ScriptSpot

Script

MeshManager

By Marco Brunetta · 2009-07-31

Version
0.5 BETA
Version requirement
3ds Max 2009
Date updated
2009-07-31
Votes
34
Description

MeshManager combines a powerful scene explorer with a mesh asset manager in order to simplify and speed up the process of creating and modifying a scene in 3D Studio MAX. This is a commercial script that is't still in the beta stage. For a similar script oriented towards materials, check out MatManager . 

 

MAIN FEATURES

>SCENE EXPLORER<

The SCENE OBJECTS entry lists every object in the scene along with some additional info and updates automatically. It can be used both to check parameters or to quickly select the item. Depending on you needs it can list the items alphabetically, by type (geometry, shape, light etc), or by layer and it can optionally display the scene hierarchy. The item can be easily selected, hidden, frozen, isolated, etc.

Besides purely exploring and selecting the item, the scene explorer also allows direct access to some of the object's properties, so you can:

- Send the object's material to the Material Editor or copy it to another object, either by dragging into the scene or directly to an entry in MeshManager

- Change the object's layer

- Check the object's polycount (very useful when trying to reduce the polycount on heavy scenes)

- Check the object's modifiers, remove them, or copy them into other objects.

Finally there is also a SELECTED OBJECTS entry that displays the items in the current selection

 

>ASSET MANAGEMENT< 

MeshManager gives you the ability to store any scene object (or collection of objects) in custom libraries, created and managed by you. Stored items are displayed whenever MeshManager is launched and can easily added to the scene or even modified.

Besides just storing the item you can also add tags and a description to it. Tags can be used for searching, and the description is displayed as a tooltip for the item.

>ITEM PREVIEWS<

The script can display a preview of both scene items and stored items in the preview panel along with some info on the selected item. Right clicking the preview image will display some options for it, like the preview size. You can also double click an object library to display all the stored previews on the preview panel.

 

>ITEM SEARCH<

The search bar at the top of the panel can be used to search meshes both in the scene items and the stored items. The search also consider the tags assigned to stored meshes.

 

Additional Info

-This is mostly a test run of the script to try to weed out as many bugs as possible. This means that THERE ARE still bugs and many features are still not complete or not yet implemented. In other words, use at your own risk!

-Because of some remaining issues in the .NET code the script is only fully compatible with 3d Studio 2009 and 2010. However it will also run on MAX 9 and 2008, but it will give an error when trying to store a mesh (the scene explorer should work fine... I hope). I'm working on a version compatible with MAX 9 and up.

-The previews for scene items are disabled by default but can be activated by right clicking the preview square. When it's active, you will notice a quick flash on the viewport when selecting the item, which is the preview being generated. So far I have found no better way of doing this... If it annoys you just disable it again.

-For the time being there is no help file for MeshManager, however most of the features should be pretty self explanatory, most of the commands can be accessed by right clicking or double clicking on an item. Some of the items can also be drag and dropped, like stored objects, materials and modifiers. Feel free to experiment, if you feel that something in the interface is not clear enough or that you should be able to do something that you can't just let me know.

- Use the Create Library option under "New" to generate a library from meshes you already have stored (like an Archmodels collection). It's still a bic basic but it works. 

-Since this is a demo version, the features are limited in the following way:

-The Scene Explorer only displays up to 30 items.

-Only 5 custom libraries can be created and only 5 items per library 

As always I can be reached in my email mbrunetta@gmail.com for comments/suggestions/bugs or right here.

Videos
Attachments

Tags: manager, scene, asset tracking, mesh, MeshManager, managment, asset managment

Comments (6)

"neat tool. Testing it on 30

Marco Brunetta · 2009-08-01

"neat tool. Testing it on 30 objects is not much of a test. It would be valuable to test this on a scene with 30,000 objects and 10,000,000 polygons."

Fair enough, here's a video of me working on a scene with 2500 objects on my old 1Gig single core PC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH8f4lKdbFc

For the most part the script works nicely, but there is a small pause when adding or removing large sets of objects from the scene. I'm still working on a few optimizations so there's a change that future versions might be even faster.


"now I waiting for max 9 ver to be ready!"

Like I said on the description, I plan to make the script compatible with MAX 9 in the future, just have to iron out a few quirks.

fajar · 2009-08-01

ooo....now I know!

trick · 2009-08-01

I really doubt there are much people around the world using legal Max versions below v9, since Autodesk only supports the 2 previous versions. This means that v9 is not actively supported anymore. In production environments this is important and 90% of the real plugin developers are going with the same policy. If you are under subscription (and many productive users are) you are ONLY allowed to use 2 versions back !!! Investing time in making plugins compatible with previous versions, for people that probably don't have the money to upgrade, will consequently give little return.

fajar · 2009-08-01

One question? why now maxscripter writte their own script using Max 2009-2010!? if they want to to make their script for sell, why they not using the lower max to accompolish that! like max 8, so they can wide their script selling scope! so many people arround the world is still using max 7 or 8 cause they still love so it much, not to mention the autodesk 3dsMax now couse much trouble, need more resource and not stable enough comparing to earlier ver.

Hay dont get me wrong it's just question! would ya!
Your script is just good as I predict(I've seen it in youtube.com before)and I already tried too,now I waiting for max 9 ver to be ready! hehehe..script tester!

thx

jonahhawk · 2009-08-01

neat tool. Testing it on 30 objects is not much of a test. It would be valuable to test this on a scene with 30,000 objects and 10,000,000 polygons.

fajar · 2009-08-01

First!