System plug-ins are combinations of one or more objects, along with optional controllers, or modifiers, or space warps, all working together. These plug-ins can provide high-order parametric control over a complex collection of scene entities. An example system is Biped which uses objects and master/slave controllers.
The Ring Array sample (\MAXSDK\SAMPLES\OBJECTS\RINGARRAY.CPP) demonstrates how a master controller can direct the animation of several nodes in the scene that have slave controllers assigned to them. In the Ring Array plug-in, box objects form a ring that take the shape of an animatable cyclic wave centered about a master parent dummy object. The nodes corresponding to the box objects are positioned and oriented by their slave transform controllers. The slave controllers simply reference the master controller and get their parameters from it at a certain time. This arrangement ensures that the master maintains control and directs the entire system.
This plug-in uses several parameters to define the behavior of the system, as follows:
These parameters can be altered at creation time in the Create panel, or can be later altered and animated using the Motion panel.
Note: This topic discusses the use of parameter block version 1 and thus is partially obsolete.
