Animation baker

Another something made to emulate a common Motionbuilder function: Plotting !
This script allows you to bake (or plot, or collapse, or whatever you name it) any transformation animation on any object or hierarchy. It works in the simplest way possible, select your objects, check that the range is correct and hit Bake !

Mirror vertices selection

Once you collapsed your Symmetry modifier, you sometimes have to make little tweaks on your mesh. Usually you want to make those tweaks on both sides of your mesh, so you need to manually select the symmetric vertices.
Well, not anymore !

Biped Picker

Another tool I dearly missed in 3dsMax after working on Motionbuilder was this:

If, like the little dude up there, you're wondering what's this oddly proportioned, flip-flops clad blue surfer is doing on such a serious blog, that means you never laid eye on Motionbuilder. At least not before version 2012. Well that weird guy is as helpful as he is ugly. He allows you to select (almost) any part of the rig without having to click it in the viewport, which can come in handy in many situations.

Anyway, trying to reproduce this for the 3dsMax Biped was the first thing I ever did in MAXScript !

Interactive Time Scrubber

Let's keep on the subject "How to turn Max into Motionbuilder"!
While working with Motionbuilder, I got accustomed to use the Time Scrubbing by holding down the J key and dragging left or right in the viewport. It allows to easily see what's in between the keyframes, which can be very useful, especially for video games animation!

Shortcuts for Next and Previous Keyframe

That's one super simple script, but one that I use all the time to animate. In Max, you have a Key Mode Toggle button to switch between 'Previous/Next Frame' and 'Previous/Next Key'.

After using Motionbuilder I found that having two different sets of shortcuts for each function was much more handy, so I wrote these very simple scripts.

Copy animation from 3dsMax to After Effects

Let's dive into one of my most often used scripts !
This little tool allows you to copy any object's animation to After Effects, with just one click on a button and a Ctrl-V... can't make it any simpler, no file to export/import, no images to render.

Instancer for Maya

I shared my instancer for Max not long ago, so while I'm at it I should share the one I wrote for Maya! It works pretty simply, by replacing the shape inside the object.

How to use Python Scripts for Maya

We covered the basics for Max, here comes the same for Maya !
There are two main ways (there are many more, but the result's the same) of running scripts in Maya, whether they are MEL or Python.

Change an attribute on multiple objetcs

That's something pretty common, you sometime want to change something on multiple objects, but 3dsMax doesn't support this through the interface. Generally you end up changing the parameter on each object... when you could write a single line of script that does it for you !

There's a very common keyword, in most programming languages, that goes through a collection of things (like the list of the selected objects): for

Resize Dummies/Points

After the Instancer, another example of function only available through scripting!
You can use the .boxsize property on dummies to change their size, and it's a point3, so it doesn't have to be a cube. Using this attribute, I wrote a simple script that allows you to resize your dummies without having to scale them, isn't that fantastic?
I personally prefer using points rather than dummies, so the script also resize the selected points!

A simple Instancer

Have you ever thought that Max (or any other software for that matter) lacks some super basic functionality? Well sometimes the functionality is there, but only available through scripting!
That's one of those cases : you copied objects and later realise that you should have instanced them. There's no way (that I know of) to do that afterward in Max interface, but there's a simple command that does just this : instanceReplace

How to use the MAXScripts !

Now for the little explanation on how to use the scripts that I'll post !

Most of them will be MaxScripts, so there are two possibilities:

• .ms are plain scripts that do a certain action when you evaluate them, open through MAXScript -> Open Script and launch with Ctrl+E
• .mcr are macroScripts, which can be dragged and dropped (one at a time) in the viewport and added to the UI from Customize->Customize User Interface. They'll appear in the category 'Vin'
  

A tiny intro

Hi all !
I had this idea for some time, and I finally have a bit of time to make it a reality. I created a lot of scripts and little tools to make my work easier since I started working in the Animation and Video Game industry. Lots of them have been used and passed on by colleagues over the years and I thought I should have a place to centralize the most useful !
I'll also put in some of my personal CG stuff I guess.