Populate:3dsmax - paneling system finally released

[plastic_]

Hi all,

I was posting teasers last year, and some of you were interested in this, so here it is finally.
I'm releasing this as public beta, basic functionality is there, although there are still a lot of things to be done. But I can't let another year pass by

I focus on writing docs now and fixing reported bugs, then I will continue working on new features.
I want to make sure that everything is super stable, before things get even more complex.

Please visit the website, join the facebook page, and share some renders

http://populate-3dsmax.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Populate/160340000683216

[Neilg]

On this so hard

Looks amazing, thank you!

[AJ Jefferies]

^ What he said

Looks excellent, can't wait to give it a go.

[RE:FORM_STUDIOS]

Wow, you really went to town with the UI... it looks great!
Sad to say my attempts at a similar tool haven't moved on since your last thread... looks like I was wise not to waste my time!

[joconnell]

This looks great! Is it c++ or maxscript? The interactivity looks great!

[Pictor2]

Just downloaded and given it a spin, fantastic tool, thank you very much!

[plastic_]

thanks for the feedback!

This looks great! Is it c++ or maxscript? The interactivity looks great!

It's maxscript, dotNet and some on the fly compiled c# (but only for UI parts).
It was important for me that all the generated objects are standard max nodes, there are no issues with missing dll´s, broken recompiles, etc.
The interactivity wasn't my main focus, and it's tricked to some degree, but for a small number of elements (<1000) it actually works well, and there is a preview mode for tweaking elements in the current FOV.
I was looking at scripted controllers, to make things smoother, but they are not scalable. It's not there yet, but I will add proxy support and dynamic memory routines, for an unlimited number of panels.

Wow, you really went to town with the UI... it looks great!
Sad to say my attempts at a similar tool haven't moved on since your last thread... looks like I was wise not to waste my time!

The UI is crazy, it's like 90% of the work. I probably wouldn't do it a second time. DotNet controls are like a can of worms. But I have a fetish for nice UI's.
There's still a long way to what Grasshopper provides, but at least I have a UI that people can actually use without being coders themselves, at least that's what I was aiming for.

[Neilg]

Quick bump for you, got the chance to have a play with it and I think it's amazing.

I was under the assumption that I could use 3 different mutations of various morpher targets and isolate it to just use the red, green or blue channel but this doesnt seem to be working? Regardless of which ones (rgb channels) I enable/disable, it just raised the value in each of my morphs the same. Tried with bitmaps and vertex paint with the same result.
Is this feature supposed to be working yet?

[plastic_]

hey,
yes, you're right, that's how it's supposed to work.
However, I totally forgot to actually implement that functionality in the processing loop.
I will add it ASAP.

Quick bump for you, got the chance to have a play with it and I think it's amazing.

I was under the assumption that I could use 3 different mutations of various morpher targets and isolate it to just use the red, green or blue channel but this doesnt seem to be working? Regardless of which ones (rgb channels) I enable/disable, it just raised the value in each of my morphs the same. Tried with bitmaps and vertex paint with the same result.
Is this feature supposed to be working yet?

[plastic_]

Channel selectors work now in v0.82:

http://populate-3dsmax.com/downloads/

thanks for finding the bug!

[Neilg]

Nice

Oh yeah, your interface is amazing. it's a no tutorial required kind of design, just open and go. I like that a lot!