8

Macro Recorder 825
pane so as not to clutter the recordings. Both
panes allow you to cut-and-paste, drag-and-drop,
edit, select, and execute code. You can resize the
panes by dragging on the split bar between them.
The left-en d of the status bar contains a resizable
Mini Listener. If the Mini Listener is not v isible,
drag on the vertical split bar at t he lef t edge of the
status bar to reveal t he Mini Listener. T he Mini
Listener panes act as single-line sliding windows
for the current line in the corresponding Listener
panes. The Mini Listener panes always show what
you are typing or where the edit cursor is placed
in the Listener panes. Con versely, anything you
type into a Mini Listener pane is entered into the
correspondingListenerpaneatthecurrentedit
cursor position.
The MAXScript Mini Listener on the Status B ar.
You can install the Listener into any viewp ort by
right-clicking the viewport label, choose Views >
Extended, and then MAXScript Listener.
For detailed information about the MAXScript
utility, open the
MAXScript Reference ,available
from Help menu > MAXScript Reference.
Macro Recorder
MAXScript menu > Macro Recorder
The MAXScript Macro Recorder captures many of
the actions performed by the user, and generates
the MAXScript commands that correspond to
those actions. Output from Macro Recorder
is displayed in the Macro Recorder pane of the
MAXScript Listener window. Several filtering
options are available that control what types of
user actions are recorded, whether the generated
MAXScript commands contain explicit object
references or are selection-relative, and whether
the generated MAXScr ipt commands contain
absolute or relative transforms and coordinates.
These options are set using the MacroRecorder
menu in the Listener window. The default option
settings are specified in the MAXScript page of
the 3ds Max Preferences dialog, as described in
MAXScript Preferences Settings (page 3–879) .
These settings can also be changed or set by editing
the [MAXScr ipt] section of the
3dsmax.ini file.
WhilemanyareasinthesoftwaregenerateMacro
Recorder output, there are also many areas that
do not. In general, most of the buttons on the
software’s menu bar, toolbars, status bar, Create
panel, and Modify panel will generate Macro
Recorder output. I f the button invokes a secondary
dialog, changing sett ings or performing ac tions
in the secondary dialog typically do not generate
Macro Recorder output. In the Create and Modify
panels, Macro Recorder output will typically
be generated if the object or modifier can be
created by MAXScript. In some cases, the plug-ins
implement ing an object or modifier has not been
updated to support Macro R ecorder, so that object
or modifier will not generate Macro Recorder
output.
MAXScript supports text drag-and-drop onto
toolbars to create Macro Script buttons. You can
select and drag text f rom any text window, such
as the Listener window panes or Editor windows,
onto any visible toolbar. The cursor changes to an
arrow with a + sign when it is OK to drop the text.
If you drop it, a Macro Script button is added to
the toolbar with the dropped text as the body of
the Macro Script. The classic case here would be
to drag text from the Macro Recorder pane onto a
toolbar to make a button that does the sequence
of events just recorded.
For detailed information about the MAXScript
utility, open the
MAXScript Reference ,available
from Help menu > MAXScript Reference.