technical architecture.

Got them to add the maxscript language at the code snippet site snipplr.com 

a maxscript snippet: http://snipplr.com/view/10508/check-the-status-of-a-remote-servers-service/

Here’s the current list of posts tagged as maxscript, skimpy so far i know! 

the site gives us easy commenting, community editing, and an easier taggable search interface than the current state of things: cgtalk forums. I think to get wide adoption we might have to make a max or python based interface to make for easier posting/retrieval without having to use the web browser however!

We’ll see how much time i get to escape from the 4 infants to get that done ! (hah)

Was playing around for a few minutes today with a studio setup of an old low poly model I had done for an interactive sales tool a while back. Liked the look

This handles the services perfectly for me here, I’m doing a little more work on it to support using the server.exe and vrayspawner exe versions as well, but that wont be finished for a while as its a spare time project. I’m really looking for feedback in terms of platforms you’re looking to use it on, and what features would be nice to see in addition.

Click here to Download

Install is pretty straightforward, simply unzip into your Scripts directory.. after a bit more testing for various people I’ll throw together an installer, but for now its slightly manual.

after you unzip it, assuming your max is installed in say, C:\3dsmax08\ you should see several files

Maxscript files: Access them as Maxscript Pulldown, Run Script.
C:\3dsMax08\server_tool_lite_05.mcr — Run this to install the script into the Customize UI, under category dbScripts.
C:\3dsMax08\ServerUtilities\server_tool_lite_05.ms — Run this to try out the tool without installing it into the Customize ui..

C:\3dsMax08\ServerUtilities\… There will be a few other exe’s in this directory, mostly commandline utilities that the script calls to batch modify things.

After you run the script the first time, it will create a file C:\3dsMax08\ServerUtilities\ServerToolLite.ini which will save your settings. In the script, it might be easier for you to add 1 server, and then browse to the ServerToolLite.ini file and manually add the other 19 servers in notepad.

Cheers,
Dave

I was asked to build a few basic slideshow type animations to play in the background at a company event, which is all well and good, except “we dont want to spend any time on this, but can you make them look good?” Thanks!

So in comes a fun little toy of a site Animoto. You simply feed it a selection of images and a music track and it does a little magic in the background for you, and out comes a fun little ‘slideshow’ here’s a sample of one of the animations it outputs:

Nifty eh? If there was a way to feasibly add video clips in, and per slide titles, then this could be a pretty badass little toy to use as a baseline.

Looking for a couple testers to beat up on a maxscript for me before I send it out to the whole world.

drop a line to dbuchhofer {AT} gmail {DOT} com if you’ve got a moment to try it out. Things should run much smoother than the old HTA/VBScript nonsense.

A couple simple tricks you can do with the remote process execution of the Slave Utils for fun. (Also corresponding commandlines for use with the psexec, which is what the slave utils is batching

you can start a remote command line on any of the machines in your list simply by doing a cmd.exe in the ‘ProcessToStart’ line.. its a small thing, but its helpful for certain things.. ie: copying files from one remote machine to another remote machine.. its *MUCH* faster if you do something like that FROM one of the remote machines, and skip the middleman.

How to start VNC on a remote machine, and have it work interactively… when you’re not allowed to install it as a service! (Read: Our IT uses its own copy of vnc that we aren’t allowed to Co-Opt for our own uses.. so we end up with 2 copies running!)

Apparently its tricky to run interactive remote processes that are allowed to interact with the desktop under full local privileges?! Go figure. Anyway, This is what you would enter to launch the vnc with the same privileges as if you were at that computer and hit the shortcut.

cmd.exe /c start “c:\program files\Realvnc\winvnc\winvnc.exe” “c:\program files\Realvnc\winvnc\winvnc.exe”

what this converts to in actual command line is something along the lines of:

psexec \\computer -i -d -u DOMAIN\Login -p password cmd.exe /c start “c:\program files\Realvnc\winvnc\winvnc.exe” “c:\program files\Realvnc\winvnc\winvnc.exe”

so it used the login and pass to launch the remote cmd.exe, but then used the local system privileges with the start command. allowing it to have full network and desktop interaction privileges.

More to come later.

A quick dmg reel one of the guys cooked up a few months back, page: EwingColeDMG
[kaltura-widget wid="jp5u0sa7ug" width="410" height="364" addpermission="3" editpermission="3" /]

testing out this Kaltura video plugin..