You can find the plug-in here.

Fails in Firefox 3.0.12 and 3.5.2. Website reported as a failed site.

Using Max 2009 on Vista x86, SP1, I created and exported a simple scene with a knot, 3 lights and a camera.

Here is the scene on this website.

The model does not play in Firefox 3.0.13, either from the file system or from this website.

It does play in MS IE 8 both from the file system or from the website.

The samples on the hypercosm website play in both MSIE 8 and Firefox 3.

This is what the model should look like.

I’ve rebooted the system at least once after installing HyperCosm. It seems very odd that the plugin does not work in Firefox for my model, when it works perfectly well on the samples and works in MSIE 8.

- windy

It’s posted in the forum here.

Two fixes:

• Fix size of sphere and check size of rest of the shapes between max and SL. All seem ok.
• Enhance exporter for better error handling and saving multiple files to control maximum size of the output file. The file size is limited to about 64 primitives so that the 64K notecard limit is not exceeded. Files are labeled _1, _2 etc.

wwv

At last. Here is a version that might be worth trying.

I’ve tested it with a few objects, and as you can see, it works to a large extent:

The smoke test finally created 6 objects. And then I tried it with a larger set of objects.

Here is the larger test case in max.

And here they are in Second Life:

First Observations:

• Looks like native Max positioning and rotation work like a charm.
• There seems to be a disagreement about what “twist” means between the prims and SL.
• Everything else looks like it works in SL. At least that this panel tests.

Install and use with Max 6-9

• Copy all the files from the zip to max\scripts\startup and restart max.
• Find the SLPrim object under the creation panel pull-down under “Second Life”.
• To create a prim, select the SLPrim object and then click and drag in the viewport. Probably the top viewport is best. Right click to stop creating objects.
• Use the modifier panel to modify the objects as you would expect.
• Modifiers may be added, smooth and normals maybe interesting. See below in workarounds.
• You may save and reopen max files with SLPrims in them. As long as you have the SLPrim maxscript file in startup, these files should open and render the objects. If the maxscript file is missing, you will see errors about the objects.
• To export the primitives to a text file, in the utilities panel choose MaxScript and then Second Life Export from the pull-down.
• You may export all or only selected objects. All objects that are not SLPrims are ignored with no error.
• Import as with any other prims of these types. See the Second Life forums for instructions about finding the importer and using it.

Caveats:
There are some caveats for max however:

1. This was developed under max6 and tested with max7. It won’t work in max5 or earlier since it depends on a feature of being able to shorten an array by assigning array.count = value. Max5 and earlier do not support this.
2. Positioning, rotation, copying and instances should all work in max in the native manner with these primitives.
3. Do not use max scaling since the exporter takes no account of the scale of the object.
4. Set your custom units to meters before you start building any objects. That way the size in the panel for meters will be the same size as objects inside max.
5. You are free to use any other max objects in the scene that you like. But of course they are ignored when the objects are exported.
6. You should build your scene well above [0,0,0] since the importer object will build all objects relative to that point. The importer cube object ends up at [0,0,0] so any object there will cover it up.
7. I have not tested building objects that are farther than 10m in extent. The “point” dummy was sized to 20m[sic] to provide a 10m box as a guideline. The point object’s box is apparently 1/2 the size of the point itself.
8. If you have too many objects for a reasonable import, you can export selected. Grouping of SLPrims should work fine. I’ve not tested this yet, but the exporter should look through all grouping and linking to find the SLPrims to export them.
9. You are free to apply modifiers to the SLPrim objects. Of course any shape or texture modifiers won’t be exported. It may be interesting to apply smooth or normal modifiers to the objects since at this point they don’t work exactly as you expect.

Release Notes:
The prims mostly work at this stage, but there are a few known problems:

1. Sphere – with cut the second end does not render. See workaround (1).
2. Torus, ring, tube – inside flap is visible when you cut, and causes wrinkle in surface. See workaround (2).
3. Torus, ring, tube – one cut end is not smooth. See workaround (2).
4. Taper x,y – reversed for Torus,Ring,Tube. Gee is it like this in SL?? Or the original prims? Not sure.
5. Twist looks wrong based on testing with SL. Looks like a basic misunderstanding about what twist means. Might be a radians / degrees mismatch since max uses degrees and Blender uses radians. Twist is 0.0 to 1.0
6. Torus,ring,tube – profile cuts don’t render correctly in max. The cut faces are left out on one side of the cut.
7. SLPrims are very slow. 30 objects bogs down max quite a lot. This is surprising since once the objects are created, the script is not needed again. Meshes are created and are cached until any parameters are changed. I have built primitive objects in this way without noticing this issue. Investigation is required.
8. Entering or changing the “description” is very slow. Each character typed causes a repaint of the object. Not sure how to fix this. Cut and paste of all text at once might be a workaround.

