[Antanas Sprindzhiukas]

Yep, I was using 2.50.40 so what’s why PostFileMerge Example.ms wasn’t there and now after updating to 2.50.51 it is there – it’s just that P.M it doesn’t warn me about the post 2.50.** updates anymore and I missed that version – may be something is wrong with my firewall config as I’m still in the process of reconfiguring new windows install after previous one died so there are still some things what are behaving not as I expect them too or maybe that’s just because post 2.50.** builds are betaalpha and that behavior is intentional.

Well, later, gotta try to figure out how to make that script which could auto-rename objects and materials the way I want it to, still I’m not sure if I’ll figure it out cause as wrote before I’m quite stupid when it comes to scripting – being architect, interior designer and cg artist at the same time has it’s boons but can cause one’s knowledge and concentration to be quite scatteredfragmented and not too deep in each of the subjects ))

P.M. 2.50.51’s thumbnail renderer now auto-detects new Corona’s versions as it should – that probably was some change in materials class on Corona’s part or something like that, at least I remember reading something about that on it’s forum – just didn’t know what P.M. uses materials to detect appropriate renderer so the two notions just didn’t stick together – well I surely needed to report that earlier, that would have saved me quite a lot of time.

Thanks for quick responses and keep up the good work.

Ahh, yes, system folder icons work too now – thanks for that too.

[Antanas Sprindzhiukas]

Hi, glad you liked my suggestions on .ies importingmanaging and sorry for hard to read text – wanted to annotate that in a more understandable manner but ended up with that ) Anyway, if something like I described could be implemented it could speed up working with photometrics tremendously – same goes for both .ies’s  and .ldt’s latter, for some strange reason, are currently not supported by Corona (at least for now one needs to convert those to ies using something like this https://sourceforge.net/projects/qlumedit/ ), but are supported by vray if memory serves me well.

about: 5 (renaming) – The last version supports to postrMerge callback.
In the script “presetsPostFileMerge Example.ms” you can see how to assign custom name for objects merged with Project Manager.

well I cannot find PostFileMerge Example.ms in c:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax2017 – 64bit\ENU\scripts\TrackScripts\ProjectManager\presets folder all I see there are these – still I’m not sure if it would help me as I’m pretty stupid when things come to scripting, even if it’s some basic stuff )) 


about: Project Manager always supports to auto-detect compitible renderer.

Hmm it detects vray and scanline allright, but cannot detect Corona – maybe that’s because I use daily builds and it has something to do with P.M. inability to detect those as the versions of the same renderer –

 idk what it is but for now I need to select Corona as default thumbnail preview renderer to be able to render those – in my case it does not auto-detect it at all, thus that renderer selection dropdown was thought of ) Maybe there are some better way to make P.M to auto-detect Corona – perhaps it’s devs changed something in how Corona is detected by 3ds max in later versions, well, they tend to change a lot of things along the way ))  

[Antanas Sprindzhiukas]

1 good

2 no less good ) – just one thing – could you make the file extension’s overlay icon bigger – I would suggest 2x times bigger – it would greatly help when one manually renames preview renders to match the max file’s names 

3 good – not for me at this moment but I’m sure people using 4k displays will appreciate that

4 needs some testing – don’t have any opinion yet

5 – now here’s a catch, it is useful but not in all cases – for example, I tend to name files as they should be and the previous behavior when imported models had their group name automatically taken from file’s name suited me more than well – for now, it leaves original ones but the problem is, at least in 3ddd models case – people doing those often don’t give a damn about proper object naming thus the group’s names often result to be called group 01 or something like that – I think there’s a need for some sort of check tick to be made to allow both modes to coexist and for a user to choose which is more appropriate at a particular case. 

