yourpalmark » 3ds Max

Deja Vu – Another Gigantic Multimedia Acquisition

Mark — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 07:29:04 +0000

First, it was the world of web and print with Adobe and Macromedia joining forces, and now its the world of 3D. Autodesk officially announced the acquisition of Alias today. The two giants in 3D graphics are Alias Maya and Autodesk 3dsmax and with this announcement, Autodesk becomes the definitive leader no matter which software package you choose. With no mention of either software being discontinued or merged in the near future, it leads to more speculation on the future of multimedia. For several years, Maya has been the choice for films and television, whereas 3dsmax has been the game companies’ choice. With this new acquisition, it looks as though Autodesk has solidified their grasp on both industries. The next few years will be very interesting with regard to multimedia as a whole. Its extremely exciting and nerve-wracking to think of what Adobe and Macromedia have in mind for the future of their software, and now there is equal anticipation for the future of Autodesk’s and Alias’s software.

To read the full press release of Autodesk’s acquisition of Alias, along with Q+As and more, follow this link: Autodesk and Alias.

I’m in Pixel Magazine !!!

Mark — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 08:37:07 +0000

I recently got my copy of the September 2004 issue of Pixel Magazine, where I was voted one of the top maxscript developers in the world!
What a great feeling, if you want to check out the interview online, along with some other great developers’ interviews, follow this link.

Buckyball 1.00

Mark — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 07:45:25 +0000

Here’s another script I wrote that I’ve been using at my job for some of the medical animations we’ve been working on. It was taking WAY too long to manually go through and create a model like the one above, so I automated the process.

Description:
The user can create buckyballs (geometric shapes of carbon atoms consisting of 12 pentagons and a varying amount and arrangement of hexagons), other fullerenes, radiolarians, soccer balls (european footballs), or any number of other interesting geometric shapes. Cancel out of the Chamfer floater to create other fun shapes with the vertexes and edges that get selected on the base geosphere. Send pics if you create anything you’re proud of with this script.

Installation:
- Unzip buckyball.zip
- From the MaxScript panel, run buckyball.mzp

Directions:
After installation, from the MaxScript panel, run buckyball.ms found in the $scripts\DigitalFlipbook folder.

Download Buckyball 1.00

Tracer 1.30

Mark — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 09:16:43 +0000

This is an updated version of the original Tracer Script written by Neil Blevins.
Thank you Neil for the permission to distribute this script.

Description:
The user draws any combination of top, front, right, bottom, back and left views of an object, scans in the pictures, and then this script will create the corresponding planes in your viewport with your pictures on them, allowing the user to use the reference photos as a guide for building their 3d model. For best results, make sure that all widths and heights correlate appropriately in your image editing software.

Updates:
v 1.30
- Added browse buttons next to source image editable fields.
- Added “Right”, “Bottom”, and “Back” as other optional views.
- Made the top/bottom planes orient according to their relation to the front/back and right/left views.
- Fixed a bug that would give an error message when trying to build a new template after deleting an existing one.
- Made “Hidden”, “Frozen”, “Renderable”, and “2-Sided” checkboxes write to a text file to keep the user’s most recent settings.
- Enabled/Disabled panel sets.
- Added “Flip Top/Bottom Image(s)” button in case the top and/or bottom image comes in 180 degrees off.

Installation:
- Unzip tracer.zip
- From the MaxScript panel, run tracer.mzp

Directions:
After installation, from the MaxScript panel, run tracer.ms found in the $scripts\DigitalFlipbook folder.

Download Tracer 1.30