Exporting Color Gradient To Max

I'm not sure that this is the right forum for this question but I was wondering if anyone knew how to link color information from rhino to max.

I have no experience with Max script, but a bit of experience with VB Script. Does anyone have any experience linking data to Max similar to what can be done in Rhino. I was wondering if there was anyway to generate a color pattern similar to the effect shown but linked to size.

The link to the max script: http://www.maxforums.org/threads/maxscript_fun_examples/0001.aspx

I am considering 2 solutions but any other possibilities are welcome:

Solution 1:

Is it possible to link Max to Excel through a vb script and then link a list of objects to a list in excel? There would need to be some way to rationally order the polygons of the mesh into a matrix via Cartesian co-ordinates so that I could map the interior edges of the facade with a matrix of values in Excel. This could wither by a list of rows and columns or a flat list. I'm not familiar with the way that max stores information about its geometry.

Solution 2:

Is it possible to "call" color values from a poly line curve and then use these RGB values to generate a material?

Without any experience with Max script I don't know where to start and whether or not this request would be complex or difficult to execute. Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Also if anyone has any suggestions for another forum that might be better suited for this discussion, since it involves 3d max as well, that would be great.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Hannes Löschke on May 3, 2012 at 3:45am

You can do it all in GH. This forum has a lot of examples how to apply colors to GH objects. The typical solution is to bake with Giulio's bakeAttributes. If you have Maxwell REnder, you can use the Sacrab.

Exporting from Rhino to MAX in FXB should keep Rhinos material assignment...

Why do you need to export to MAX anyway?

Permalink Reply by Ben Fortunato on May 3, 2012 at 4:04am

I Thanks for your advice! I couldn't find the FXB export from Rhino. But I will experiment with other file formats such as 3DS and keep you updated. Your solution seems to be very straight forward and avoids Max Script, which is a plus!

In any case I think I need some way to globally change the material properties of these colored materials, reflection ect, while keeping the RGB value untouched.But that is something I can figure out on a Max forum.

With regards to why I am using Max, I prefer to render in Max for a variety of reasons, support of vray proxies, better camera control and 64 bit support for larger scenes to name a few. I experimented with Rhino for vray but found it hard to use, especially for compositing renderings into photos since I can't preview the vertical shift option of the physical camera in the view port. It also took a very long time to render once I added mesh vehicles trees etc. The view port is also harder to navigate once you have a large scene. There are a host of reasons. . . . Rhino is not really built for rendering like max is.

Permalink Reply by Hannes Löschke on May 3, 2012 at 4:18am

sorry for the typo FXB-> FBX (MotionBuilder)

There's some material properties, you could modify with a little change in giulios component. but since your'e going to export to Max anyway, you might have more control over there.

I can see the point with Vray and the camera stuff.

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