[Tomas Westerholm]

Hello,

simple wish, could you program the MXS export to respect the given visibility flag (on/off) per object. I will be doing animations by using that feature. Currently all non-hidden objects are exported. It should be implemented so that non-hidden objects with visibility 0.0 per current frame are not exported.

Objects with visibility other than 0 or 1 are problematic as they should be semi transparent according to 3dsmax logics. For me that is not problem as I will only use 0 or 1. You might just have it so that non 0 values are regarded as visible?

Anyway, adding that little tweak into export should not harm those who are not using this feature. For me, it would be crucial feature.

maxscript commands:

$*.visibility = on
$*.visibility = off

Best Regards, Tomas

[Bogdan Coroi]

The visibility value is already checked when exporting the scene and only a value of 1.0 translates in a visible object.
We will modify this, so having a value greater than 0.0 will translate in a visible object. In this way, MAXScript's visibility properties will work as expected, that is, $.visibility = on means a visibility value greater than 0.0 and $.visibility = off means a visibility value equal to 0.0.

[Tomas Westerholm]

OK. Actually that is right. On and Off parameters are enough (for me), but are you able to run this script (below) to animate a "box01" object's visibility and succesfully render the animation frames 0 and 1 = export MXS that respects the animated visibility attribute? First frame (0) should show the box and frame 1 the box should be missing. I cannot make this happen, at least it is not working in the linked .max file which is a part of earlier made script based file.

http://www.3drender.fi/public/maxwell/visibility.max

If I do the animation manually at editor, it works. Could it be that the script writes different values than the editor and that brings the malfunction and difference to editor made ok animation?

The initial on/off trick per frame is needed to get the value recorded properly for "silent" frames for all objects to prevent gradual sliding values between 0 and 1. I thought if this could be an issue here. If max is saving values like 0.999999 but displays them rounded 1.0 or 0.00001 like 0.0 ?

Code: Select all

animate on (
sliderTime = 0
$*.visibility = on 
$*.visibility = off 
$box01.visibility = on 
sliderTime = 1
$*.visibility = on 
$*.visibility = off 
$box01.visibility = off
)

[casey]

Tomas, this is somewhat tangential to your bug report but I wanted to mention that you can simplify that on/off process by assigning a Boolean controller to the visibility track instead of leaving as a float controller. That way there is no interpolation.

Similarly, you can set your keys to be non-interpolating, but that's a waste of time for on/off visibility IMO.

- Casey