Re-instance

[glorybound]

Is there a way to connect two things together; making them an instance? I have about twenty lights and three of them are orphans. I would simply like to make the other three part of the instance group.

[joconnell]

Yep - so if you pick whatever you want to be the master object - lets say it's an object called "vraylight01". You pick all your other lights and in the maxscript listener type "$.baseobject = $vraylight01" without the commas - swap vraylight01 with the name of your master object.

[glorybound]

Yep - so if you pick whatever you want to be the master object - lets say it's an object called "vraylight01". You pick all your other lights and in the maxscript listener type "$.baseobject = $vraylight01" without the commas - swap vraylight01 with the name of your master object.

wow. I was sure there wasn't a way. Thanks!

[thablanch]

Already answered, but the little tool is nice to have in your toolbox:
Same Thing as joeconnel Maxscript line, but with UIé
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/copy-replace

[AJ Jefferies]

Yep - so if you pick whatever you want to be the master object - lets say it's an object called "vraylight01". You pick all your other lights and in the maxscript listener type "$.baseobject = $vraylight01" without the commas - swap vraylight01 with the name of your master object.

Oh my god. 15 years of using 3ds max and I had no idea you could do this.

I could kiss you John O'Connell.

[cheerioboy]

Oh my god. 15 years of using 3ds max and I had no idea you could do this.

I could kiss you John O'Connell.

Same here! haha, I'll be checking out that script. Thanks Alain

[joconnell]

Oh my god. 15 years of using 3ds max and I had no idea you could do this.

I could kiss you John O'Connell.

It's so handy. Back in the days when there was no forest or other scattering tools I used pflow with some maps to scatter particles on a grass plane, backed those to nulls and then swapped the nulls for a randomly chosen grass model. Very useful bits.

[glorybound]

Awesome, thanks!

Already answered, but the little tool is nice to have in your toolbox:
Same Thing as joeconnel Maxscript line, but with UIé
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/copy-replace

[Dave_Wortley]

The baseObject is like the Shape node from Maya, Max has a transform Object which has a baseObject, Maya has a Transform Node and a Shape Node. Max hides it, Maya shows it. It's how the instancing system works. I wish we had a way to visualise this in Max!

[glorybound]

I have tried the copy/paste script, but it wasn't working for the lights target.

[joconnell]

Ah - that could be a bit of a pain in the arse since a light and it's target are two separate nodes in 3dsmax.

[glorybound]

Yes, that was my dilemma

Ah - that could be a bit of a pain in the arse since a light and it's target are two separate nodes in 3dsmax.

[WimOos]

make your lights not target lights and then run the script?

[Dave_Wortley]

The .Target property is from the 'Transform' Node not the 'Shape' Node. Technically what is does is assigns a lookat Transform Controller to the main object.

You can give any object you like a Target just by saying $Box001.target = $Box002

Thus it won't matter if you swap the light shape for another light shape, the target belongs to the transform node.

[gandhics]

The baseObject is like the Shape node from Maya, Max has a transform Object which has a baseObject, Maya has a Transform Node and a Shape Node. Max hides it, Maya shows it. It's how the instancing system works. I wish we had a way to visualise this in Max!

Oh... no.... please no... that's one of many thing why I do not like Maya.
What's worst? their name can be different!