splineCP
Binds spline vertices to point helpers via John Burnett's BindPoints modifier. Means you can animate vertices without going to subobject mode. Yummy! It can be useful to animate (and deform) tail - tentacles - etc.
Since the third release of max - you can use spline to drive mesh deformation. This is a great feature - but it has limitation: you have switch to subobject level everytime you want to animate vertices and making the whole animation process very non-intuitive.
That was then - this is now. By usingo this great plugin from John Burnett - BindPoints - now you can use any max object to control points movement.
Create Spline Control Points (or Create SplineCP for short) script creates several point helpers at every vertex in the spline. Then it binds each vertex to its corresponding point helper. The point helpers now acts as control points. The first vertex are bind to the largest control point - which is also the parent the rest of the control point. However - if you are using this method to animate legs - you can unlink all control points - relink them - and apply IK solver to the hierarchy.
This technique can be applied to many situation. You can use it to animate tail - tentacle - snake - face - pencil - string - cloth - vines - and many more.
Note that you need BindPoints modifier by John Burnett in order to use this script. Bind Points can be downloaded here: www.johnburnett.com/web/plugins.html.
Installation
Put Function_SplineCP.ms to maxfolderscriptsstartup and Macro_SplineCP.mcr to maxfolderuimacroscripts.