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.
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!
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
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
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.
Awesome, thanks![quote=“kristianturner85, post:3, topic:48941, username:kristianturner85”]
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
[/quote]
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!
I have tried the copy/paste script, but it wasn’t working for the lights target.
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.
Yes, that was my dilemma :)[quote=“LeonidaVray, post:2, topic:48986, username:LeonidaVray”]
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.
[/quote]
make your lights not target lights and then run the script?
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.
Oh… no… please no… that’s one of many thing why I do not like Maya.
What’s worst? their name can be different!
Try this one…I’m not the one that wrote/made this, I think it was from scriptspot.
Used countless times, it has been an integral part of workflow for most jobs.
macroScript instancer
category:“Tools”
toolTip:“Instancer”
buttonText:“Instancer”
(
on isEnabled return (selection.count == 1)
on execute do try(instanceReplace selection[1] (pickObject message:“Pick instance source”))catch()
)