IntroductionWelcome| 00:04 | Hi! I'm Aaron F. Ross and I'd like
to welcome you to 3ds Max 2013
| | 00:09 | Essential Training.
| | 00:11 | 3ds Max is a top-tier
application for digital content creation.
| | 00:16 | Here are some of the topics
we'll be covering in this course:
| | 00:19 | modeling with polygons, curves, and
subdivision surfaces, defining shading
| | 00:25 | properties with materials and maps,
setting lights such as spot and omni lights,
| | 00:32 | adjusting camera position and Field of
View, animating objects with keyframes
| | 00:38 | and controllers, keyframe editing
in the Curve Editor, constructing and
| | 00:43 | animating hierarchies, and final
output rendering to an image sequence.
| | 00:49 | I've been using 3ds Max and its
predecessor 3D Studio since the early 90s, and
| | 00:55 | now I'm happy to share my experience with you.
| | 00:57 | So let's dive into 3ds
Max 2013 Essential Training.
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| Using the exercise files| 00:00 | If you're a premium subscriber to lynda.com,
then you can download and install
| | 00:05 | the exercise files for the course.
| | 00:07 | I've got them here on my Desktop as you can see.
| | 00:10 | If you're not a premium subscriber,
then you can create your own Exercise Files
| | 00:15 | folder, as we will see later in the course.
| | 00:18 | Inside that Exercise Files folder,
you'll see numerous subfolders and these
| | 00:23 | are created by 3ds Max.
| | 00:25 | This is a 3ds Max project folder
structure, and all the different types of files
| | 00:30 | are kept in specific locations.
| | 00:32 | For example, in the scenes folder,
we've got a bunch of 3ds Max .max files
| | 00:38 | organized by chapter.
| | 00:41 | Again, if you're a premium
subscriber, then you can download these.
| | 00:44 | If you're not, you can create
them as you go through the course.
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1. Getting StartedSetting user interface defaults| 00:00 | Before we begin in earnest, I'd like to
take a moment to show you how to change
| | 00:04 | the color scheme of the 3ds Max user interface.
| | 00:08 | This can be helpful.
| | 00:09 | We all have our own preferences.
| | 00:11 | I prefer a lighter interface because
I find that the white text on a black
| | 00:15 | background is harder for me to read.
| | 00:17 | So I'm just going to go into the
Customize menu and choose Custom UI
| | 00:20 | and Defaults Switcher.
| | 00:23 | In this dialog, we've got two sections.
| | 00:26 | On the left are the tool settings.
| | 00:27 | This lets you choose the default
behavior of the tools in 3ds Max.
| | 00:31 | And as you click through these
different options, it'll actually tell you
| | 00:34 | what those options are.
| | 00:36 | Usually, you'll just choose Max, which
will be the default 3ds Max tool settings.
| | 00:42 | At the moment, I'm more interested in
the other section here, which is the UI
| | 00:47 | schemes, and I'm going to choose ame-light
which stands for Autodesk Media and Entertainment.
| | 00:54 | Click the Set button and don't be
alarmed when the screen flashes.
| | 00:58 | 3ds Max is just loading up all the icons,
and you will see a message that says,
| | 01:03 | The default settings will take
effect the next time you restart 3ds Max.
| | 01:08 | So I do recommend that you shut down 3ds
Max and reopen the program before continuing.
| | 01:14 | And that's how you change the
user interface color scheme in Max.
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| Setting preferences| 00:00 | Let's set a couple of preferences in
3ds Max and simplify the interface a
| | 00:04 | little bit for teaching.
| | 00:06 | First of all, you'll see that you may
have this big area of the interface here
| | 00:11 | called the Graphite Ribbon.
| | 00:13 | I'm just going to shut that off because we
won't be using that until later in the course.
| | 00:17 | So I'll click this icon on the
main toolbar and that will take the
| | 00:20 | Graphite Ribbon away.
| | 00:21 | I'm also going to hide this thing
here which is called the ViewCube.
| | 00:25 | If you click on that accidentally, it
kind of does things to the interface here.
| | 00:29 | So I'm going to choose to disable that
by going to Views > ViewCube > Show the
| | 00:35 | ViewCube, and that'll turn it off.
