Maxscript books?

[BrandonD]

You can learn quite a bit on the web and from picking apart other people's scripts. Bobo has a few MXS tutorials as well (www.scriptspot.com/bobo)

Alex Bicalho and Simon Feltman wrote a book covering MXS and the SDK. Do a search on amazon and I think you'll find it.

[markdc]

Mastering 3dsMax 4 has all the scripting text from the book above, plus it's updated for max4.

[Bobo]

Originally posted by chepe297
I am wondering if there are any books which teaches you MaxScript? If so, can you please provide me with the book name and the author. Thank-you all.


Since there are not many MXS books out there,
you should also take a look at the MAXScript Help
shipping with the free 5.1 update.

It features around 20 "How To" tutorials (the same as in max 5.0 but a couple of typos and bugs have been fixed) showing you how and WHY to do certain things.
As Brabdon said, the rest is self-teaching by dissecting other people's scripts. That's how we all learned it. It works ;)

[Skyraider3D]

I learned MAXScripting with these three things:

- MAXScript help
- http://www.origamy.com.br/max/English
- http://www.scriptspot.com/bobo/mxs2/mxs_tut/lesson01.html

And occasionally peeking in other people's scripts from scriptspot.com ;)


Mr. Bobo, many thanks for your tutorial!!! :thumbsup:

[MFreywald]

On the one script I wrote, I got immense help by posting the script and my problem in Discreets forum under Maxscript. Swami then looked it over, corrected the mistakes (practicly rewrote it since it was so bad :P ), documented all his changes and sent me an email describing where I went wrong in certain areas. I highly suggest you have at least SOME background in programming. Even if it's just self-taught. I learned C, BASIC and assembly back on my Atari comps long long ago. Maxscript is pretty close to programming in C using pointer members and structs. And like suggested your best resource is the help that's included and looking through other peoples scripts.

[erilaz]

Yeah, Swami and Bobo rock the Kasbah. They are the scripting kings! :bowdown:

[chepe297]

BrandonD - Thanks for your help. Yeah! I saw that book too, but unforunately it's out of print.

brian_dlm - Really! "Mastering 3DS MAX 4" has all the scripts in the book by Alex Bicalho and Simon Feltman. That's great! (since that book is out of print)

Bobo - Thanks for the piece of advice. Unfortunately I don't have 3DS MAX 5 only 3DS MAX 4. So a maxscript manual come with 3DS MAX 4 now? That's good! I always have a hard time reading the help files from the monitor.

Skyraider3D - Thanks for your help and the links.

MFreywald - Thanks for the advice, but don't worry. I just finished my computer science degree. Have 4 years of programming experience in C and Java. Thanks for your help. :)

erilaz - I am sure they are! :thumbsup:

[Bobo]

Originally posted by chepe297

Bobo - Thanks for the piece of advice. Unfortunately I don't have 3DS MAX 5 only 3DS MAX 4. So a maxscript manual come with 3DS MAX 4 now? That's good! I always have a hard time reading the help files from the monitor.



No, the "How To"s are part of the Online Help.
Yes, you can have them by downloading
ftp://ftp1.discreet.com/web/support/3dstudio/3dsmax51_Maxscript_Ref.exe

They should be largely compatible with max 4 as most of them were written for VIZ4. If the Help says a tutorial is not compatible with VIZ4, it means it is Max 5 only. I think there is only one using new Morpher access that will not run in Max 4.

[MFreywald]

Well, then hell! you should be able to jump right in no prob. Best way I found to reference online help like the maxscript help, Is to just look up the functions I'm looking to use as I start typing em in. Obviously, you first write your psuedo-code then start writing the blocks of code for each psuedo-block. But I fully understand about reading manuals off the monitor. I too prefer to have 2-3 books open in my lap and 3 or 4 books waiting for me at my feet :P Also finding a script at scriptspot that is similar or somewhat the same idea your looking to do and dissecting it will help alot. Did for me. :)

[chepe297]

Bobo - Cool! Thanks for the info.

MFreywald - Yeah! I agree! Thanks.

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