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Stractals Tutorial: Template Activation

Stractals 3dsmax script

To install and activate a new template you have purchased, do the following:

  1.  Drag the mzp-file onto a viewport. (The template files are automatically extracted and installed)
  2. Stractals script opens and the Template Activation Dialog shows up (see the image below).
  3.  Enter the license key you got in the email of your purchase order.
  4.  If everything is correct, you will see the message “Activation successful!”. That’s all!
    The new template name will be listed at the Templates dropdown list.

Alternative way to activate your templates

If you want or need to activate an installed template in other moment, you can do this:
Go to Help/About rollout. Press on Activate Template License.
A dialog window will show up, where you can pick the desired template file to activate. Then just follow the steps 2 to 4 previously described to perform the template actrivation.

 

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Stractals Tutorial: Getting Started

Stractals 3dsmax script

This is an introductory tutorial showing the workflow for this tool.

You will learn the following topics:

  •  Creation: picking a template, setting up a container, adjusting parameters, building the structure.
  • Edition: convertion to editable structure, manipulating 3dsmax instances, selection tools, material creation tools.
  • Fuse Structure tool and its applications.
  • Exploring other type of templates and structures.

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Troubleshooting

Q-Proxies takes too long to generate the proxies

If you are trying to convert a lot of objects from your scene to proxies at once or you are dealing with extremely high-resolution meshes, the plugin may take a really long time to complete the task.

Fortunately, Q-Proxies can be configured to speed up the proxy creation in these cases. You can turn off the options ‘Convert copies to instances’ and ‘Grouped objs. as single proxy’. Then change the Mesh Type to ‘Convex hull’. (Instead of using a polygon reduction method, the convex hull method uses a built-in algorithm to produce a fast-to-compute proxy mesh).
Since version 1.20, a preset called “Fast proxies” was added to provide a quick way to set up all these options at once. Try it! 🙂

Q-Proxies does not support interactive render

This is not entirely true and in practice it’s definitely not as bad as it seems. Q-Proxies does not cause any issue with the interactive render. It’s just that it shows the low resolution meshes instead of the final objects.
The interactive render depends on the render engine you are using. They are all different. Since Q-Proxies is meant to be universal and compatible with any render engine, it does not provide specific support for that functionality.
However, this is not a major issue. You must remember that interactive render is just for preview purposes only. And so are the proxy meshes. They are a rough “preview” of the object. The production render shows the high resolution meshes as well as the final render version.

Some people are very used to working with the interactive render. However, not many years ago, interactive rendering functionality didn’t even exist. All renders were managed with the production render. So you can use the same technique. Simply save 2 different setups for the production render as render presets, one for very fast rendering (emulating the interactive render) and the other for final quality, so you can switch between them whenever you need.
Just note that this is not recommended if you have too many q-proxies objects in the scene, because it may take some time for the plugin to load all original objects back to the scene every time before rendering.

In summary, if you want to take advantage of Q-Proxies strengths like compatibility with all render engines and third-party proxies, editable .max files for proxy objects and the possibility of bringing original objects intact back to the scene, we suggest you to preview the proxies with their low-resolution meshes to work faster.

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TurboSplines Tutorial: Creating Helix Coils

This external tutorial posted by Elara Systems encompasses thorough instructions for creating Helix Coils using the TurboSplines and Path Deform plugins.

It goes over strategy for pipeline planning when using a complicated modifier stack when combining multiple external plugins. It’s a tutorial for a more advanced user of the 3DS Max System and also requires you to have the plugins listed above.

Click on the image below to watch it on Youtube:

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Introducing RandoMixer 3dsMax plugin

More info: RandoMixer

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