is that you click the button to store the mesh and you click it again to store a different mesh. I was considering Alt + Click will remove the stored mesh but it may be unnecessary.
Thanks for your input. I agree. I think it makes most sense to have it in the tool palette. The thing that is giving me pause is that if I make a SubPallet it goes at the very bottom of all the other menus. Also, I believe you have to have a Tool already selected to activate the other menus in the Tool pallet. With all that stuff in mind I feel like the Plugin menu is closer/easier? I am torn.
In this case, I agree with you : having the palette the closest as possible to the save/load tools button would be the more practical. So having a configuration as in your screenshot would be more easier than having to scroll to the bottom of the tool palette.
I think I am going to have 3 or 5 slots to store meshes. There is just one now to test it. What I have working now is that you click the button to store the mesh and you click it again to store a different mesh. I was considering Alt + Click will remove the stored mesh but it may be unnecessary.
Been making this Bitmap Preview tool. But now it's expanded into a multimedia tool. You can load/use Audio and Video files now too. I will be releasing it on my site here soon enough.
It's my first WPF Project, and has been fun and a good learning experience so far.
mLichy: Nice work. What are you using to layout the wpf ui controls? Are you using the designer in visual studio or something else? I've recently began to look into c# and wpf but I don't have a good grasp on any of it yet.
Been trying to expand my scripting abilities beyond maxscript as of late
mLichy >> WPF looks really interesting, I've been looking around and am amused I've never heard of it before. I found this site called WPF Tutorial and some books regarding the 3d portion of it. Do you have any recommended sources on where to begin exploring WPF? Would you recommend giving it a shot?
LoTekK - Yes, you can listen to/watch Audio/Video files I'm about to add a volume slider as well. Right now you can Play/Pause and Scrub through them.
Bryan - I'm just using VS2010. This seems to work fine. I've messed with Expression Blend, but don't feel I need it for what I was doing.
To both Denny and Bryan -
I've had some prior C# experience before this, but the way I've been learning is just google searching mostly. Checking out CodeProject.com and using MSDN. I also made it a goal to customize almost all UI elements in my project.
So using Styles and Control Templates, I've customized all tooltips, ContextMenus, scrollbars, scroll viewer, grid splitter, textboxes, and made my own custom ListboxMenuItem, and thumbnail setup. Then the backgrounds are just using gradients and whatnot.
I forgot, I made a video showing most all of this off. Although since this I've updated it more, fixed bugs and added new features.
WPF Tutorial is a decent site, but is lacking info sometimes. Like I mentioned, MSDN is probably the best place to look. Also it's just trial and error . But google is your friend.
I'm working on a custom rig builder for Maya. I know that a lot of tools/script alredy do that, but since that creating a rig is something very personnal, I do my own one. I'm bored to manually do that.
My purpose it's to make an auto-builder for any type of character compatible with the UDK.
That's mean I don't try to obviously make an humanoid character.
Firts step done : making the bones based on a hierarchy of locators.
The bones are named from the locators (because later I want to recognize some bones like hand/foots).
Replies
There is also a portable version !
I will take a look on it, looks promising !
like this:
That's the point. You want it to be lightweight so you can have it always running from startup. Anytime I need a portion of the screen posted, I just hit CTRL+Shift+4 and I get a cursor to frame my shot. It also lets you choose formats, compression and keeps track of the Hyperlinks even after you cleared your clip-board.
For video:
LICEcap goes a step further and gives you the necessary extra tools for recording .GIFs. It lets you set the frame rate and size and gives you a pre-roll to get everything ready. very handy. Imgur compresses gifs, so I prefer to upload to min.us.
I've been modeling the Halo 4 BR and posting to the WAYWO thread with .GIFs like this:
These are some really nice tools to show stuff off on Polycount.
I meant the website not the app haha! But yea, lightweight is good.
Unlike all the other tools you can just use the clipboard of Win / OSX and click on the tool to upload it right away, once its uploaded it copies the URL to the clipboard right away and open the image in a browser tab.
What I don't like with all the other tools is the extra layer of interaction needed for getting what you want in the first place, like right click to get a menu with another button that copies the path actually to the clipboard.
