Animating Lights with Motion Capture- by David Goodman @ Max-Realms

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Unlike the noise controller (or any other type of controller), the float motion capture controller gives you direct control of what is going on in your scene in real time. In this tutorial you will learn how to make an omni light blink exactly when you want it to using motion capture. The setup is fairly simple, but there are a few steps along the way that may be a little confusing at first. I'll do my best to keep it simple. That in mind, I will use the "step" method in its purest form:

1. Create a plane in the Top viewport. The size is not important, we're just using it as an object to see the effects of light.

2. In the Left viewport, create an omni light about 10 grid squares above the plane. Set the multiplier of the light to "0" and hit enter.

3. Select and Right Click on the omni light. At the bottom of the dropdown list, select Trackview Selected.

4. When the Trackview window opens, you'll see +Omni01. Click on the + to reveal +Transform and +Object (Omni Light).

5. Click on the + Object (Omni Light). Now click on Multiplier to highlight it. Click on the Assign Controller button. In the
Assign Float Controller window that pops up, select Float Motion Capture and click OK.

6. Back in the Trackview window, right click on Multiplier and select Properties from the dropdown box. A window will open up: Motion Capture\Omni01\Multiplier. Under Device Bindings, Click on the Value: None box. Under Choose Device, click on Keyboard
Input Device and select OK.

7. Under Keyboard Input Device, Key Assignment, click on Assign and enter whatever key you want to use. I used "W". Now, at the bottom of this box is a section called Parameter Scaling. In the Range box, change the value to 1. Back in step 2, we set the light's multiplier to 0. Since we have set the range to 1, the multiplier's total range will now be from 0 to 1. This way, we will not have a "negative" light and the brightness will never go above 1. If you do want the light's intensity to be higher than 1 for, say, lightning or something, then set the Range value here accordingly. This setting can be easily edited later in the Motion Capture utility window.

8. Close any open window and click on the Utilities tab. Click on the Motion Capture button. If you get a midi interface warning, click OK and just ignore it. Under the Motion Capture rollout, in the large window, you should see a little box with Omni01\Multiplier next to it. Click on it so the little box turns red. This is how you activate and de-activate a single controller. Under Record Controls: click on Test and start pressing whichever keyboard key you assigned to be for motion capture. If you set up everything correctly, you should see the effects in the Perspective viewport. Okay, now you want to record it. Click on Test again to de-activate it. And click on Start underneath Record Controls. The time slider at the bottom of your Max window should be travelling from frame 0 to frame 100. Click on the mocap key while it's moving to record the light. Once it has reached 100, (or you click Stop) you can click on the animation play button to view it in the Perspective window.

That's pretty much it. Experiment to see what else you can do. Mocap can be used for so many things that I can not begin to touch on them all here. I will probably do more tutorials in the future on motion capture, so send me requests for tutorials on what you want to know. Thanks!