Sean (hype) - Vertex Lights

i'm gonna try, but i have no idea how far i'll get.

idealy what you can do is make a copy of the object convert that to editable mesh and then delete the copy after your program is done.

Hey hype,

You are right. The attachObjects function will not work in this case because vertices are not objects (nodes) they are sub-objects that all contain positional data offset to a node (therefore you cannot convert a subobject to a node).

To get the vertices to lock onto the object, it's going to be a bit trickier than you might think

As for the "why can't you do mesh operations without converting your object to an editable poly/mesh?"...well, that's like asking "why can't I move my sub-object without enabling some sort of sub-object mode?"

...the answer is simple. Max must use the edit poly/mesh/patch/whatever to manipulate the sub-objects of your node (ie...verts of your mesh)....if your object is not an editable mesh (or if it doesn't contain some sort of edit mesh/poly/whatever modifier), max has no way of manipulating the vertices/faces/edges/whatever. "Manipulation" also includes things like counting vertices.

As far as I know (I'm not too well-versed on attachment constaints)...to use an attachment constaint, first you have to specify a node (object) to attach to, and then you specify specifically which sub-object you want to attach to of that node.....but I'm not too sure.

so you must have another technique for linking to vertices? cuz you've been hinting at it, and if you're not too sure about this one, there must be another!

"always two, there are..."

Hehe...yep! There's definitely another way

Think outside the omni-vertex mesh hype....outside the omni-vertex mesh!

hahahaha...
i'm about to head out to dinner, and now that's all i'm gonna be thinking about the whole time! "outside the omni-vertex mesh..."
my friend's gonna think i'm nuts...

does your technique have something to do with a trimesh?
or does maxscript recognize arrays as nodes? cuz you could put each vertice into its own array and attach to that?

i'm scouring the help files, and i got nuthin....

Well....we know that we can get the position data from each vertex in a mesh, right?

So if we could just somehow think of a controller that could utilize the position data from the script: "getvert <obj> <index>", we could use that to individually control the position of each light to match its corresponding vertex.

.....are my hints helping yet ?

gosh goly gee willikers, dude! hahaha...

i searched your "clues", and it brought up the answer, but wow - its complex! at least to someone new to scripting!

there's an example in the help files though that is more or less exactly what we want to do. so i see the solution. now i guess we'll see if i can implement it!

also, i have some sliders in my rollout, but i think i'm way over my head with trying to "wire" a slider value to some kind of randomizer (for making all the lights different intensities, i made a slider that, at 1, they're all at 1.0, but when slid up, would ideally introduce random values to all of them.) does this sound way too complex for my second script ever?

K...checked up on the "lights" variable....all it is is a default array for all of the lights in the scene....it doesn't actually contain any global parameters.

Therefore, you've still gotta do the "for loop" I posted above to run through them and apply the shadow settings.

As for needing to add the "baseObject" thing, you can read about that in the maxscript help files in the "lights" section

hey, that worked, that code you just put up. cycled through them all no problem.
thanks. i even used the lights variable (which i should remove in case someone has other lights in their scene already).

in attaching the lights to the vertices, what is the benefit of using a position controller script instead of some sort of attachment controller? will it not work with an attachment controller? is it because the position script would update in real time? just curious as to the "why" behind it.

Hmm...not too sure...I just found that using a position script gave me an extra level of control.

Btw...does the attachment constaint allow for vertex attachments? Or just face attachments?

i'm guessing just face atachments, cuz it isn't working yet! hahaha...

well, i think i've reached my limit with Maxscript. it's hard. i still think its magical what you guys are able to accomplish with it.

i'm happy i managed the beginner stage pretty easily. i just can't find enough info in the help files or online to learn what to do next. i'm just one of those guys that isn't cut out for coding, and i am okay with that!
i'm not giving up yet, i'm gonna keep plugging away on it, but i'm not expecting it to progress past where it is right now. some of the things are just to complex for me to get at this stage in my maxscripting.
i at least understand maxscript now, and could maybe even look at some code and try to decipher what its doing just by reading it. thats alot further than where i was 2 weeks ago!

i'll keep going, just not as gung-ho as i have been. it's exhausting to work all day on something and not get very far on it. a week of doing that is plenty for me. like i said, i'm not giving up entirely. i'm reluctant to add things i see in the scripts you guys have created unless i understand what its doing, so i'm trying not to just copy the code blindly. if i understood what the heck it was doing, i'd happily copy it. but if i put something in there, i really want to understand what it is i typed. and there is just no info on controlling randomizing variables with sliders - in fact, there's only one page on sliders in the help files, and it doesn't explain very much about them at all. so thats been driving me nuts. i could go on and on, but you get the idea.

i'll try to post my code tonight or tomorrow morning. it puts omni's at every vertex, shifts them a little off the surface, makes the base object non-renderable, and turns shadows on if you want them. the things i've been trying to do are:

1) - have a slider that, when at value 1, all the lights are default white, but when slid to 10, makes them all different colors, and the values between 1 and 10 would control the saturation of the color.

2) - have a checkbox that made them volumetric, with some presets that didn't make the scene too heavy to render (cuz there could be a lot of lights depending on the base object!)

3) - have a slider that, when at 0, left all the lights at a default multiplier of 1, but, if slid to its maximum, animated the multiplier based on an animated noise pattern, so the brightness ebbed and flowed through all the lights during an animation.

i'd also like to make all the lights references of each other like Franklyn's does, so they could be adjusted with one set of settings in the light lister, but i can't grasp what he's doing in the code exactly.

oh, and the vertex linking. crap, that's hard!

that, to me, is hard stuff to do. super easy if i could just use regular Max to do it, but the listener doesn't really get all that across properly.
as i understand things you guys are doing, i'll add stuff to mine. but i'm not expecting miracles by thursday!

i could perhaps comment those areas of code and explain them to you if you want?. i know its not the best example of how this should be done but hey it works . i really think you should keep at it with the same momentum.you're doing really good for someone who was a code-a-phobic . also the areas you're trying to deal with are actually quite complex so you shouldnt allow it to deter you.