CGTALK MAXSCRIPT CHALLENGE - Topics and Suggestions

Motion stack instead of Motion Panel!Like Mod stack...

A "Make Something Cool" button! We really need one of those! I've heard that in Maya and XSI, there's like one button you push, and VIOLA~! You have something cool! Kinda like that MR button called, "Make Pretty"

I would dearly love to have a tool to slice or trim Polies using other Polyies as a the cutting edge. even if the polies don't intersect, the tool would trim on the projected intersection.

A simpler tool would be to align the Slice plane to a normal.

I'm not a scripter and rely heavily on those gifted as such. I wish I had more to give.

I look forward to your ideas/comments.

jonah

An electricity/lightning bolt generator, with animatable end points and lots of controls for speed, size, color, forks, etc.

Kind of like this: http://digimation.com/software/asp/...7&category_id=1

I can think of a few different ways to do this, so the results should be nicely varied.

I'd like to see someone make a nuclear sub burst out of the water, anyone seen that on down persicope?

Just another idea ..

(l) SNOW/RAIN STORM
A script to create an animated snowstorm or rain effect in a scene eg. using pflow. Could have settings for intensity, wind direction, wind force / random windbursts.

(m) SPECIAL DISPLACEMENT
A script for fun to run through a b/w bitmap and randomly (or in eg. jumps of say 10 pixels on the bitmap) create a geometry object (eg. a box) for each pixel eg. with a height or other setting based on the "blackness" of the given pixel (eg. white resulting in tall boxes and grey in smaller boxes).

(n) WAVES
A script to create foam on top of waves, eg. combining the wave modifier with pflow, or some other method.

Have todays Dilbert load as the start up screen. Or just random images from a folder. Easy one I know but it would be fun.

Just letting you know the new challenge will be up in a few hours.

How about a maxscript that utilised Max 7's editable poly GrowSelect function, and used an incremental setMapFace operation to allow creeping textures.

I only ask as i could really use one!!

I vote for these kinds of tools as well... maybe something, that simplifies ocean-animation in general, like a plane-mesh with a distance-dependant density, and showing only faces visible in the camera frustrum. And of course something for creating foam, white caps (though that would probably have to be a plug-in, rather than a script) and maybe particle flow splashes. I know, Dreamscape offers these, but I guess it should be possible to script.

Furtermore, I'd like to see some scripts making it easier to create natural environments, like scripts for tree-placement, grass creation and animation, especially keeping an eye on polygon count (so mostly using textured planes).

The new challenge will be up in a few hours (had a late film night!)

I'm noticing a severe lack of attendence in the maxscript challenges. What do we need to do to make them work for you?

erilaz,

I am too slow to solve the challange in my lunch time, so please extend my lunchtime or make me faster

Still like/love to "think" about the challanges, ie the idea of generating textures with maxscript.

Maybe "challange" is a difficult approach as , - I can only speak for myself -, many tasks at work are challenges.

Georg

I scripted a tool to do something like that a couple of weeks ago while at work... will post it up when I got a mo

Hi Erilaz,


Well it has been Siggraph week so I imagine a lot of people have been busy into the lead-up to that.
I also think that some of the challenges so far have maybe been a little too in depth for a week for the normal full time employee of a 3d sweatshop. Maybe there should be two categories, a month task and a weekly task.
The weekly task would be more basic scripts, like useful functions:

select duplicate faces,
deselect invisible edges,
select spline segments that are zero length or even as stated above,
align slice plane to selected faces -- i have one, download it here jonahhawk
explode elements (and many other things that were in footools once!)

or basic utilities:
coffee table script (challenge no. 1)
rename all bitmap paths

Then the monthkly taks could be something a little more full on like the footprints task,

a material converter,
project manager (to manage scene resources),
storyboard editor,
and some of the things that have already been suggested.

I'm just thinking this might help younger scripters to learn a bit more rather than feeling a bit put off by more advanced scripters.

Anyway, keep up the good work.

cheers,

Josh.