ScriptSpot

Script

Not Anonther Bitmap Path Checker

By Marco Brunetta · 2008-03-11

Version
BETA 3
Version requirement
Tested under 3D Studio MAX 9.0 32bits
Date updated
2008-03-10
Votes
13
Description

You know when you leave an animation test rendering at night so that you can see what the camera work looks like, and then the next morning you find that the scene had a bitmap with a bad path and nothing happened?

Rise your hand if that has ever happened to you!! How many times have you wished there was a way to avoid this?? WELL NOW THERE IS!!!

END OF SALES PITCH

Anyways, with this script, MAX will check the objects in the scene whenever you hit render. Any object with a "bad" material (that is a material with a bitmap that has an invalid path) will have the material stripped and replaced with a new standard material (the kind that the Material Editor has by default).

The render will then continue normally and no errors will pop up.
Once the render is done the script will return all the "bad" materials to their corresponding object and a list will pop up displaying the names of the objects that had bad materials. Double clicking a name on the list will select that object so you can fix the material if so desired. If there was no "bad" material then nothing will happen.

Additional Info

The script is NOT a macroscript so you can either run it manually on each session or put it in the scripts folder to be run by max on start-up each time. It might be a good idea to make into a render effect or something like that... I will look into it later.

Also: this script is to be considered BETA since it has not yet been sufficiently tested. Feel free to report any error or suggest changes.

USE AT YOUR OWN RISK

Original idea by Paul Jones.

Attachments

Tags: render, Material, missing maps, find, materials, render-time, maps, find maps, find missing maps

Comments (10)

Marco Brunetta · 2008-08-18

In order for the script to work properly when doing a network render the callbacks it uses are persistent. In a nutshell this means that once the script is run it "stays" on the file. I never intended for this to be an actual tool so I never came up with a way of removing it.

I've attached a small script that will remove the callbacks for you when run. I'm sorry for the inconvenience. If you still have problems you can look me up in MSN at kit_brunetta@hotmail.com

Attachments

judderman · 2008-08-18

Is it possible that your script changes something in the file? I've opened the file on another machine that I didn't use your script and it too is doing the same thing - after rendering, the window pops up and says vray proxies have bad materials, but when I import them they do have the correct materials.

judderman · 2008-08-18

How can I remove your script? I've reinstalled max and it's still there?! I've cleaned out the folder. I'm literally at my wits end, the script is screwing up my vray proxies and replacing them with blank textures, i might kill myself!!!

michaeljlogin · 2008-08-10

cool

Marco Brunetta · 2008-03-12

Fixed, it should work properly now even when doing a net render.

Marco Brunetta · 2008-03-11

It has come to my attention that since the #preRender event does not work when doing a NetRender this script would probably not work with Backburner. I think I have a solution tough... stay tuned!
As a workaround, having the script load automatically on each render node might do the trick.

Marco Brunetta · 2008-03-11

Now there is... sorry, first time uploading =P

MarTroYx · 2008-03-11

Ho! sorry , I see it now :-P

MarTroYx · 2008-03-11

Thank! that seam useful but there's no download link ??

michaeljlogin · 2008-08-10

what I do is make a test render, first and check that before I do an overnight render. I have done renders lasting over 24 hours. large format 640x480. ok, so I usually set the frames to skip 30 frames and render one, so a long animation turns into like 15 frames, each one spaced apart, and that's my test. once it plays back well and I like the look, i will set it to render overnight. Your error should not happen if you do an .avi not a tga or .bmp or .jpg and of course test it the way I described.