To infinity and yadda, yadda, yadda......

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Back again with another on of those block rockin' scripts, this time I'm not too sure of how useful it will be in the real world, but what the heck!

I'll have to admit I sort of pinched this idea from a lightwave plug-in thing that I saw on the net. I can't remember what it was called or who wrote it, but this is sort of like that, so credit to this bloke for that thing wot e wrote. This ones called "Draw EX" standing for draw extrude, and thta's just what you do. You pick some faces on your object then click Draw EX, then you scribble a pah down and then extrude those faces along the path. I've thrown in a couple of loft tools as well.

Insert tab A into slot B

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To install this script, as always, copy it to your "ui\macroscripts" dir. Next time you restart max you'll find it under "draw_curve2" in the "Chugg's Tools" category. I suggest you put it on a toolbar, but it will work just as well from the quad. One point to note is that the dialog for this is modal. This means that you won't be able to do anything else in max while the dialog is open. This is just because when you've started to do the extrude bad things would happen if your mind started to wander and you went off and fiddled with something else. Not that your mind would wander of couse. Sharp as a tack you are (yeah right!)

Hybrid theory

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Tjis is the whee rascle. Once you've picked some faces (the faces you pick must be a continuous group ie all faces must make one block. They must all share at least one edge. Two triangles joined only by a vert will not do) a grid will also pop up. In line with the centre of your face selection and aligned with it's average normal, this is your scribble plane. You can start to draw a path on it. The first point you click will be the start point - it is coloured red. Now you can either drag or click around to make your path. Dragged points are coloured green and clicked points are coloured yellow. This is to allow you to create linear shapes as well as nice curves. You can mix and match as much as you like. When your done right click. When you do this dialog will pop up allowing you to change the number of segments in the extrude. The start point of the path is always moved to the middle of the face selection, so it's alright if you don't start it just there. You can see that you can also change the scaling and twisting of the cross sections as they travel along the path. As explained earlier for saftey reasons this dialog is modal, meaning you can't do anything else with the max ui while it is open, including panning or orbiting the viewport. make sure your in a good position to see your extrude before you start. When your happy just click the extrude button and it will build your mesh. The original faces are deleted but the new section is not welded to the base part. This is because A. it means easy selection of the new extrude as an element and B.I couldn't be arsed to write that bit - so it works both ways.

The war of art

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Here are a few pics to give you a better idea of what to expect....

start off with a cube and convert it to an editable mesh.

Select the top faces

start Draw EX and click once round about the middle of the selected faces and once more a little way off in a vertical direction

Increase the segments and scale it in a little bit

then add a little twist - or maybe a lot

After the extrude

You'll notice that the end is not capped. I know, I know, I still need to add this bit. But I'm sure that it's not beyond your skills to add a cap - yes?

And if that wasn't enough for you here's a little video demo of the whole shebang.

Av it then!

Release history:-