max tips & tricks

[dennis]

5. For anyone who ever does interiors, http://www.thesamplecentre.com has thousands of whole carpet tiles JPEGed ready to download.

splendid link! cheers

[gilicom]

Ever wonder why trim and extend in editble spline don't always work that well?
try them in front or right view (not user or perspective).

[jacksc02]

7 - Did you know that by default settings quasi monte carlo for primary bounce ( will render slower and more graynier image then if you turn up global QMC sampler subdivision to 4 (cleaner and faster). And making quasi for secondary bounce (exterrior) will make it render even faster, and even faster with global subdivisions to 4.

Morbid, can you explain this in a little more detail

[flipside]

7 - Did you know that by default settings quasi monte carlo for primary bounce ( will render slower and more graynier image then if you turn up global QMC sampler subdivision to 4 (cleaner and faster). And making quasi for secondary bounce (exterrior) will make it render even faster, and even faster with global subdivisions to 4.

Morbid, can you explain this in a little more detail

The reason is simple. Altough the GI calculations will take longer, the actual rendering will go faster because smoother GI means less work for the AA sampler. Same goes for glossies, sometimes increasing glossy subdivs actually decreases rendertimes.

It depends a lot on which image sampler you choose. (QMC or adapt subdiv).

[jacksc02]

ahhh i see now, i couldnt quite work out what morbid was getting at. Thanks for the clarification flipside!!

[Erik N]

Dynedain wrote:

If you have an object and your points all need to be in the same plane (like say a wall where the top face has gotten distorted and the points aren't all at the same height anymore) you can select all those points, and scale by 0% the dimension you want them aligned in. So in the case of this wall, select all the top faces, scale by 0% in the Z, and they will all be perfectly ligned up and ready to be put in the right Z location.

Is there an equivalent to this for an editable spline object? That is, is there any way of setting all the vertices of a spline to the same height in a given axis, including the bezier handles?

[dominiquelaksmana]

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Quote:
15 - attaching multiple heavy objects in 3ds max via editable mesh/poly will perform a memory leak which will force max to jump the memory to maximum then crash. (test is done by cloning 100 (100x100) spheres and attaching them all in one batch. While if you attach them one by one your memory will grow exponentially, but you will be able to attache an nth number of them then save, close max open max and continue. (maya can do this attachement with memory under 900mb)



That's true. But there is another trick about it. Just attach a few objects then type: -> gc() <- into the white script/command line in the left lower corner. This should clear the cache and memory should be free again.

well what i usualy did was set the undo level to "1" then after that attach and deselect.. this should clear the cache.

[muzzy]

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Quote:
15 - attaching multiple heavy objects in 3ds max via editable mesh/poly will perform a memory leak which will force max to jump the memory to maximum then crash. (test is done by cloning 100 (100x100) spheres and attaching them all in one batch. While if you attach them one by one your memory will grow exponentially, but you will be able to attache an nth number of them then save, close max open max and continue. (maya can do this attachement with memory under 900mb)



That's true. But there is another trick about it. Just attach a few objects then type: -> gc() <- into the white script/command line in the left lower corner. This should clear the cache and memory should be free again.

well what i usualy did was set the undo level to "1" then after that attach and deselect.. this should clear the cache.

Use editable poly for attaching , from my experience it is more stable than mesh.

[Dynedain]

Dynedain wrote:

If you have an object and your points all need to be in the same plane (like say a wall where the top face has gotten distorted and the points aren't all at the same height anymore) you can select all those points, and scale by 0% the dimension you want them aligned in. So in the case of this wall, select all the top faces, scale by 0% in the Z, and they will all be perfectly ligned up and ready to be put in the right Z location.

Is there an equivalent to this for an editable spline object? That is, is there any way of setting all the vertices of a spline to the same height in a given axis, including the bezier handles?

This does work for e.splines I believe. But you need to be in vertex mode. I don't think it will fix bezier handles though.

[gilicom]

Is there an equivalent to this for an editable spline object? That is, is there any way of setting all the vertices of a spline to the same height in a given axis, including the bezier handles?

open a new script and paste this into it (you can make a button out of it)
make sure you select a spline and you have no modifier on top it.
the script:

on isEnabled return
(
selection.count == 1 and \
(classof selection[1] == SplineShape or \
classof selection[1] == Line) \
and selection[1].modifiers.count == 0
)
on execute do
(
new_z = $.pos.z
for s = 1 to (numSplines $) do
(
for k = 1 to (numKnots $ s) do
(
knt = getKnotPoint $ s k
in_vec = getInVec $ s k
out_vec = getOutVec $ s k
knt.z = in_vec.z = out_vec.z = new_z
setInVec $ s k in_vec
setOutVec $ s k out_vec
setKnotPoint $ s k knt
)--end k loop
)--end s loop
updateshape $
)

[Erik N]

Thank you, gilicom, but it doesn't seem to work. I get a FileIn Exception call needs function or class got: true

[gilicom]

I'm sorry you have to add ) at the end (i fixed it).

[dejaVu]

Dynedain wrote:

If you have an object and your points all need to be in the same plane (like say a wall where the top face has gotten distorted and the points aren't all at the same height anymore) you can select all those points, and scale by 0% the dimension you want them aligned in. So in the case of this wall, select all the top faces, scale by 0% in the Z, and they will all be perfectly ligned up and ready to be put in the right Z location.

Is there an equivalent to this for an editable spline object? That is, is there any way of setting all the vertices of a spline to the same height in a given axis, including the bezier handles?

You might want to try adding an XForm modifier to do this instead of using Scale Transform.

This makes a difference when you try to apply modifiers like Extrude to the line. As Transforms (move, rotate & scale) are perform after Modifiers in 3ds max object dataflow, you will find that any subsequent modifiers you apply will not work properly on the Spline.

[Dynedain]

Dynedain wrote:

If you have an object and your points all need to be in the same plane (like say a wall where the top face has gotten distorted and the points aren't all at the same height anymore) you can select all those points, and scale by 0% the dimension you want them aligned in. So in the case of this wall, select all the top faces, scale by 0% in the Z, and they will all be perfectly ligned up and ready to be put in the right Z location.

Is there an equivalent to this for an editable spline object? That is, is there any way of setting all the vertices of a spline to the same height in a given axis, including the bezier handles?

You might want to try adding an XForm modifier to do this instead of using Scale Transform.

This makes a difference when you try to apply modifiers like Extrude to the line. As Transforms (move, rotate & scale) are perform after Modifiers in 3ds max object dataflow, you will find that any subsequent modifiers you apply will not work properly on the Spline.

Normally yes, but in this case, you are scaling the vertices of an object, not the object itself, so the scale isn't parametric and happens before modefiers instead of after

[Metin_7]

Re: max tips &amp; tricks

2. press ctrl + n will open a calculator that you can paste from (very usefull for sec = > frames count).gili

I've wanted for this for quite some time... didn't know it was there already, so I've been using the MaxScript Listener window... Thanks for the tip!

You can also use "r" in a value entry field, followed by the relative addition or subtraction. So if you've got a spinner with a value of 10 and you enter "r18" in it, the resulting value will be 28. And if you enter "r-6" in the field you will have 4. Don't know if this also works with "/" and "*".

Cheers,

Metin