I like the 1-click Clipboard Uploading feature, that is something I haven't seen yet, and I've been looking. Hyper Desktop lets you upload with drag and drop when you open the program from its tray Icon. What is flickr embedding like? How about Adobe Airs Resource use?
True, especially when using print screen for the whole screen - but then I often fire up a new document in PS which is open the whole time crop it there and copy it back to the clipboard and then click on the tool.
Regardless of that though its a time cutter and I do see myself more often screens to bugs or email at work whenever an additional screen helps people understanding complicated matters better, because its almost effortless.
I feel like this kind of stuff should be implemented into the OS. Its so helpful to be able to send quickly recordably screencapture .GIFs to people. If only they weren't limited to 256 color and so heavy-weight in size.
O that sounds awesome render. Been playing around with a Maya screenshot script (sort of like Grabviewport except stripped down) and I think I'm going to try and implement something like that (most likely Dropbox though) with an option for opening in Photoshop or uploading it.
http://renderhjs.net/shoebox/
the website got a overhaul with a better documentation on the very specific detail and some better overview pictures for each tool.
*other new additions* in this release
converting a SWF animation to a spritesheet and animation XML data. This is still a early stage but I thought it might be nice to have a look at for some people at least.
Generates a TMX (tiled map format) and a tilebank based on a screenshot of a tile based game.
This is more what I use or made for work where we have PC and mac computers and sharing locations of files is usually a mess. This tool converts or opens mac and or PC paths or generates them on booth platforms.
I also extended the Animation to Sheet tool to export PNG sequences for After Effects use (There is a template for that in the settings). Unlike other solutions it supports full scripted animations in AVM1 and AVM2 movies (AS1, AS2, AS3- pretty much anything with a .swf ending).
The FlickR uploader in particular works like this. It's quite simple, either drag a PNG, JPG, GIF image on the droplet or copy a image to your clipboard and click on the bucket.
I created a joystick controller creator/manager. The creation is a pretty standard affair and doesn't stray too far from Rick Stirling's tutorial in terms of the process and flow.
The main thing I wanted to add was an easier method for user to hook-up their wire parameters for the morph targets. The way you do it in Max is kinda dumb in terms of the actions and over-complex if you're wanting something pretty standard. So here the user can select a valid circle controller and mesh and wire them up using a simple drop-down menu and button.
It handles normalisation automatically for the user.
There are other bits and bobs you can see. The only thing it does that isn't shown is the ability to create the actual joysticks faster. You can do this by creating standard planes in the viewport of different size, when one is selected and you press create it will then create a joystick based on the plane's location and size. It will also take it's name and, depending on if the plane has any length or width segments, be a square or other size.
Any feedback/pointers would be great. I can't display the code/release the MAXScript until I've handed in some uni work that this is attached to. Once it's handed in I'll be re-writing the whole thing and put it up here/on my site.
Any comments or crit you can give would be super useful though.
Also this post was needlessly long.
Making a character customizer system for UDK! Check out my thread if your interested
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1547129#post1547129
Blocking in these systems then I'm going to go back and make all the art content look "pretty" :P
Most recent update is custom clothing jazzle!
[ame="
[ame="
Don't usually wander into the technical talk area, but I'm glad I did. Thanks for posting this. :thumbup:
It takes your currently masked geometry and duplicates it WITHIN the same Subtool. Similar to 3dsMax duplicate to element. It works with a fully masked element or partially masked geometry.
There are lots of ways to do this but no 1-click solution so I made this. I was placing 4-5 different spikes all over a creature. I didn't want 100 Subtools to manage and wanted to duplicate different ones as I went. This is saved as a Macro for now but is part of a larger toolset I have been working on.
Download
Found about it on this script's page.
Now get this to run at higher than 6 FPS on a machine like mine and ship it in the next cryengine update. :poly124:
EDIT: on second thought, it's less special than I thought. On further inspection, It lookst like they are Live RTTing a cube map at the objects pivot for the reflections. Only really works well with spheres. Nothing special, cryengine already has something similar, still interesting though! :thumbup:
Hope you's like it!
[ame="
Because why the hell not? Still amazes me that Unity doesn't have a vertex paint tool built in... Just the first day of development, so it still needs some work before it's fully cooked.
