topic Re: manipulate timeline of thousands of mCloth MPC animation vertices in 3ds Max Programming Forum

manipulate timeline of thousands of mCloth MPC animation vertices

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 15:50:41 GMT

I don't understand how to gain access to the MasterPointController vertices timeline array of an mCloth mesh.

I have an mCloth partial animation of a waving flag (one cycle of a wave). It has thousands of vertices.

It starts at time 2800. I'd like to manipulate -- in this instance -- to copy the final position to time 0, slide all others to start at time 1, and then add an Out Of Range controller to Cycle or Loop.

Attempting this with the UI crashes max, so seems a candidate job for Maxscript.

Could someone point me to some similar example of Maxscript that I could use/modify for the job?

Re: manipulate timeline of thousands of mCloth MPC animation vertices

denisT.MaxDoctor — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 17:39:16 GMT

as i understand you have 'baked' vertex animation in Master Point Controller.. so the code you are asking above (in your task order) might look as:

( mc = $.baseobject[#master_point_controller].controller range = gettimerange mc selectkeys mc for k=1 to mc.numsubs do ( pc = mc[k].controller at time range.end v = pc.value at time 0 ( k = addnewkey pc 0 k.value = v ) ) movekeys mc (1 - range.start) #selection enableorts mc on setafterort mc #loop )

take this as an idea and tweak as needed

Re: manipulate timeline of thousands of mCloth MPC animation vertices

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 18:30:04 GMT

Ah I finally see how to access the MPC! Thanks.

Yes, honing in with a slightly different approach now that I see how to access all the vertices and keys, something almost like:

startKey=55 blendKeyCount=5 for i = 0 to getNumVerts($) do ( vtx = "$.mCloth.'Vertex " + formattedPrint i format:"u" + "'.controller" print vtx -- make room for a copy of the last key in the first position print (moveKeys vtx 1) moveKeys vtx 1 sortKeys vtx count = vtx.keys.count lastKey = vtx.keys[count] assignKey vtx.keys lastKey 0 -- delete 1 until startKey selectKeys vtx.keys (interval 2 startKey) deleteKeys -- add some spacing between first and second key for a more natural blending moveKeys vtx blendKeyCount )