Color Animation Macro Script

This macroscript first came to my mind when I was trying to animate things in VIZ using MAXScript. I had lots of problems and had a hard time to overcome VIZ sub-object animation limits, and here's the first result: Color Animation Macro Script

Download it here (25K)

OBJECTIVE

The goal of this script is to animate material colors and opacity in VIZ 3

INSTALATION

Download this file and place it on the ui/macroscripts folder in VIZ 3.

This script is a MacroScript, and all MacroScripts need to be placed in the UI. Just right-click any toolbar and select Customize. Add two icons to any toolbar: Color_Anim and Render_Anim.

USER REFERENCE

This script is made of two parts: Color_Anim and Render_Anim. You'll see details of both here.

Color_Anim

Color_Anim creates and manages the material animations. It's through its UI that the animation should be done.

Just click on it to show its UI:

Its usage is quite simple and limited: all you need to do is:

  • Select the material you want to animate
  • Go to frame 0 if Animate is on or turn off Animate (important step!)
  • Click Add Tracks to create the animation
  • Turn on Animate, go to the desired frame and change the parameters in the script (you cannot animate the parameters through the Materials Editor, it doesn't work)
  • That's it!

If you want to dismiss the dialogue and come back later, no problem. Also, if you want to edit the values in the Track View, it's fine. You can even delete the object or the material and the script will work fine.

The dialogue gives you two more options:

  • Remove Tracks will remove all animation and will remove the material from the Track View.
  • Reset Anim will remove the animation, leaving the material color as is.

Track View

As mentioned before, the script adds a series of tracks in the Track View so you can adjust your animation.

Render_Anim

To render any animation made with Color_Anim you need to use Render_Anim. If you do not use it, the animation will be rendered with the data found on frame 0.

Render_Anim takes longer to render than the regular renderer, since it needs to process Shadow Maps and process geometry at every scene, but this is the price we pay for having animation.

Its usage is quite simple. Just click on it in the toolbar and its dialogue will appear:

Basically it allows you to select the image size and how many frames to render. Notice that while rendering an animation, it will always require it to be saved to disk.

If you ckick Configure, it'll show you the Render Scene dialogue, where you can configure render data like Anti-Aliasing, Shadows, etc. Once it's configured, Render_Anim will use this configuration to render the animation.

Even if you want to render a single test frame, you will need to use this script for it, or else, frame 0 data will be rendered.

Hope you like it!

LEGAL NOTICE


THIS SOFTWARE IS FREEWARE AND ITS FREELY AVAILABLE FOR ALL KINDS OF USAGE EXCEPT THAT IT IS NOT ALLOWED TO SELL IT IN ANY FORM, NOR GAIN MONEY FROM ITS DISTRIBUTION. IF YOU WISH SOMEONE TO HAVE IT JUST GIVE IT.

WARNING: I take no responsibility for ANY damage caused by use of this software.

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