You’ll see the MetaNode Toolbar appear above your command panel. It contains the ‘Inbox’ and ‘Send’ buttons.
How MetaNode Works
Once you install...
First, select some objects you wish to Send...
Whenever you Send a MetaNode message, whatever is selected currently is what’s going to be sent. The message will also include a thumbnail of your currently active viewport, the name of the max file it came from, and a timestamp.
Click the 'Send' button...
And open up the Send UI. Here you’ll see a list of all the machines on your network that have a MetaNode Client installed. Machines which are currently offline, or don’t have a MetaNode Client running appear grayed out.
Add some users to send to...
Either select some users and press the ‘>>’ button or use the search box and press enter to add users.
In this example we’re sending a message to ‘The Boss’ and the ‘Project Lead’. Even if ‘The Boss’ is offline at this point, you can still message them, they will receive the message once they come online or connect to the MetaNode Server.
You can also add a note, to explain what it is you’re sending.
Once you’re done – press ‘Send’!
People you sent the message to will get a notification...
Upon receiving the message, a recipient’s Inbox button will shake and display display the number of unseen messages.
When you get a message, click the Inbox button...
And open up the MetaNode Inbox UI. You’ll see a list of all your messages here. Choose a message and click it’s ‘Import’ button.
This will open the MetaNode Compact Loader...
It’s a slim version of the 3dsmax native Merge dialog, with one big difference – it’s not modal. In fact, none of the MetaNode UI elements are. So you can keep them open as long as you like and continue working until you decide to use them.
Select some objects and choose your desired merge settings, then press the ‘Merge Selected’ button.
(Pressing ‘Merge Selected’ without touching the object list will automatically merge everything.)
And that's it!
Your selected objects will appear in your scene, in the right spot, just like when you merge a max file.
The ease of sharing 3dsmax data offered by MetaNode opens up many ways to enhance your worklow, and we're sure you'll quickly discover a lot of them, just like we did when we first tried our prototype, years ago. We hope it will change your workflow for the better, like it did ours.
Enjoy sharing and collaborating, never having to navigate to some obscure network folder, and never having to manually maintain and delete temporary files.
Oh and also, did we mention you can send messages to yourself too? 