Update: I was incorrect about this. If you pass a string to a mapped function it passes the entire string, not each character individually. I don’t know what made me thing it worked. I wish it did, though…
I just discovered that you can send a string to a mapped function in MaxScript. The mapped function treats the string as an array and very quickly processes each character in the string through the function. It’s great for quickly finding and changing characters in a string.
As part of my upcoming GDC talk I’m going to be talking about premier tools that have been written inside of Max. Along with the tools being developed at my employer I want to feature tools created by other Max tool developers. Early this week I wrote Andy of Lots Of Robots fame, Kees at Lumonix, and OrionFlame creator, Light. I’ve never spoken to Andy before, I’ve participated in online discussions with both Kees and Light and I’ve met Kees once, for about twenty minutes, at last year’s GDC.
Within minutes of sending out my emails I received responses from all three. They all offered support and access to their tools. For that I just want to say, “Thank you”. Please consider visiting the websites of these guys and purchasing their tools if they would benefit your pipeline.
Automatron Character Animation System
As soon as I get around to adding a Links section over on the right-side nav bar on this page I will be adding permanent links to those sites. The tools are amazing and deserve to be promoted heavily.
I’ve gotten this question a lot lately at work. We recently migrated to Max 9 and the artists are still getting used to the new features. The old standby Polygon Counter utility has been removed from Max 9. In it’s place the often under-utilized viewport statistics display has been reworked to perform better and provide information. To enable the viewport statistics the default key is “7″. When the statistics are visible they, by default, display the scene totals for polygon count, vertex count, and frames-per-second.
Obviously the default readout isn’t completely useful to everyone. This was the problem with the pre-Max 9 viewport statistics. The information provided wasn’t entirely useful or configurable. Luckily that has changed in 9. In the Customize\Viewport Configuration dialog there is a new tab, “Statistics”. The controls on that tab allow you to change the information the statistics display provides. You can enable/disable polygon counts, triangle counts, vertex counts, edge counts, and the frames-per-second readout. You can also set the display to show the scene total of those counts, the selection totals, or both the scene and selection totals.
The new system is a huge improvement over the old statistics system and the old Polygon Counter utility. It’s a great update and I’m happy Autodesk chose to update the viewport statistics instead of sticking with the Polygon Counter floating dialog.
