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Posted: Feb 19, 2009
Category:
My name is Christopher Diggins and I am the documentation writer for the 3ds Max SDK. This blog will discuss various topics related to the 3ds Max SDK. I will also have the occasional interview and guest post from various 3ds Max experts. I am also interested in interviewing casual users of the SDK, so if you want to share your thoughts let me know! I am hoping to try and establish a better connection with the 3ds Max SDK users.
I have been with Autodesk since last September and we have been working hard to improve the SDK documentation. In a survey conducted last year by Attila Szabo, one of the highest priorities for 3ds Max SDK was better documentation.
Overhauling the 3ds Max SDK documentation is a long-term effort, but the next release of the 3ds Max SDK documentation already has some significant improvements that I hope you will like. The biggest changes are a complete rearrangement the table of contents and improved linking from the programmer's guide to the reference API documentation.
I look forward to talking with users of the 3ds Max SDK. Right now, I would especially love to hear your suggestions regarding the documentation. For example: are there any tutorials that you would like to see? What do you think of a cookbook approach to documentation? What part of the SDK confuses you the most?
P.S. If you are going to be a GDC this year don't forget to reserve your place at the free Max SDK training offered by the Autodesk Developer Network. For more information see Shane Griffith's blog.
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| Posted by 3D Reverie on May 06, 2010 at 11:37 AM
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Anyone,
I'm an architect and 3D Max artist. I want to start using game engines to import our 3d Max models in to. I downloaded an AU 2009 document on using game engines, but it's very vague. I have purchases the game CRYSIS, but I don't see the editor.exe that documentation from AU points to. I have also downloaded the SDK for CRYSIS but I'm not sure what to do next. Can anyone help or lead me to some directions. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
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| Posted by 3D Reverie on May 06, 2010 at 11:37 AM
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Anyone,
I'm an architect and 3D Max artist. I want to start using game engines to import our 3d Max models in to. I downloaded an AU 2009 document on using game engines, but it's very vague. I have purchases the game CRYSIS, but I don't see the editor.exe that documentation from AU points to. I have also downloaded the SDK for CRYSIS but I'm not sure what to do next. Can anyone help or lead me to some directions. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
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| Posted by superrune on Apr 23, 2010 at 07:47 AM
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"Some of the "example" code they have now is literally 20000 lines of completely uncommented code, with variables like "a,b,c,d,e,f,g", it is simply not possible to follow it, even for veteran programmers. There needs to be at least one example for each type of plugin, under 2000 lines and COMMENTED."
I very much agree with that sentence, it's really hard for a learning programmer to read the SDK-samples the way they are today.
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| Posted by Christopher Diggins on Dec 03, 2009 at 09:33 AM
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| Thanks Shadowsill. This kind of input is very valuable. I agree that smaller better and better commented samples need to be made a priority. When the next version of the 3ds Max SDK is delievered, I'll point out the latest and greatest samples on this blog.
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| Posted by shadowsill on Dec 03, 2009 at 08:59 AM
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I would like to strongly reiterate the need for *basic* examples. Some of the "example" code they have now is literally 20000 lines of completely uncommented code, with variables like "a,b,c,d,e,f,g", it is simply not possible to follow it, even for veteran programmers. There needs to be at least one example for each type of plugin, under 2000 lines and COMMENTED. Readability needs to be the goal, not practicallity - if an example is short, but does something we'll never need, that's fine, as long as we can understand it.
With regards to the documentation specifically, I'd like to see some sort of documentation on constants, there are all these big tables of #defines with no indication of what each one is supposed to be for, it's pretty worthless as it is.
I've also seen several methods that have no documentation at all - e.g. the last one I saw, I think mesh or objectstate has a "getNormal(int i)" method which is found nowhere in the documentation. I don't know whether it gets a vertex normal, a face normal, does it generate a normal itself or does one have to be pre-computed, etc. If it's a private method, it needs to be marked as such, otherwise, it needs documentation.
A simple picture with a possible scene heirarchy would have helped me a lot at the start - e.g. if I make a scene with a sphere with a material and a cube with a material and attach a lookat constraint between the two, show me a picture of all the nodes, who are the referencemakers, who are the referencetargets, etc.
Well, those are the biggest issues I've had, although it's really just the tip of the iceberg. Thanks for giving us the chance to offer our input.
(I should note I am still stuck using 3dsmax 8, so maybe some of these things have been fixed)
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