Workarounds:

1. To render missing faces in the max viewports, force 2 sided in either of two ways: (a) Make a two sided material and apply to the primitive. (b) Configure the viewport to “Force 2 sided”.
2. To show a smoother primitive in the max viewports apply a smooth modifier, choose “auto smooth” and set the angle for the appropriate rendering. You may have to change the angle when cut or profile cut is changed.

Download SLPrims 0.9.26

Download Examples for Max7

I’ve created a Forum for discussion and download of SLPrims.

I hope you find this useful. Any feedback or comments are welcome in the forum.

Cheers,
Windyweather VanAlten

Progress so far is that the UI is pretty much done. Here are some pictures and if you’d like to download the script and try it, you are welcome to. At this point, it does not create any mesh, but the UI functions. Comments are welcome.

My current approach involves two scripts:

1. The primitive script will build meshes and allow manipulating the primitves in max. There will be rules of course. See below. But generally, as much of native max will be used as possible.
2. A utility script will sweep the scene and export all the SL primitives to a “tag file” in the same export format as the Blender Script.

Rules for use of the prmitives are at least:

• Create the primitives with the SLPrim object only. Only these objects will be exported to SL.
• Other objects in the scene will be ignored, so if you want to light and render the scene in max, you are free to do that.
• Movement and rotation are native in max. You must size the objects in the SLPrim ui, not using any scale or other modifiers.
• No modifiers are supported. It is to be determined whether they can be ignored.
• Texturing is undetermined at this time. Sure would be nice to support textures as they are in SL. Maybe using a special SL texturing plugin that knows how to apply the UVs in the same way as SL. Or add another rollout to the SLPrim.
• In order to support object positioning in max, it’s probably going to be required to set the world units in max to a specific settings in meters. Sure would be nice to have actual units displayed in max. This probably just falls out with a little work in the primitive.
• More???

Other problems include:

• Grouping. If a large collection in built in max, say a boat of house of a couple of hundred primitives, then grouping should be preserved from the Max environment into SL. The current tagged file format does not show this opportunity. Not sure how to implement this.
• Is the SL import script available? Or is it a built in function in SL? Might be nicer if it were a script so that it can be enhanced for texture coords and grouping. Where can we find the documentation for that function / script, or the source?
• More issues?

Here are the rollouts for the script at this stage:

To install the script, just copy all the files to your max\scripts\startup folder and restart max. Then look in the Second Life category of objects in the object creation drop-down. Click on SLPrim to see the UI. The script does not yet create a mesh. Comments are welcome.

SL Primitives MaxScript with UI only

Enjoy,
Windweather VanAlten

Adding Dreamscape terrain and sky.

Adjust terrain.

Adding plants and clouds.

Backyard from above.

Backyard from a lower level.

Max model of the Lament Box. (141KB)

Movie of Animation. (8MB, DIVX required)

You can find it here. Along with a few tutorials that I have captured.

gmax and tutorials

Import molecule files for Chemistry or just for fun. Both PDB [Protein Database] and MOL format files are supported. This script works in both max and gmax.
The MDL Chime browser plug-in displays molecule files in the browser.
The VMD program displays molecules and supports a large number of rendering options.

However, while these programs incorporate a knowledge of chemistry, neither of these programs provides fine control over rendering and animation. The Import Molecule max script imports the molecule files and creates max geometry that can be rendered and animated at will.

Materials are created for each atom type. The atoms and bonds are grouped for each molecule and the name of the group is based on the name of the molecule. A material is created for each type of atom and the color is set according to the CPK standard. The materials can be changed in any way desired later on.

Unlike other rendering options, max allows far more options for rendering. Note the shadows and bump texture in the above picture and the lighting and rendering effects below. Of course all the animation capabilities of max are also available.

Rendering Options

Balls, Balls and sticks and sticks alone are supported.

Some molecule files don’t contain the right number of bonds. Note the molecule in the background above that the bonds don’t connect the atoms. This can be corrected by choosing the option for Sticks Both Ways as in the foreground.

Installation and Use

Copy the script to 3dsmax4\scripts\startup and copy the importMolColorTable.txt file to 3dsmax4\scripts.

In the Utilities panel click MaxScript and then choose Import Molecule from the pulldown.

Choose the display type.

