I have an undulating terain model that I have imported from AutoCAd. I have a whole series of ‘proxy’ trees, with their pivots in their middles and at their lowest point. How do I easily move them all down so that they hit the terrain? ‘Align’ doesn’t work well in this case.
(I have about 300 or so and doing them one at a time by eye is a pain - I am sure this is simple.)
Scatter?
my treesa are already made though - how do I ‘align’ them all quickly?
might be a way to script it, but your guess is as good as mine
i’d just move snap at this point…
mmmm - I really thought this would be a piece of piss.
:?
www.itoosoft.com free stuff, glue?
I would say that this might help alot
http://www.jimjagger.com/JPages/JJTools/Tools\_JJToolsV7.htm
Look at Quick Align v2.0
daforce- does that work with vray proxies?
Glue is the way to go! Coooooool! Nice one dude! 
:lol: 
Next thing - I have a series of cars that need the same thing doing to them. Problem with a car is that all wheels need to touch the terrain so they need to be angled properly - any ideas on how to do this?
jacksc02 & tricky:
No idea
i find that a certain amount of time should always be spent on trying to resarch a new way to do things. but after the time is up one should just rool up their sleeves and do it manually. sure it would take time but you might get it done in less time than it took to find the answer
Da-elf: I agree, but I’m wearing a t-shirt - what must I do?
basically you have a bunch of trees you want to place on an undulating landscape? just move them up and down in z axis
Tricky,
Group the car if is not currently one object. Then drop it using the Glue plugin…make sure you click on “follow normal surface”. Then adjust manually if necessary.
If you group each car and then select them all, you should be able to drop them all at once.
Glue is a wicked plugin…
ok i have just been trying out Glue with Vray Proxies.
It works really well, all you have to watch out for is the origin point of the proxies, you just have to make sure it is at the base of the object and not somewhere off in space.
you still cant scatter proxies, but im trying to find a work around for that
Here is a little image to show my findings.
Well u know max comes with that little thingy, the advanced painter. The thing is u just need to activate it. It will let u paint on the surface with a number of objects -including vray proxies- of your choice. You can create a button for it via customize menu. It shares the familiar brush workflow which is in all max since v 7 i think.
Cars are a different story because if u want to simulate them properly, u have to struggle with vehicle dynamics. Well i tested Vehicle simulator - a plugin for max-, but IMHO it was impossible to control. Reelmotion was a cute program which used to work quite well, but it´s not avaliable anymore. :roll: .We always ended animating them by hand…
you CAN scatter proxies. I created a whole thread about it earlier. dont have time to search right now though. Pick up the scatter plugin at www.plugins.de