I want to select objects based on their prefix name.
Example:
I have a master control called “Bunnies_ctrl”
I have 3 helper objects called “Bunnies_helper”
I have 3 helpers objects called “Bunnies_temp”
First how do I collect the prefix of the selected objects name? I want to collect all the characters until i get to the underscore “_” so the result of the variable would then be “Bunnies”
Then I would use that variable to select the other helper objects. For example
select “Bunnies” + “_helper”
select “Bunnies” + “_temp”
The reason I want to collect the prefix is because it changes from “Bunnies” to “Donuts” |
I'm assuming that by 'collect' you mean select, in which case the easiest way to select objects based on a prefix is to use a wildcard.
select $Bunnies*
But, that doesn't sound like what you want. I'm having a bit of trouble understanding exactly what the workflow you're looking for is. So I'm assuming you want to select the master control object (*_ctrl), run your script script, and have it select all of the associated helper objects.
First part is pretty straightforward. Get the selected object's name, parse through it using "_" as a delimiter, store that prefix as a variable.
ssSelected = $.name as stringStream --gets the name of the selected object as a stringstream and puts that into a ssSelected variable
strPrefixSelected = readDelimitedString ssSelected "_" --reads ssSelected using "_" as a delimiter and puts that into strPrefixSelected variable
I hope you're not actually using the exact same name for multiple nodes...that's generally a bad practice, but here's the bit you asked for:
strHelpers = strPrefixSelected + "_helper"
strTemp = strPrefixSelected + "_temp"
select strHelpers
selectmore strTemp
I would probably take a slightly different approach though, and select
any node with the prefix:
nodeControl = $ --stores originally selected "_CTRL" node so we can remove it from selection at the end
strSelectWithWildcard = "$" + strPrefixSelected + "*" --building the full string with node identifier and wildcard so we can select every node that starts with "Bunnies"
select (execute strSelectWithWildcard) --execute Compiles and evaluates the contents of the string as a MAXScript expression and returns the result of the evaluation. Coverts "$Bunnies*" string into $Bunnies* maxScript code.
deselect nodeControl --deselects _CTRL" node, leaving us with "_Helper" and "_temp" nodes selected.
