MAXScripted Tools and Packages

These are packaged scripts bundled into a neat little .EXE file. All scripts have been tested with 3ds Max 9, however please send bug reports to me at jamescleaveland@gmail.com. I'll also take this time to say that you use these scripts at your own risk, and its not my fault if you spontaneously combust from using them.

Illusion Scripts

I initially developed this package in-house at Illusion Studio. It has since been released as open-source under the GPL, and I perform maintenance as well as general house-keeping. I encourage you to hack on these scripts if you feel like it, but do us all a favor and share your updates! I will gladly review any revisions and host them here. There is a detailed version history in the header of every script where you can remark on what has been revised.

Once installed, the scripts will be located in the category "Illusion Scripts". There is also a category "Illusion Utils" that is full of small utilities that aren't mentioned here.

Download Package (.EXE Installer)
Animation Range	A small utility that docks itself on the trackbar. Great for people that are tired of going into the Time Configuration dialog box just to change the frame range.
Auto Cache	This script will automatically cache out the selected objects (or the whole scene), and the cache data will go to the specified folder. It will detect whether the object has transform or vertex animation (ie skinning) and perform either a Transform Cache or a Point Cache accordingly. This script works great in tandem with Cache Loader.
Auto Reload	This will automatically display a dialog when 3ds Max is started that displays a dropdown list containing the most recently accessed files (like Open Recent). To run this at startup, just copy the Startup_Auto_Reload.ms file from 3ds Max/scripts/Illusion_Scripts to 3ds Max/scripts/startup.
Batch Animation Preview	Does what it says it does. Just drag and drop animation files onto the script, and set up the appropriate preview parameters. This script can make a preview for every camera in every file, and will also set up the range automatically if the camera name has a range in its name that follows this format: "(0-100)". Since this script is made possible only through Windows Messages, there is a small quirk concerning .MOV outputs. The compression index spinner references the desired .MOV compressor in the Compression Settings dropdown list. To find out what compression index you need for a particular compressor, you will need to manually perform an animation preview and get to the Compression Settings window, then count to see what number the compressor you want is in the dropdown. Please note that the index is 0-based. This means that if you want H.264 compression, and its the 11th item in the list, the compression index spinner should read 10 (coincidentally, 10 is the default because that was where H.264 was on the development workstation, but this varies).
Biped Help	A small floater to quickly select biped parts. Meant to be a stripped-down version of Jim Jagger's similar script.
Cache Loader	This script will attempt to load cache files onto the selected objects or the whole scene from the specified folder. It matches objects to cache files by their names, and also shows what files didn't get used for some troubleshooting purposes. Works great in tandem with Auto Cache.
Cache Transforms	A small utility that will cache an object's transform information to an external file. It will also load transform cache data from the specified file to an object.
Cleanse Objects	Performs some crazy calculations on meshes to see if there are strange welds, illegal faces, etc. The process can take a long time, and there should be no reason to use this script unless there are some really badly modelled objects corrupting files.
Clutterizer	Allows the artist to quickly clutter up a set with props. Has settings for random scaling, rotation, etc. for more diversity. It creates instances or unique objects depending on user input.
LightSheet	This is a great tool for lighters. You can exclude/include multiple objects to multiple lights with one click, or copy and paste exclude/include lists from one light to another (or multiple), or draw lines in the viewport to all of the objects that are affected by certain lights, or... the list goes on. Lights can also be grouped into Subsets, which are layer independent. Once a Subset has been created, the artist can adjust the light or shadow color of an entire Subset according to a bell-curve visualization. All properties on lights can also be adjusted en-masse for a Subset, either absolutely or relatively. The Misc tab is also full of goodies such as Shadow Presets, saveable Palettes, and more.
Mapocide	This script will attempt to remove all maps and materials from the scene. It is usually successful, although you may need to reload the scene since material libraries are only dropped completely after scene loads.
MonkeyBridge	This is a 3ds Max version of Keith Lango's MonkeyShuffle for Maya. It does everything that MonkeyShuffle does, and is of course meant to be used with MonkeyJam, downloadable here. Basically you make key frames for your key poses on all of a rig's control objects (which are preferably saved in a selection set or layer). Then you can use MonkeyBridge to output images of those key poses and export them to MonkeyJam for quick timing adjustment. Once you have something you're satisfied with in MonkeyJam, you can reimport the timing to 3ds Max with MonkeyBridge. Just make sure that all of the control objects are selected, otherwise you will get strange results.
Morph Assistant	A handy tool for mirroring or symmetrizing meshes for morph targets. This script hasn't seen an update for a while, and only works on Editable Poly objects.
Render Pre-Composer	Allows the artist to quickly composite frames together with popular blending modes directly in 3ds Max. This is for everyone that wants to see what a render looks like with ambient occlusion multiplied on but can't take the time to open a compositing suite.
Quick Align	Wonder what this does?
RenderTab	This is a complete replacement for the Batch Render utility that comes with 3ds Max. This was a huge reinventing the wheel project, but this script boasts huge improvements such as multiple modes of sorting, .XML import/export, copying/pasting columns, and the ability to edit multiple jobs at once (that's right). Backburner options like Priority, Initially Suspended, etc. are also included, and the script is also easily accessed externally for versatile scripting capabilities (see documentation in script file for more details).
Selection Navigator	A handy utility for navigating through selections. Sometimes page-up and page-down are too hard to reach, you know? Oh, you can also cycle through siblings (objects sharing a parent).
Shot Navigator	A great tool for animators. When there are multiple cameras in a scene file, it becomes a little tedious going to the Time Configuration dialog to set the frame range for a specific shot in the file. This script allows you to automatically set the current active viewport to the camera specified, and if the camera name has a range in its name that follows this format: "(0-100)", the range will also be set. There are also options to set up information stamps on the viewport so that any desired information can be stored directly on the frame when making animation previews, which is great for meetings so that you know exactly what shot you're looking at.
SkyBox Renderer	This script hasn't seen an update for a while. However, it is useful for rendering tons of skyboxes over Backburner for game engines.
Smooth Manager	This utility is good for applying instanced smoothing modifiers to a selection, finding objects that share the same instanced smoothing modifier as your selection, and other similar tasks.
Trajectory Toggle	Toggles trajectories on or off for the selected objects.
UV Planar X	Snaps the selected UV vertices in the Unwrap UVW window to the averaged X axis.
UV Planar Y	Snaps the selected UV vertices in the Unwrap UVW window to the averaged Y axis.
Z Depth Batch	This is a strange one. I wrote this one because we had a bajillion scene files that never had Z-Depth rendered on them, and we needed to do it towards the end of a project. Perhaps another poor soul will find this script useful - it renders Z-Depth passes on a list of files locally (sorry, no netrendering on this one).