Offline building in Max

I've begun working on a maxscript to do offline building.

So far I've got the UI built. I'm using Max6 and will test with Max7. The script does not yet build any primitives.

You can follow my progress here:
http://www.windyweather.net/wp/2006/12/01/second-life-max-primitive-ui/

This article talks about the approach, and some of the problems, your feedback or comments are appreciated. I'm a long-time max user and scripter, but new to SL. I don't want to go off on the wrong approach if I can help it.

You can download the script and try it out. Comments are welcome.

wwv

Yes, yes, yes! I was waiting for this. A few months ago I decided to pick up a 3ds Max introductory book and study it. I studied maybe 400 of its 800 or so pages. Kept detailed notes. I studied it thinking that I could perhaps use Max to enhance the texturing and lighting of my SL builds. But I never managed to use it The reason was that almost everything I made in SL involved quite a bit of torturing, and replicating those exact tortures in Max proved to be very difficult for me. Especially where torii were concerned. So I put Max on the side and hoped for an offline builder. So yeah, go go go! Good luck with it. I hope everything goes smoothly. I'll keep an eye on the above link and this thread and follow your progress.

Very cool, Windy. I'm not much of Max user myself (I'm a Mayan), but you have my thanks anyway. It's so great to see someone finally doing this. I'm sure many will be bowing to worship at your feet. There's no shortage of Max users in SL.

Sweet.

The stuff I have from Prim.Blender should be pretty complete, but feel free to hit my IM if you need any help. And nice work, too.

This sounds very promising! Keep up the good work. I will pay attention to this thread in the future, and appreciate the effort you put into this!

I've got the "Simple Object Prim" converted to maxscript and it's beginning to limp.
But it crashes max.

It's about 2300 lines, and this is just the primitive object. This does not include the eventual utility that will export the primitives.

Transliteration from Python to Maxscript is a pain. Almost every line needs attention.

I'm pressing forward.
wwv

That's great news! I just started working with Max, and yumm, am I getting spoiled after too many hours sitting in front of Blender and Poser.

It doesn't work yet, but I'm beginning to make some real progress.
Full details here: http://www.windyweather.net/wp/2006/12/14/second-life-max-prims-14/

These are screen captures from a max window:







Lots of work yet to do and the version to download is PRE PRE PRE alpha..

cheers,
wwv

Ya know...I just never really understood the point in these...if you're scripting a program to throttle it down into a limited scope of object creation like SL has....what's the point in using it in the first place? Might as well just use SL to begin with because you're already on a PC.

Granted I know that SL comes with the lag, etc, but it hasn't really seemed to get in my way enough to want to go through the trouble of using a separate program to build in, and then having to spend more time configuring a script to spit it back out to me in SL.

I understand the goal is to make the game more accessible....but I just can't ever seem to understand the point unless it's done in a way that someone can build using the normal tools for the program, and then have the program translate that efficiently into SL prims. All I see is the same exact building abillities as in SL, but without SL. Using programs that are, for the most part, costing small fortunes and not free like SL.(unless you pirate it *wink*)

I mean, is it just so people don't have to deal with the "Ooo!"s and "can I haf 1 4 free plz!?" constantly flooding past while trying to build? In that case why not just use a program that already deals in primitives and has terrain features by default like Bryce?

I'm not saying I wouldn't be willing to give something like this a shot, but since all I do is build, if I take the SL away from building....I would never log in and since I cannot texture my starships, I would never manage to find someone who can.

I also don't want to spend 3hrs finding a place to download another 3d program and then a few days to find a crack program that doesn't contain 1,000 trojans.

Well sadly till every inch of the world is wired with free internet I'll still use things like this, ideas or the will to do projects pops up at the oddest of times and being stuck with a laptop but with no internet can be a drag. I look forward to seeing more progress on this project since I all my current courses are in max and I don't like having to switch back and forth between toolsets .

If you're worried about trojans, Tiarnalalon, I'd suggest actually purchasing the software or look for freeware alternatives such as Blender3D.

One of the reasons I use these offline builders is simply because I'd like to fully utilize my dual 1600 x 1200 res. monitor setup to build content without any computer hangups or slowdowns. Working in a small 800 x 600 window where many times your PC gets constantly inundated by the SL client constantly trying to draw the surrounding high polygon environment gets frustrating and annoying fast.

