VFXArabia | The VFX creation of Alaa Alnahlawi (علاء النØلاوي)
Brick Wall Builder:
Brick Wall Builder is a scripted plugin created using 3ds max MCG and as the name tells it creates a various shapes of brick walls with huge amount of flexibility like you can choose multiple kinds of stones and apply a random materials to them in addition to changing the position,rotation and scale uniformly or randomly. It's as simple as just picking the shape and the brick and it will do the rest, and when you are done with distribution you like and thought of changing the shape length do worry also has the ability of maintaining the count and distribution while you are doing so.
The tool is broken into diffirent sections:
-The pick part where you're gonna pick your base shape, bricks and end part.
And you are able to view your bricks and end parts as proxy meshes (which still needs some optimization) in adition to enabling and disabling end parts.
-The General parameters:
I will just heighlight the important stuff here
Strides will allow you to move every other column of bricks up on the Z Axis a brick distance. This will allow you to achieve the normal brick wall shape when you dicrease the gap between the columns.
Z+ will shift your wall orientation either up or down.
Ativating Random Mat IDs will overwrite your mesh setting and give your bricks a random ID numbers from 1 until the Max Mat ID parameter is reached.
The rest of the sections are self explanatory, just a couple of transformation parameters.
Please bear in mind that there is no filtering for the picking part yet so when it say pick a curve do pick a curve and for the bricks part pick a mesh, an one more thing it only supports one welded line and this due to MCG limitation whick I hope it's gonna be fixed in future releases.
Update 1.1:
-I fixed the straight lines issue (in case your shape was a rectangle with straight angles for example).
-The parameters now in system unit.
-Increased the limits of some spinners.
-Fixed the min and max, so when you put one for min you will get one.
-Be careful if there is no objects in the end part list please do disable the end part check button or else the tool wont update.
Update 1.2:
-Random scale remapped and goes from 0 to 100 properly now.
-Adjusting the path vertexes on Z axis will mess up the bricks orientation in a weird way, now it's fixed and however you modify it it will stay pointing up.
Update 1.3:
-The bricks are one unit shifted on z axis when created, it's fixed now.
-Now the tool will preserve your bricks Material IDs and will not overwrite them to (1).
-I removed the proxy feature, it doesn't work as it's suppose to work. Instead you can apply BBox modifier to your brick.
-Since last update Side Shift uses the wrong direction, it's fixed now.
Update 1.4:
Error message solved : Can't find operator VuTransFormsOnCurve
How to install:
After downloading and unzipping the file go to Scripting menu and choose Install Max Creation Graph. after installing you will find it in command panel creation tab under VFXarabia category.
Requirements: 3ds 2016 Extension1
Direct Download 1.4
ScriptSpot Page
