3dsmax UI flyouts

Hi there!

Did a search on maxs’ usage of “flyouts” for the toolbars.

Is there any documentation on these? They are only mentioned in the help file and nothing in the maxscript help. Very sparse results on google aswell.

Thanks in advance.

Can you elaborate what you mean by “flyout”? If you mean the collapsable sections inside the scrolling vertical panels (like Create, Modify panels, etc.) those are called “rollouts”. Lots of hits to be had in the MXS help file for those.

You mentioned “toolbars” so maybe you mean somethng different?

The max help calls the “click and hold to expand” function of the toolbars for flyouts. Such as the snap buttons in the main toolbar . Ive found something in the *.cui files called “flyoffct”. Maybe its not something that you can create that easily for your own toolbar ?

Adam, you can see an example of a flyout next to the FOV: property in a FreeCamera’s Parameters rollout.

Commands that can be mapped to buttons, keyboard shortcuts, and menus, are created using MacroScripts (*.mcr) files. The common practice is to create a tool as a *.ms file and then create a *.mcr wrapper file that enables it to be mapped in the UI. As far as I know the *.mcr format does not include a way to nest multiple commands into a flyout button.

Editting the various *.ui files (.cui, *.mui, *.kui, etc…) files is possible, but potentially problematic. Any time a user makes a change in “Customize\Customize User Interface…” the associated *.*ui file will be re-written by Max, potentially blowing away your additions.

Thanks Adam and Jeff, guess you confirmed my suspicions. Usually when something isn’t documented, it’s not there or it’s for secret eyes only :P.

I’ll read into *. mcr wrappers, I suppose its quite related to rollouts then?

Thanks for your time guys!

I have another issue, but it’s not UI related. I’ll start up another topic!

Macroscripts and rollouts are not related. Macroscripts came about in Max 1.2 (or thereabouts) because people wanted a way to add their Maxscript created tools to the UI. Before that you had to run all of your Maxscripts from the Utility panel. A rollout is a standard MaxScript UI element, and is the basis in MaxScript for creating a form to contain UI elements.