Another good thing about using an offline builder modules/scripts is the better 'Undo' sytem they offer where you're able to set the max number of undo's (in most 3D software packages). Reverting beyond 6? steps back on a prim or a set of prims is not possible unless you have good memorization of what you did past that and manually returning them to their original state. All of the other prims that were not actively selected and worked on can sometimes be undone one or 2 steps or many times not at all.

My main preference in using offline builders is the advanced texturing that can be done in 3D software packages, such as 3DS Max, without the need for in-depth digital painting talent. Examples would be creating convincing lighting, shading, caustics and other various effects on 3D objects and then making use of the render-to-texture feature to translate it all into a bitmap.

Of top importance to most of the building community is the ability to create content when grids are down (or in some cases, just the one your piece of land is on) or when there isn't any internet connectivity available to make use of SL's building tools, such as the situation Kensuke has described.

The present Maxscript is quite limited (boxes and cylinders only atm) and a little buggy, but I hope it will progress further just like the Blender3D version has. Good Luck on getting this to work the way you want it to, WindyWeather.

My motivations for building SLPrims for max is to allow me to build complex structures more efficiently than is possible in SL. SL building has a large tradeoff. I'm not saying it's a mistake, only that the choice of building content in world, while approachable for novices, is not efficient enough to suit some of us who are experts with offline tools. As I build in-world, for example, I spend way too much time moving around to change my point of view so that I can line things up. As one studies SkidzPrimz and other such tools, one begins to see the nature of the inefficiencies that need to be overcome. SkiczPrimz seems a very intelligent tool set to solve many of these problems.

Also, there is a very long learning curve for each of the tools - Blender3D, max, maya, Rhino - each of them have their advantages and differences. Since there is such a long learning curve with each tool, changing from Blender to Max or vice versa can be more than one is likely to want to deal with. I would rather work weeks to build a SLPrim environment in Max than learn to use Blender efficiently and I have tried to use Blender. I'm not saying that Blender has a problem, only that it is very different from Max, and after 10 years with max, I want to use what I know how to use efficiently.

Offline building will not interest many of us SLers. But some will immediately grasp the advantages of building a large complex structure in max, maya, blender, and then importing it.

I think I can understand the theoretical basis for SL's choice of primitives, and I'm sure that this has been discussed, argued and shouted and flamed about in many other places. IMHO, Someday soon, in geological time, the advantages of primitives in storage / bandwidth that we now see will not be so important and primitives will probably fall away in favor of more generally translatable 3D formats.

Until that happens, the only way to build SL content in traditional 3D tools is to model the SL prims in those other tools.

My intent is not to cause a flaming match here, but only to clarify my motivations for working on SLPrims for Max. Perhaps there will be other interested parties, or perhaps only me.

FWIW,
wwv

Thanks for your interest. I hope you go the message that this is PRE PRE PRE Alpha and actually not functional. The only reason to release it is to get some feedback on the approach and to avoid missteps at this early stage.

And of course, there is no export function from max yet...

wwv

Ill give an example of why offline builders are good by simply describing my situation. I work at a liberal collage in a VERY liberal department. Its great, we have to do a high volume of work in a miniscule amount of time, so having a free environment at work is key. Heck, the head of the Department comes in every so often to show us websites like a site that puts a pic of your head on a dancing elf, or shows us a video of the "Farting Preacher". But the limit is I can't have an actual GAME installed on my work computer. I can work on non-work related things (as long as I get my real work done), so using 3DMax or something simmiler is fine. Since most of my day monday - friday is spent at work, thats when I get the most ideas for builds. Right now im limited to using my old and rather rusty Mechanical Dawing education to simply draw the ideas out to use when I get home. But it would be much better if I could just fire up a offline builder (which would be a 3D Design Program not a "Game" and spend a few mins working on that, then just save it to one of my flash drives and just "upload" it to SL when I get home.

Plus building controls in SL aside, its hard to build large, complex structures in public sandboxs when you have 20 griefers messing with you. So just running a script to generate what you created offline is very helpful.

I have tried the blender plugin, but I find blender's controls to be a pain in the arse. So looking forward to this 3DMax plugin. Just wish someone would make one for Daz 3D Studio as well.

I've already gone and wrote a 3D model importer that converts tris to prims. The problem with that is it's not a very efficient process.

