Naming Animations/Tracks

[gaggle]

I don't... understand.. I hear you on the naming thing, but I don't know how to relate to the concept of "an animation within MAX". There is only one timeslider. So the whole scene would be one animation.

Well that's where I'm coming from, clearly you're refering to another line of thinking. Could you please elaborate a bit?

[Sundance Kid]

yes, off course.

simplified problem:
i have to boxes,
box01 is rotating along the y-axis
box02 is scaling along all axis

when exporting using the *.w3d exporter i can import the scene directly into director, and by using very basic controllers i can manipulate the scene using lingo. now...

my programmer wants to control these two animations using lingo. he wants to access them by using there names (the animations own names, not the objects names). Alas, when directly exporting to the *.w3d filetype there names are the following:
box01-key
box02-key

my programmer wants me to name them accordingly:
box01-Yrotation
box02-xScale
box02-yScale
box02-zScale
(since box02 scales in three directions - three animations)

now, when accessing track view i am not able to doubble click the tracks containing animations and give them new names. (doubble click yRotation and change the name to "box01-YRotation") like I would be able to change the name of an object in 3ds max.(not in the trackview offcourse)

with this example it sounds stupid and useless to change the names, but in the real project there is a good reason for doing it. (read: extremely lazy programmer, because you can do it in Director itself).

now 3ds max wasn't written for this kind of "usage", the plugin that lets you export the scene is just an xtra, but still, it would be nice if one had the possibility the specifically name each element of an animation in max.

hope this explains it a bit more

thank you for all replies


regards
sk

[EricChadwick]

I haven't read the whole message, but perhaps you could use a Note Track on a controller, then add a note key to the track. Put whatever text you want in there. Programmer should be able to see the note key, and be able to see it as a child track of the controller.

We're using Note Tracks to export time- and context-sensitive data from Max to our real-time 3d software. Works great.

[Sundance Kid]

Thank you very much for the replies, alas it did not win me any more ground.

all animations still come out as "myModel-key".
maybe the director-peple can help me. there might be a trick i one appraches the problem from the other side.

... the quest continues ...

regards
sk

[gaggle]

It sounds like the problem lies with the exporter, that it truncates the data MAX is able to provide?

Is the plugin's source perhaps available? Or the makers of said plugin could be contacted and, using a bit of force if neccessary :), be convinced to update it so it can include useful data.

Or your programmers will simply have to bite the bullet and come up with a way around the limitations of the current plugin. They're all lazy by nature though, so I realise it can be tough convincing them to do anything not directly copy-paste'able :)

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