Free texture library

A new depot for free photo textures is available at Texturelib.com.

Bike Chains

A script by Elton Petruz for rigging bike chains.

3ds Max users survey pre-results

Autodesk is calling Max users to participate in a survey to help guide future 3ds Max development. Meanwhile in initial results Autodesk see obvious red flag for the viewport, and only this results from the survey have been posted.

Superflow Elements

Superflow Elements creates linked hierarchy from selected objects and align all pivots to the first object. That simple chain setup give you a freedom to play with and create motion graphics, abstract art and visual fx.

When I wrote the first version of this script for Ian Clemmer about an year ago, he not share too much about his purpose, but at the beginning of October he release series of tutorials that show what we can do with this script.

All programing part on the script is main. I improve the script and the new version 1.1 is out. Meanwhile I work on the next version 1.2 which will include spline rig for real time spline animation. The next version is almost ready and should be online very soon.

Now Ian work on new video tutorial where to show the new possibilities of the last version 1.1. For details, news and updates check out frequently at ScriptSpot.

Automatize Weld Vertices

Snippet code for quick welding vertices on multiple poly or mesh objects, that I post as reply to that forum thread.

-- for editable poly
for obj in selection do ( -- loop through selected objects
    obj.weldThreshold = 8.0 -- set weld threshold value
    allVerts = #{1..(polyop.getNumVerts obj)} -- get all verts list
    polyop.weldVertsByThreshold obj allVerts -- Weld
)

-- for editable mesh
for obj in selection do ( -- loop through selected objects
    thresh = 4.5 -- weld threshold
    allVerts = #{1..(obj.numVerts)} -- get all verts list
    meshop.weldVertsByThreshold obj allVerts thresh -- Weld
)

Six ways to create condensation 2

Part 2 of Cristian Pop's tutorial is now online.

Here he show another 3 methods to create water drop effect using thinkingParticles, Max 2011's new Object Paint and fR Wet shader.

Link to Part 1.

Railclone released

Itoo Software has finally released its plugin for parametric modeling based on custom geometry parts. Railclone lets you to build complex structures using included set of primitives or any geometry from the scene. RailClone Lite, a free version of the plugin is available for download.

3ds Max survey

Autodesk is calling Max users to participate in a survey to help guide future 3DS Max development.

Pixeled

A script (for 3ds Max 9 or higher) by Andrew Dour for converting GIF's bitmaps to mosaic of 3d cubes. Version 2 come also as win32 application which generate OBJ mesh.

Batzal Ghost MR shader goes free

Batzal Software's Ghost shader for creating layered transparency effects is now available for free. The Mental Ray shader allows you to fade out objects or particles into the background in one render pass, while kept reflection and shadows behind transparent objects.

6 ways to create condensation effect

Tutorial (part 1) by Cristian Pop on creating condensation effects in 3DS Max. Now shows his first 3 methods - using Scatter, PArray and ParticleFlow.

Babel3D online 3D file translation

Babel3D is an online translation service from the creators of 3DPaintBrush. Input formats are Autodesk 3DS, DXF, DWG, Rhino 3DM, SketchUp SKP, STEP, IGES or OBJ file. These files can be translated into 3DS, OBJ and XAML 3D formats. Babel3D also allows you to convert DXF and DWG files to 2D PDF format.

3ds Max 2011 Service Pack 1

Autodesk has released a service pack for 3ds Max 2011 and 3ds Max Design 2011, includes fixes for over 15 issues.

As I see in the readme.pdf - "Put Material To Scene now works in the Compact Material Editor (CME) with copied materials". If that's true, maybe my last script "Update Scene Materials" (I was released in previous post) no longer needed for a single material update, but if you like to automatize putting many materials from library to scene, it still will can come in handy.

Update Scene Materials in 3ds Max 2011

I found user request binds to some 3ds Max 2011 issue with Compact Material Editor and Put Material To Scene. The issue: The Material Editor's "Put Material to Scene" button no longer works in 3ds Max 2011 (the scene not updated).



Official solution for this issue suggest to use "Assign Material to Selection" button and to choose "Replace It" option when "Assigning Material" dialog appears. That's a very slow, time consuming solution for scenes where need to update many materials.

So I understand the user who search for script to automatize this task especially when intended to update quickly the scene from material library (.mat file). And I wrote a macro script (you can get it from my web site) to serve as fix for this issue.

I need to say that I'm still work with 3ds Max 2009. That mean I can't test it myself, but as the Max functions in the code are fine, there is no reason to worry if the script will work on Max 2011, but just to be sure, I'll ask (soon) a friend of mine to check it out on his Max 2011.

3D head scan

Lee Perry-Smith has released 3D head scan for free download (read the license though), available in .obj and ZBrush formats.

Texture painting with Viewport Canvas in Max 2011

Tutorial for beginners by Antti Lehtinen about texturing in 3ds Max 2011 using Viewport Canvas.