learning maxscript

[neokyubi]

hi guys,
i've decided to take a peek on maxscript. is there any literature you can recommend? Is it necessary to buy any books? (if so, which books?) Or do you find the max helpfile good enough to get an in depth scope of possibilitys and ideas on how to solve problems?

thanks in advance

[Mr. Bluesummers-3DT]

Oh god no; please don't buy any books. None of them are any good.

The best place to start is with the documentation. Maxscript has pretty good tutorials in the documentation, and I've always found it valuable to learn based on experience. Any specific project in mind?

[liquidbear]

wat can max script actually do ?
I hear people talk about it and i still dont get its potential

[Mr. Bluesummers-3DT]

Maxscript...is a beautiful and ugly thing. Almost everything in 3dsMax is exposed to the scripting language, allowing you to automate 99% of 3dsMax operations. For example, suppose your team is making a post-apocalyptic warzone, and they need to do some "melty-damage" to their buildings. You can script something up that'll procedurally model in damage to all of those objects- saving dozens of man-hours. Or you could write a new tool that de-triangulates a mesh into quads to facilitate cross-platform Import/Export. Or you could...[blah blah blah].

What makes it ugly is that the final 1% that isn't part of the language is pretty critical. Things like window control are notably missing, and too often some things just don't work. For example, the edge-to-poly and vertex-to-edge selection tools in the Edit UVW tool don't work properly, which can halt a project in it's tracks.

Maxscript is an example of a clumsy, often broken, and poorly supported scripting language. However, within the context of such a powerful program (3dsMax) it's a very useful tool.

[liquidbear]

cool i have to look into that now cause im starting a short batman fan film and some of the stuff u said sounds usefull

[Mr. Bluesummers-3DT]

Just remember that sometimes it's faster to take the stairs than the elevator.

[liquidbear]

i know lol

[neokyubi]

i want to create a script which builds me finished, uvw'd, textured, rigged,animated models PLUS rendering, so its a ALL in ONE button click ahah how cool would that be haha jk jk

well.. i dont have anything in mind yet, but something like polyboost would be interesting to do I will have to find some problems to solve first... maybe somebody does have some minor problems/ideas for me to try scripting?

[Nukie]

I find maxscript hard to do, but that might be because I'm not a programmer. I'm already glad I can program xhtml and css, but it pretty much ends there. Some basic php maybe, and some basic ActionScript, and thats it.

Dived into Maxscript once. I do must say I found it looks a lot like ActionScript, which makes it a bit easier. Thing is tho, if I have programmed something, I cant remember how I did it and so kinda have to start all over again.

So, if you ever go and start maxscript, I wish you more luch than I had with it.

[zortech]

I got myself a copy of that book, ages ago...and I can't really complain about it. The maxScript reference is very good and covers all the important topics, however I find it not the easiest way to learn MXS. As the name says, it's a reference, not a tutorial. But that depends on your previous programming experience.

Well if you want to learn MXS, you should be able to pick something to start with.

[poopipe]

Originally Posted by neokyubi

i want to create a script which builds me finished, uvw'd, textured, rigged,animated models PLUS rendering, so its a ALL in ONE button click ahah how cool would that be haha jk jk

well.. i dont have anything in mind yet, but something like polyboost would be interesting to do I will have to find some problems to solve first... maybe somebody does have some minor problems/ideas for me to try scripting?

if you use z-brush a lot you might find it useful to write some obj import/export scripts - it's less important on max2009 since they replaced the basic obj plugins but something that exports each separate object in your scene to a separate obj file would be useful and then a companion script that imports a folder full of obj files into your scene.

I wrote a whole bunch of that sort of thing for a project a while back - didn't take long to do but saved days of work over the course of a month or two since i was dealing with 60 or 70 files at a time