At the moment it's got the basic stuff you'd expect, like visual brush radius, brush strength, color preview, falloff curves, interactive brush resize/strength.
Do you plan on releasing it?
Spent a bit more time this weekend working on it. Key thing was trying to keep it intuitive (and vaguely wysiwyg):
[ame="
Cheers man. For the blends I just made a simple demo shader that uses the red channel to blend between two textures, while the green channel controls the sharpness of the transition via pow(). I don't have the shader on me at the moment, but it's basically along the lines of
Holy shit! That would completely change my whole workflow. I apologise for being an annoying prick, but do you have any ETA on this? A tool like this is something I've been dreaming of.
hey glad you like it!
I've been working on it the last couple of days. Improving performance a lot and implementing instancing. When you clone an object in 3dsMax it will appear automatically in Unreal as well!
Not sure about an eta. I'm pretty busy nowadays. All I can say is it's probably going to be sooner rather than later.
I love how Maya 2012 totally breaks the script UI layout.
Axtended
[vv]39988568[/vv]
I recorded a session where I animated a scene and exported it, first couple of minutes and the last minute are relevant for the exporter.
a friend told me that the wheel collider is rather slow on mobile devices, I want to know and hence this prototype to see if it will do fine with 4 or more of them on a screen.
Actually looks pretty cool, making a iOS racing game?
I have it basically working but I wanted some feedback from you guys. From a useability standpoint do you think I should have it as a menu in the Tools Palette where its near most of the stuff you use or bundled together in the Plugin Menu with my other stuff? I can't decide.
Something else that has got me puzzled is that I have the button that displays the stored ZTool's name change when you store a new Tool.... BUT it only works as a script. When I compile it to the plugin it just makes a duplicate button with the new Tool's name. On the next launch it does change to the new name but I am not sure if that is good enough. I am trying to think if there is something else I can do or I should just leave it as that.
I want it !
The most logical choice would to have it inside the tool palette, or at least as a subpalette.
Your plug store only one mesh or more ? A remove button next to the load button could be cool to remove a tool.
I would love to have it below the other Save/Load stuff but I don't think its possible. I know I have seen other plugins do it I just dont know how.
I think I am going to have 3 or 5 slots to store meshes. There is just one now to test it. What I have working now is that you click the button to store the mesh and you click it again to store a different mesh. I was considering Alt + Click will remove the stored mesh but it may be unnecessary.
:thumbup: Sounds cool !
It's my first WPF Project, and has been fun and a good learning experience so far.
Been trying to expand my scripting abilities beyond maxscript as of late
LoTekK - Yes, you can listen to/watch Audio/Video files
Bryan - I'm just using VS2010. This seems to work fine. I've messed with Expression Blend, but don't feel I need it for what I was doing.
To both Denny and Bryan -
I've had some prior C# experience before this, but the way I've been learning is just google searching mostly. Checking out CodeProject.com and using MSDN. I also made it a goal to customize almost all UI elements in my project.
So using Styles and Control Templates, I've customized all tooltips, ContextMenus, scrollbars, scroll viewer, grid splitter, textboxes, and made my own custom ListboxMenuItem, and thumbnail setup. Then the backgrounds are just using gradients and whatnot.
I forgot, I made a video showing most all of this off. Although since this I've updated it more, fixed bugs and added new features.
http://matthewlichy.com/bitmapResourcer/bitmapResourcer.html
These books I've heard are good.
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/WPF-4-Unleashed-Adam-Nathan/dp/0672331195/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334345419&sr=8-1"]Amazon.com: WPF 4 Unleashed (9780672331190): Adam Nathan: Books[/ame]
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/Pro-WPF-2010-Presentation-Foundation/dp/1430272058/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1334345419&sr=8-2"]Amazon.com: Pro WPF in C# 2010: Windows Presentation Foundation in .NET 4 (9781430272052): Matthew MacDonald: Books[/ame]
My purpose it's to make an auto-builder for any type of character compatible with the UDK.
That's mean I don't try to obviously make an humanoid character.
Firts step done : making the bones based on a hierarchy of locators.
The bones are named from the locators (because later I want to recognize some bones like hand/foots).
Froyok >> Looking good, next step is making a proxy rig I presume?