Strata Design 3D CX has several scriptable areas.
Dialogs can be built and displayed by a Lua script and the Scripting menu can be dynamically added to. Several of the standard object node types can be scripted, there's a scriptable effect shader type called Script FX, the standard camera lens definitions can be changed via scripts, and you can write scripts directly in the scripting console.
Each of these scriptable areas is explored in the sections below.
A Quck Safety Note
You need to be very careful to avoid infinite loops in your scripts. It's possible to lock up the user interface when scripts loop forever on UI threads.
Some day in the future we'll safeguard against this, but for now you need to avoid infinite loops and even very slow or lengthy loops in your scripts.
It's fairly easy to build user interface dialogs from a script. Go here to learn more by example.
Scripts can be written for individual object "nodes". 3D objects use nodes to track data such as position, offset, scale and rotation. Strata 3D CX allows independent scripting of these nodes to create complex animation and modeling effects.
The basic scripting concepts chapter demonstrated scripting the scale node of an object using the predefined "HeartBeat" example. The other node types are nearly identically supported, with each node type having it's own available example scripts, and with the notable difference that the arguments available to the script body differ for each node type.
By selecting the FX tab of the Resource palette a special Script FX can be created (or an existing one can be edited). Script FX are specifically designed to allow the scripting of special effects that can be applied to one or more objects using the same drag and drop simplicity of applying a surface texture.
Scripts added to the scripting menu can enable or disable their menu items, check and uncheck them, and respond to a menu selection based on the dynamic state of the program. It's a very convenient place to put useful scripts, and with a nice dialog UI they can even gather additional user input.
Although there isn't a visible user interface provided you can provide scripts to redefine one of the standard camera lenses. The Cubic camera shipped with Strata Design 3D CX is defined by a script. This section will show you how to add a new lens type to be used in place of one of the pre-existing lens types.
For program wide and for wide open scripting nothing beats using the Scripting Console. The reduced level of structure makes it possible to do many things in Strata Design 3D CX, some of them dangerous. This section will get you started.