Category Archives: 3dsMax

Extra iRay tools for 3dsMax

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A helpful guy from autodesk showed me some useful tools for 3dsMax and nvidia iray. A special iray material , and a maxscript that allows you to access a lot of features hidden from the default render dialog

iRay material plugin

There is a sticky thread on the mental images forum which allows you to download the plugin from their ftp site.

It has a host of features.

  • 3 layers: Glossy Coating, Metallic Flakes, Glossy/Diffuse/Transparent Base
  • Backscattering (for realistic fabrics)
  • Metallic flakes (for great car paint)
  • Sub-surface scattering
  • Thin film coating
  • Spectral dispersion
  • Anisotropy on each layer
  • Emission (self-illuminance)
  • Displacement, bump, round corners, cutout

iRay manager script

There are a bunch of hidden features in iray that can be access using scripted commands. The iRay manager script was originally written by Artur Leao then later updated by Thorsten Hartmann. As a result we now have two slightly different version of the script, as both parties seem to be now publishing updates independently.

  1. Resources
  2. Interactivity Performance
  3. extended progressive Options
  4. FireFly Filtering (to remove 1 pixel hot spots)
  5. Matte Ground
  6. Background
  7. Clay Render
  8. Save/Load Options

You can download Artur Leao’s version from his blog.

Thorsten Hartmann version is available on his web page.

The nividea forum also hosts a thread on iRay Manager script.

iray dev Blog

Nvidea have a site dedicated to iRay at http://irayrender.com/

If you browse through the blog you can find the matte material for iray

Rigging eyes in 3dsMAX

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3dsMax script controllers are enormously powerful tools for creating custom character rigs. This tutorial will show you how to make a very simple eye rig in 3dsMax and introduce script controllers to make an animator GUI.

Setting up the scene

Continue reading →

Max Tips: UI Tweaks

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A couple of 3dsMax UI tweaks I use to make things a little slicker and quicker.

Fix view cube ‘drift’


The view cube‘s animated rotation feature can cause the scene to drift. You might notice that after clicking on a face of the cube the viewer says orthogonal when we’d expect it to say: left,or top, etc. When the view is slightly off axis, it can cause problems if I’m trying to animate or model accurately.

Also if I’m trying to work quickly waiting for the UI update is a pain so I like to turn this feature off.

  1. Right click on the view cube.
  2. Chose options and turn off use animated transitions when switching views.

Use the home button

The home button is useful for getting back to the same custom view. I find it useful to quickly return to the same point of view while I’m working on a particular feature.

To set a ‘home’ view:

Right click on the home button and pick > set current view as home.

3dsmax maxscript Mirror ball

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This maxScript generates a mirror ball. I wrote it for fun, as part of some project related RnD.

There are a few parameters for you to play with, and it’s a lot faster than building one by hand. But be warned things can get a little slow with a lot of mirrors. You can download it as part of my maxScript pack.

See here for installation instructions

Installing the Designimage Maxscript pack

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Tell me what you think

Sign up to my youtube channel for tutorials and my twitter feed for updates. I’m thinking of making the scriptpack only available if you subscribe to a mailing list. The scriptpack will remain free but I’d like setup a patreon for some new things I have in mind.

Tell me what you think in the comments below.

Download and unzip

The first thing to do is download the scriptpack from gumroad:

free scriptpack download

Donations not matter how small will help pay for bug fixes and updates. But just type 0 in the text box to download for free.

Automatic Installation

These maxScripts should install automatically using one of two methods. First open 3dsMax then either:

  • With Max open drag and drop the KenzorsScriptPack.mzp  file onto a max viewport
  • or from the 3dsMax menu bar pick MAXScript > Run and choose the KenzorsScriptPack.mzp file

If everything works you should see this message.

Manual Installation

Sometimes windows permissions can get in the way of the automatic install. However If the automatic installation fails for some reason, you can simply copy the files to the correct location manually. A .mzp file is simply a renamed .zip file. To install the scripts by hand you just have rename it and unzip it.

  1. Rename KenzorsScriptPack.mzp to KenzorsScriptPack.zip
  2. Unzip the files keeping the folder structure.
  3. Copy the KenzorsScripts folder and its contents to your 3dsMax ‘user scripts‘ directory.
  4. Copy the userMacros folder and its contents to your ‘userMacros‘ directory.
  5. Copy the userIcons folder and its contents to your ‘userIcons‘ directory.

You can check you ‘user paths‘ in max by going to the menubar.. .. Customise > Configure System Paths > select the ‘System’ tab > and checking the paths for  ‘Additional Macros’  ‘Additional Scripts’ and ‘Additional Icons’ You can also find paths by using the getDir comand in the the maxScript listener window like this.

getdir #userMacros
getdir #userIcons

Another tip is to use the shellLaunch command to open the windows folder. So this will open Windows Explorer at C:\Temp\SomeFolder (if it exists).

shellLaunch "explorer.exe" "c:\\temp\\somefolder"

This means you can open the userIcons folder directly using maxscript like this

shellLaunch "explorer.exe" "$userIcons"
shellLaunch "explorer.exe" (getdir #userIcons)

Running the scripts

The MaxScripts are run using my ‘Script Navigator’ utility or by simply navigating to the .ms file in 3dsmax Instructions and videos for these MaxScripts can be found on my maxScript page and on my youtube channel.

Further information

I’ll be posting updates to my profile on scriptspot For those of you that are interested the guys at scriptspot.com have written this post about maxScript it’s history and how to use it. http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/tutorials/script-installation-in-3ds-max

Autodesk

3ds max maxScript help

autodesk-3ds-max overview