Choose the size and complexity of the parts. Careful about choosing too many segments or too many sides if there are a large number of atoms.

Set the scale of the atom. Atoms are by default only 1.0 unit in radius. 100 is a good scale for typical max work, but the choice will depend on the size of the molecule in the scene you are designing.

Click on Import molecule and choose either a MOL or PDB file.

Lighting and Rendering Effects

All the power of max can be used to render your molecules once you import them into max.

You can find this and other scripts at TurboSquid

Railings are not provided, but games usually do not require railings.

Optional Curtains are provided with the linear stairs to fill between the treads and the floor.

As you can see, submaterial ids are set for the various surfaces of the stair objects.

Stair Rollouts

Linear Stairs

Spiral Stairs

Circular Stairs

See TurboSquid
for these scripts.

Here are some examples of arch objects with textures and rendered with 3d studio max.

Gothic Arch

Roman Arch

Including Transepts

Transepts are the crossing points of the arches that makeup the roof of a cathedral. The transept plug-in allows building cathedrals as well as other corridors and hallways.

Plug-In Rollouts

Arch Rollout

Arch Door Rollout

Arch Transept Rollout

The plug-ins provide planar mapping coords, although you are likely to want to use a mapping modifier to provide customized mapping. Submaterial ids are assigned to the various parts of the objects, as you can see from the examples.

All of the scripts are available on Turbosquid.

This animation uses Follow Path, and LookAt to have the red cone follow the path while looking at the central sphere. The path has been duplicated and then rendered as a mesh so that it is visible. Also a second cone was linked to the first cone so that its orientation can be seen as it follows the path.

The moving rods and pistons show another use of LookAt. The horizontal rods are animated to move back and forth. The balls and pistons [just nested cyllinders] are linked to follow the rods. The wide part of the piston is looking at the the ball, and the inner piston is looking at the outer piston. In max, both sets of pistons behave the same, but in RTRE, the red piston fails to behave correctly. Note that it is not possible to have two objects look at each other, so another object, the ball, is required to complete the circuit.

To fix the blue piston in RTRE, it is quite simple. One merely has to add some dummy keyframes to cause RTRE to pickup the animation of the objects as they are transformed by max. To do this, add a position keyframe to the first and last frame. The look at constraints are rotational constraints, so this does not conflict with a position key. But the position keys cause RTRE to pickup the entire transform for the object, including the rotation, so the look at constraint is correctly animated by RTRE.

Download the FollowPath Scene

This animation uses a rotation script for the gears like this:

( eulerAngles 0 0 (360*currenttime/100) ) as quat

This can be customized by either changing the 360 to a larger number of degrees to speed up the animation, or by changing the 100 to match the number of frames in the animation. Balls are linked to the gears so that their rotation can be more easily followed. The gears were created by the Geodesic program available on this site.

Download Rotating Gears

Download Dungeon Map 7

The poolstalk scene combines animation with sound and camera capture.
There are two ways to get up to the pool. Walk through the spinning disk of the teleport module and you will be transported to the pool side. Or take the elevator. To use the elevator, navigate near the elevator and then click the green button. If the elevator is not waiting for you , click the red button to bring it down.

Download PoolStalk

To use one of these scenes, download the zip file, by clicking on the picture, then unzip it and run it. You will need a reasonably powerful PC, Windows 2000 or better, and a pretty good video card. However, these scenes will work on a 1.3GHz laptop with Intel integrated graphics. It is best to have nVidia or ATI graphics.

To navigate through the scenes use the arrow keys to move around, and the page UP and DOWN buttons to move up and down. DELETE and END move back and forth. There is no gravity, unlike the other scene explorers such as Walkabout and Quest3D.

You can find examples of RTRE scenes in other posts in this category.

RTRE is now maintained and updated by TurboSquid as a certified plug-in for max.

RTRE was designed originally as a visualization tool for architectural projects. Unfortunately it has not been enhanced over the last few years to include new features in the new graphics cards.

Limitations
RTRE has some significant limitations:

1. No Gravity. So you can’t walk down stairs for example.
2. No transparent moving textures. So flames can’t be done realistically.
3. No animated UVmaps. So special effects using moving textures aren’t possible.
4. No animated meshes. It’s not possible to have animated people or animals without animated meshes.
5. No particle support. Not even for small numbers of mesh based particles.

Some obvious enhancements would take better advantage of new graphics
cards.

1. Bump mapping using either standard bump maps, or
   pixel normal maps [DDS files].
2. Vertex displacement maps. Maybe using DDS files. Aren’t they used
   for that too?