Flipper Mechanism

26 votes
Version: 
0.96b
Date Updated: 
10/17/2008
Author Name: 
Arda Kutlu

Flipper Mechanism

This
Script creates a rigged flipper mechanism with all textures and
materials. With this script you can easily do old style airport
flipping boards, flipping clock, signs, etc.

Usage:
- Click "Assign Base Material". Prepare first material of material
editor as you wish, or drag drop existing maps into first slot.
Click the same button when done.

- Do the same thing to assign a material for characters on the plate
by clicking "Assign Character Material"


- Specify Texture Path and Filename


- Either select a presetted set of characters or create your own by
entering manually.

You can also enter new characters to the presets or delete some by
double clicking them

- Select a font. Arial is the default one.

- Adjust "Plate Length", "Plate Width", "Plate Height", "Plate Gap" and
"Texture scale and Size" values if you need.

You can change texture scale after the creation from the modifier panel
of "Master Controller" as well. All objects are instanced, meaning
changing each objects modifier values will change other objects as well.


- Hit "Create Flipper"
-- You can flip the plates from "Master Control" by animating flip value

Use at your own risk

version History:

Version 0.94

- Added variable texture render size options.

- Now you have to specify texture path before hitting create button. It is now possible to name textures and select different fileformats.

Version 0.95

-Max's standard bitmap save options instead of the custom one.

-Bug Fix --Connection between master controller and plates replaced with wired parameters instead of expression controller in order to work better with large amount of flippers.--

Additional Info: 

Special thanks to Lukas Lepicovsky for sharing
his piece of code which was used in ui-material editor
connection

Version Requirement: 
created in v2008, 0.96b is 2009 update
Video URL: 

Comments

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masquerade's picture

Hi Geoff, What is the exact

Hi Geoff,
What is the exact problem with max 2011? I didnt updated it for a long time but just checked if its ok with 2011 and 2012 and it seem working fine on my machine.
The problem may be related to:
-the default keyframe point (it should be 0 as default)
-default object controllers (bezier float)

If you can check these or any other customaziations you made in the newer version of max, we may figure out the problem.

About the fonts.. Yes I know it is very limited. The script actually doesnt recognize the currently installed fonts, it only knows the fonts which are installed by default. So if you for example delete arial from your system, it would throw an error about it.

I'll try to fix that, it was on my mind.

Sorry for the very late reply.

YoyoGraphics's picture

Great, but...

This is terrific script and a big life saver for me, but there are a couple issues:

• The mechanism doesn't seem to flip properly in Max 2011. It works just fine in Max 9 though, and I can merge it from there into 2011 and it works.

• It's only able to access a fraction of my fonts.

I can probably make due for now, but if this stuff is easily fixable it would be great to have an updated version.

Thanks!

- Geoff

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