Hot Knife Digital Media

Found myself heading over to Paul Neale’s great site for some knowledge on Weak referencing in 3ds Max the other day.
http://paulneale.com/tutorials/Scripting/weakReferences/weakReferences.htm

This solved a few problems I was having, thanks, and led me to dip my toe further into MaxScript with the result of a simple modifer that can be dropped onto a spline control object – you can then select other spline control objects that you wish to store positional, rotational data for – hitting the “>” button will instance the modifier across the control objects.

You can then hit the Gettr button to store their transforms….double clicking on the list will apply the stored tranform. Let me know if it works for you !!

I’ve added a Blend pose slider which has a checkbox next to it – enabling the checkbox blends the pose from the current position in space. Leaving it off blends the position to and from a zero position.

Script is here DOWNLOAD

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This is a research piece in learning Maxscript, with the emphassis on learning. Basically it creates a web-like structure that can be used as the underlying bone system for a character’s mouth. Pressing ‘Create Points’ will create a layout of Helper points that can be placed around the characters face. At the moment movement is symetrical with only the right hand side being adjustable. These will act as guides for the bone and control objects, dictating their placement and direction of movement. The original helper points can be moved and rotated and pressing ‘Move Bones’ will align the bones and Controls to their new position.

On the red helper objects is an Attribute holder which holds the reaction value to the Control objects, of which there can be several levels as more than one Control object can effect a point. Once you are happy with the setup press delete and the orignal Helpers will be deleted. A selection set is also created of all the useable bones to aid in skinning.

The idea is to expose the under lying wiring of the rig to the user by placing it on the viewport nodes for ease of use and also to enable them to be animated.

I’ve updated the script 10/08/09. Now the right hand red nodes control the amount of movement they inherit from the control objects and it no longer crashes upon loading. Also I’ve created a Modifier which will store the position of the control objects – allowing you to store poses. Available here. Again this is work in progress and I still need to add stuff so keep watching.

Download here.

Things to do are :-

Add rotatation for the lips.
Add a Jaw control.
Add a move button for the base nodes.
Add eyes and nose Bones and controls.
Add the Bones into a Selection  for ease of skinning.

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