Blog for Thomas Shaw at GarageGames.com

A script to setup character nodes in MAXscript

Thomas Shaw — 2007-07-09T02:00:11+00:00

So, the other day, I was helping an innocent beginner setup their character hierarchy in MAX. I have done this before and always see that same issues and questions. Being an inquisitive fellow, I thought, "I bet I could automate this process somehow". I realized that no matter how a person arranges their Character Studio Biped, the torque/biped setup and naming conventions are always the same, making it a perfect candidate for scripting!

Besides, I have always wanted to have a good reason to learn MAXscript.

It took me a couple days to figure it out, but it was fun to learn how to work it. I have to admit I kinda squealed like a little girl when I got this script to finally worked right.

THINGS IT DOES:

1. Creates the most basic, necessary nodes/dummys that the max2dts exporter and TGE needs for a character, EXCEPT for the "bounds" bounding box. I haven't figured out how to script the creation of a bounding box that will read the bipeds size and create an appropriate bounding box.

2. Moves the dummies to the generic body part they are supposed to be attached to for a standard bipedal humanoid figure. For example, the "mount0" node gets moved to the center of the right hand.

3. Parents the nodes, in a proper hierarchy, to the biped.

HOW TO USE THE SCRIPT:

1.Download the script here:
www.3drogue.com/downloads/TorkCharacterNodes.ms
You can save the script anywhere you want, but I put it in the scripts folder in the 3dsMAX9/scripts folder.

2. Have your character mesh and Biped arranged and skinned how you want them.

3. Run my script - You can do this by going to "Maxscript" on the main menu bar, then selecting "open script". Once it is open, hit ctrl-e to execute the command "evaluate all". That will run the script on your scene. You can also do "evaluate all" by going to "File"---> "evalaute all" in the script menu.

BUGS:
1. The "cam" and "eye" nodes will need to be moved to a proper location that fits your biped. For example, the "eye" node gets centered to the "bip01 head" bone. It should actually be slightly in front of the head, or where the eyes of your character are. The "cam" node as scripted, will probably be off in space somewhere behind your character.

2. No "bounds" bounding box is created. This is because I don't know how to script the creation and sizing of a bounding box based off the size of the biped.

That's all.

I might make one for vehicles next...

Anyway, maybe this will help some people.

Moved to TGEA

Thomas Shaw — 2007-03-01T17:58:19+00:00

I have never officially showed anything I have been working on in the engines in the whole 4 years I have been using them, (although, I have posted some screenshots in some of my posts in the forums) so I thought it was about time.

With the release of RC1 of TGEA, I decided to port a map I had been working on in TGE 1.5 over to TGEA. For my purposes - mainly showing off art resources - TGEA seems really stable.

I can't claim to fully understand the material system as yet, but it was fairly simple to add materials and mappings to my objects. I just copied a simple material setup from the included demo and plugged in my own settings.

Here's some shiny to look at:

Shiny is fun...

..although I need to figure some other sorts of materials. For example, shiny doesn't look so good on trees.

As for the terrain; I am currently using the legacy terrain, directly ported over from TGE1.5. I don't really have a need for giant Atlas terrains, and I like the ability to directly manipulate the legacy terrain.

Next I will be re-doing the rest of my characters to support the material system and adding "junk" to the environment so it looks lived in.

Wishfull thinking #2: Shapes on Terrains

Thomas Shaw — 2006-11-10T18:16:53+00:00

I always feel slightly guilty for posting things like this, since I am not able to create the described systems, but I get all excited over the idea, and can't stop myself. I post in hopes of inspiring others, who know way more about such things than I.

Placing objects on the terrain:

Just saw this old thread, www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=33267 and wanted to belch forth additional ideas:

Wouldn't it be cool if you could use the terrain editor interface - where you use that grid that slides over/"sticks" to the terrain - to also place objects?

Like, say, you wanted a bunch of trees through this one valley - just like in the terrain editor, you could use the texture slots gui, only have shapes there instead, and then draw those shapes onto the terrain.

That would be such a huge time saver in terms of production.

It seems like it might not be too hard to impliment... The gui is already there - the terrain editor interface. The technology is sort of already used by the "fxShape replicator"; although I know nothing about how that was implimented. The fxshape replicator does seem a little buggy sometimes...

At any rate, that would be such a huge time saver in terms of production.

I have a friend who used to work for Arena.net (GuildWars). One time he let me take a look at their level editor - it was very cool. It had something sort of like what I described above, as well as other neat tricks.

One thing it did that was also very cool was that you could create rules where the engine could automatically place objects according to the "type" of terrain in the level.

If there was a Torgue version I can imagine it would be a little bit like the terraform settings in the mission editor, only instead of adjusting where the textures are placed based on height, imagine shapes being placed instead of textures. You could have grasses at lower elevations, that slowly blend into a mix of grass and highplains trees, which in-turn, blend, as you go up, into various alpine flora and fauna.

Again, it seems like the code is halfway there in torque - take the terraform gui and code and mix it with the shape or foliage replicator (especially the settings for "allowed terrain") and you might have a start...

So ya, that's my thought for the day. Not entirely original, but, I think, it would be Ultra Handy (tm).

A scripting interface?

Thomas Shaw — 2006-10-03T19:03:04+00:00

Feeling inspired by Mark's Cutscene Creator blog post, I thought I would toss this idea out to people.

First of all, this is NOT something I know how to do at the moment; just something I am thinking about trying to get created or learn how to create myself. I am also interested in hearing from people about their own thoughts on how this could work, whether or not you would find something like this useful, and whether you see something here that will be particularly gnarly to figure out how to do.

I have been thinking alot about this topic lately.

As an artist, working mostly alone, it seems like alot of my time is spent on navigating folders/ fixing typos/fixing broken scripts etc. rather than doing art. For an Indy developer (or just a single person like myself), that is alot of "non-productive" time spent. Surely there must be a way to help manage scripting?

I have been imagining some sort of standalone application or TGE GUI to take the various navigational annoyances out of the types of scripting we do.

Since I work mainly with art and specifically characters, I thought up an interface like this:

Basically, it would just parse the various files that involve the characters; looking for certain words and putting whatever is to the right of the "=" in an editable box in the gui.

This way, you would only be able to edit info that is intended to be editable. For me, this is very helpfull because on cold dark nights when I am very tired, I tend to "edit" things I shouldn't... like actual code. Woops.

Also, when I am tired, I find myself going in loops of opening the wrong files in the wrong places, and all sort sof other goofy mistakes. This would help alot with that.

Everything in that pic is pretty self explanatary I think, except maybe the "Scan files for associated data.." check box.

That idea comes from me trying to imagine how to actually make this app usefull and work with the existing hierarchy of files and folders of TGE.

Since I would want to be able to edit all the relevant entries for a character, I would need to access several different files in the default TGE setup. So I thought maybe there would be a way to automatically scan files for data that is referenced to each other and load that data into the Character Manager editor. For example, I have my "rge_d" character loaded into the editor, it would be cool if you could automatically scan certain files for things that reference or are relevant to that player and then load that data into the appropriate slots in the Character editor.

I'm not sure of the "logic" that could be implimented to accomplish this... Would a simple search for keywords in the files be enough? But what would it do with keyword matches that didn't fit into any of the editors categories, as would probably be the case with different people's game builds? Maybe there would be a tab for "Misc" where it would list out the lines from the code that had hits that don't fit into any category.

At any rate, I think this would be a really cool resource, that could also be implemented for any scripting where you need to have access to several different files at once.