As for why someone would bother to use an offline builder: lack of internet connectivity. You can build without being lagged to hell, build when Second Life is down, and build on laptops and palmtop PCs (in theory) in areas that have no internet connection. That's pretty convenient.



This is precisely the reason I opted to using Blender. Maya and Max are for professionals that can afford the software or otherwise torren^H^H^H^H^H^H acquire it. And since all three are industry standards, it's not really a stretch to build for them.

And if you find any trojans, send me the links. I work for a security company that fixes this stuff.

It seems unreasonable to use this SL board for detailed discussions of the SLPrims, bugs, features and issues. So I've created a private board for this purpose:

http://www.windyweather.net/smf/index.php?board=15.0

I'll continue to make major announcements here, and the content will be in my blog , and we can continue any free-for-all discussions over in the private board.

Cheers,
wwv

Here we go!!!

For release notes and download:
http://www.windyweather.net/wp/2006/12/20/second-life-max-prims-26/

For discussion, bug reports and feedback:
http://www.windyweather.net/smf/index.php?board=15.0



It's working!! Not perfect, but it seems to work for all primitive types and many modifiers.

Have at it. And thanks for your support.

wwv

Looks very cool Windy I just downloaded the beta and played a little bit with it. Everything behaved as expected. I did notice a couple of the same issues that you mention in the release notes, but they did not look like they were going to be any showstoppers. So all in all, great job! The product looks like it's already quite usable. Thanks for making this (and for making it so quickly too!!). One of these days I will try to recreate a few of my furniture pieces and see if I can come across any unknown issues and report them to you. Thank you again

Well I wasn't trying to start an argument earlier, I was just wanting to understand and sadly my hands got carried away with me so I apologize if anyone got upset.

I did think this was funny though..



I don't know if this is just a dig to get me annoyed or what, but *shrug* a large number of the people who have the $$ ones personally have either pirated directly, or are mooching their company's corporate license for personal use. Some people's jobs let them do that *shrugs again*

To those that explained a little better, I appreciate it and I can definitely see the advantages of using an offline builder for the texturing aspects that were explained. Curious to know if the plugins are programmed to somehow create that wierd 'twist' that SL does to some textures on tortured prims (Hollow, cut, and then taper a prism and look at how some of the textures do a little Z manuver near the edges)

I'm colorblind and can't draw, so I can't make really complex textures anyway, but the ability to use something like this to paint on the prims and then export the textures I can see as a huge benefit.

i havent used blender. How is the blender plugin for SL. Has anyone used it. I saw it when I started up my sf.net project. If it works i would love to use it. Building in SL is kind of hard. It is so hardd to zoom in and stuff. I would love to use an offline programs. A lot of the time that I program is while im offline anyways.

You're very welcome. Be sure and check the discussion board since I've found some problems and there will be an update later today.

For discussion, bug reports and feedback:
http://www.windyweather.net/smf/index.php?board=15.0

wwv

this is kind of funny. some of the posts in this thread hint at why offline content creation is convienient.

for example, i don't have internet at home, and work is firewalled to an extent where second life doesn't work.

i can go to internet cafe to use second life, (save that for weekend), but very interested in offline creation till i get internet at home. but seems i can't get the max script with out going INSIDE second life (had a look around all the links)

oh well, was bored yesterday so wrote a max plugin to load SL skeleton to be able to do some animations (was going to get it to export BHV tonight, have it copying / pasting/mirror pose which i like for animation), but wanted to also make some primitives (presume you can link objects into one thing to attach)

the blender prim builder is also not working for me... wander off to find that thread

//edit, found an earlier version to look at (prim 14), mostly currious as to what params all the objects can do, as mention, time in second life from internet cafe so neither convienient of good performance

Hi, I have made a tool that can export objects from SL to SLPrims using the Prim XML format.
I need to make sure that the exported prims are imported properly in SLPrims, but I cannot run 3DS Max, so I need someone to do the test for me.
IM me if you want to help.

Just thought that I'd give this a bump!

Great work! I bumped into one of the blog posts on windyweather.net when I was googling for something unrelated. I totally missed this thread when it was originally posted.

The combination of this with sculpties opens some very interesting possibilities indeed!

I'll comment on the private board later when I've had a chance to use SLPrim and think a little deeper on it.