Rigged Planetoid (want to make a procedural one now)

ArchangelZero

Hey all,

For a school project, I made this quick planet and rigged it in such a way that anyone can come into max, click the main controller, and edit the colour of the land (inc. sea) and the clouds. It does a couple other things too, like I rigged a controller that rotates a light around the planet and stuff.

This goes to the rigged planet in case anyone wants to play around with it.


click to enlarge

It's nothing to write home to mother about, really. But I'm thinking a procedural planetoid script could be something really cool to work on (if not exactly original), not to mention it would right up my alley on several levels.

Thing is I'm not quite sure where to start, being quite newbish at this time... Anyone have a bit of advice? I'm thinking MaxScript is the way to go for something like this. Although, would a Python script work in Maya and Blender as well?

Anything helps!

Cheers!

Eric Chadwick

Hey this is pretty cool! Yes, Maxscript should be up to the task, though the code won't really be very portable. There's no native Python support in Max... but there are ways to get it to work...
http://www.rtrowbridge.com/blog/2009/02/python-in-3ds-max/

r_fletch_r

I would look into doing this with max script, if your learning to program dont bog yourself down. While Max, Blender and Maya all support python that is where the similarity ends. workflows and commands are specific to each app so beyond the base python syntax / commands a script written for blender wont work in max or maya without a lot of extra work.

Eric: Blur studios released a free production proven Python plugin for max, its presently down for maintenance though.
http://code.google.com/p/blur-dev/