Wiring Basics
Wednesday 28th Feb 2007
Wiring is Max's answer to expressions. Since this is only a basic introduction to wiring, I'll give a practical example for its usage.

The Problem
A complex scene often requires a large amount of sub-division to occur at render time. This is generally fine, but when the scene starts getting more complex even test renders can begin to take valuable seconds longer then absolutely required.

The Solution
This tutorial will teach you how to implement a view port slider that will control all the Turbosmooth or Meshsmooth objects in the scene. Estimated time to complete the tutorial, 10 minutes. The reason I'm not doing this as a scripting exercise is because  in order to be totally automated, the script would have to seek out and use all Smooths, but what if you have some that you don't want the script to effect? The problem can snowball until you're putting in more work just to use the script than simply wiring the parameters to a helper.

Step 1.
Build two objects, I have chosen Cubes for the sake of demonstration. One your first object, apply a Meshsmooth, and on the second a Turbosmooth (in the Modifiers panel).

Important - Ensure that the 'Render Iterations' is ticked, otherwise Max will ignore any wiring to that parameter.

You can wire many Modifier parameters, try some variations to see if you can improve your workflow on certain jobs.


Building Cubes... Complex stuff.

Step 2.
Now setup your slider, this is located inside the Helper Create panel in the Manipulators section. As the image shows, I've made the snap value 1.0. This is because you cannot use a floating point number to subdivide with (Iterations are always integers).


Your Slider!

I personally have placed my slider on the right side of the screen near my modifier panel. If you have rigs or other manipulators in a scene, you can obviously place it elsewhere.

Step 3.
Right click on your newly made slider, Wire Parameters. You'll be given a rollout of what there is to wire. Select the value and then you'll get a wire that follows the mouse around, now click on one of your box's and select its Modified Object --> Meshsmooth (Or TurboSmooth) --> Render Iterations.


Selecting what wires to where

Step 4.
Now you set the direction of the wire - who's number affects who. In this case, we want our master control to be the slider, so select the rightward direction.


Selecting who's boss

Now repeat the process for your other box..

Step 5.
Now turn on Manipulate, move the slider about and hit render, you'll notice both objects are smoothed uniformly. In a complex scene with multiple objects and complex modifier stacks, this little method can save you minutes of time, preventing the need to manually select each object every time you want to change settings.

Download the .MAX File for this tutorial


 
  
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