+ there’s another suggestion on naming – it would be very handy if PM could automatically rename (if the user wishes sopresses some button which would enable that) not only imported group’s name but objects, lights and materials which that file contains as well based on that dragged-in 3ds max’s file’s name which could be used as a prefix which could be added before the already present names during import/merge. That would be totally awesome when importing something into an already densely populated scenes where names like box 01-9999 are already quite common not to say materials named default 01-9999 which often results in quite a messy situation, same goes for the lights as well. For now, I merge those models into a different scene and then manually rename those using this http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/interactive-universal-renamer handy tool and then merge those into the main scene which works well but takes way more time than it could if PM could handle that automatically. The resulting names for objects etc could look like Prefix(merged max file’s name)(space)original object’s, material’s, light’s name – it still would look quite messy with all those generic names after prefix but would surely beat thousands of box00001,default00001,coronalight0001’s in the scene and would make managing those scenes, well, a little more manageable )

+ there’s another little one on the naming too – it would be great if PM could select only file’s name without selecting the extensions too during manual file naming inside it – sort of like Total Commander does – there been already a couple of times when I accidentally renamed files eliminating extension – not a big thing but could make life a little easier ) + this  it really is quite hard to see and edit

Another wish for UI enhancements would be – some buttons for render thumbnail + it’s settings and a renderer’s selection dropdown menu which could be placed here  – it would speed up doing manual thumbnail rendering quite a bit and dropdown renderer selector would help a lot when there are some different renderers prepared models in there. Maybe that selector dropdown wouldn’t be necessary if PM could auto-detect the model’s files active renderer and auto-choose appropriate renderer + preset according to that but not sure if that’s possible, perhaps that function is present already except for it didn’t work right for me once. 

 And here goes something totally unrelated to UI design yet it been nagging me for quite some time and I didn’t want to create another thread specifically for that. I hope that print-screen explains what I mean – If not, I will try to explain it more precisely in a separate post next time.   

[Antanas Sprindzhiukas]

Hi, there is some ideafeature request which I think could greatly benefit some of the Project Manager users and could even possibly attract some new customers too )).

Well that idea is rather simple at a glance and it is the merging of sketchup models in Project Manager.

That’s where things get’s more complicated or should I say more handyuseable for some )) cause the idea is not about just importingmerging those models by simply using some sort of suppressedautomatic default 3ds max dialog, but by doing so with style )) more specifically:

1) Automatic creation of a folder containing that model’s textures, lets say by using that original model’s name as a folder name template, it could have some options like creating that folder in the same folder where that model is originally located or in some user selected path like in original max’s importer dialog. More specifically, I think it could just move those textures from the standard max’s import folder to a new one, created by PM using that models name or something similar.

2) Automatic renaming of those textures on hdd with that model’s name as a prefix to original texture names contained in a model + relinking those textures paths to that folder.

3) Automatic application of edit normals modifier – automatic selection of all model’s normals using it, resetting those normals and then converting that model back to editable mesh to minimize the chance of appearance of corrupted smoothing groups
ormals which are quite frequently encountered on sketchup model import

Why I think that would be so handy, well, anyone who has used some large quantity of sketchup3d warehouse models in some large scale project (making some city for instance) eventually runs to a problems with duplicate texture names, mainly because original sketchup model makers usually don’t give a damn about those names and one can easily get hundreds or more texture paths pointing to some different folders with completely different textures named exactly the same, like 12brickwallfacadeauto_01etc.jpg,. And even if, during import, one creates texture folders for each model manually, it causes a major mess when that scene needs to be relocated and those scenes are generally very hard to manage, not to say what PM’s Search&Collect (not what it is it’s fault) just goes nuts dealing with those scenes and messes them completely and utterly as a result . Right now I’m dealing with such a scene and I am using that http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/library-track-relink handy script to rename those textures on hdd based on modelfolder name and automatically relink them, but even given the incredible usefulness of that script (o, how good it would be to have similar functionality in PM) the process is quite slow and tedious when some near 3.5k models containing more than 5.5k textures are involved, of course that’s an extreme case but it happens sometimes ))

So one can easily imagine how much time could be saved if those models were correctly imported or more specifically their mapstextures were correctly located and named and automatically put in an accordingly named folder in the first place. Not to mention how handy it would be to merge those using PM using same familiar interface and logic – that’s mainly the case why I’m writing
equesting it here and not requesting some specific sketchup importerimport helper on scriptspot or in some other place, which to tell the truth, was my original idea ))

　

[Antanas Sprindzhiukas]

Hi. Well, this particular theme was dark variation of this one http://givesnofuck.deviantart.com/art/Kombo-285108444 yet it doesn’t apply only to that exact theme for it does happen so with every other theme which has some dark windows explorer background too.

Edit: Same thing with standard high contrast themes + sorry I didn’t write that before – that’s win7