| | 00:37 | Now let's go into the 3ds Max Preferences.
| | 00:40 | In the Customize menu, I'll choose Preferences.
| | 00:44 | Most important thing I want to point
out to you right away is the Help tab,
| | 00:48 | click on that, and you'll see that the
help files for 3ds Max are by default
| | 00:53 | hosted on the Autodesk web site.
| | 00:55 | This can be problematic if you're not
connected to the Internet, or if you're on
| | 00:59 | a slow connection, or if
there's a server load on that day.
| | 01:03 | So I don't recommend that you use the web site.
| | 01:05 | I actually recommend that you click
Local Computer/Network and then click
| | 01:10 | the Download button.
| | 01:11 | That will take you to the 3ds Max web
site where you can actually download a
| | 01:16 | full copy of the Help.
| | 01:17 | Then once you've placed it in the
appropriate location, you can go back into
| | 01:21 | this Preference Settings and click
Browse to point at where you've installed
| | 01:26 | that Help documentation.
| | 01:27 | While we're here in the Preference
Settings, I also want to go to the Files tab
| | 01:33 | and there is a very important
setting in here that I want you to enable.
| | 01:37 | It says File Handling, Convert
local file paths to Relative.
| | 01:42 | We want to enable that.
| | 01:43 | What that's going to do is ensure
that when we add assets to our 3ds Max
| | 01:49 | project, the location of those assets
will be recorded relative to the current
| | 01:55 | project folder and not an absolute
path that is recorded relative to a
| | 02:00 | particular computer or
drive letter or volume name.
| | 02:05 | This will become a little bit
clearer as we go forward in the course.
| | 02:08 | But again, the reason I'm doing this is
to ensure that when I create a project
| | 02:13 | folder in 3ds Max, that folder will be
portable and I will be able to move my
| | 02:18 | assets to a different machine or to a
different folder on the same machine and
| | 02:23 | the links to all of the
files will not get broken.
| | 02:26 | So I have enabled Convert
local file paths to Relative.
| | 02:31 | And those are just a couple of the
most essential preferences that we need to
| | 02:35 | set in 3ds Max before we begin.
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| Using project folders| 00:00 | There is one more thing that we
need to do before we can really begin.
| | 00:03 | We need to set 3ds Max to a project folder.
| | 00:08 | A project folder is a way of
tracking assets, of managing the links
| | 00:12 | between multiple files.
| | 00:14 | 3D programs are different
from 2D programs like Photoshop.
| | 00:18 | In Photoshop, you open a document and everything
that you need is right there in that one file.
| | 00:24 | But in a 3D program like 3ds Max,
you're dealing with lots of different files.
| | 00:29 | You load a scene file which has your
geometry and animation but that's linked to,
| | 00:34 | for example, texture files or images on disk.
| | 00:37 | And in order for all of those links to
be preserved you need to have some system
| | 00:41 | for doing that and that's
called a project folder.
| | 00:44 | Up here in the upper left-hand
corner of the 3ds Max interface is the
| | 00:48 | Caption Bar, and this button over here
on the far right is called the Project
| | 00:54 | Folder button.
| | 00:56 | And if I hover my mouse over that you
will see it says my current project is in
| | 01:02 | the Documents folder,
that's the default project.
| | 01:04 | What we're going to do now is we're
going to either create a new project or set
| | 01:10 | to an existing project.
| | 01:12 | If you are a lynda.com premium
subscriber then you can download the exercise
| | 01:16 | files and then use this command to
point at that folder, and then all the links
| | 01:23 | for the exercise files will be preserved.
| | 01:26 | If you're not a premium subscriber,
then you can create a new project folder
| | 01:30 | using this same button because it
is in fact a two-in-one command.
| | 01:35 | I'll click that, and on my Desktop I've
placed the exercise files for the course.
| | 01:44 | Let me open that up so you can see
that there are a bunch of curiously named
| | 01:47 | folders inside that.
| | 01:49 | It's very important at this stage that
you make sure you're clicking the root
| | 01:53 | level or the top level of
the project folder structure.
| | 01:57 | If these curiously named folders are
inside the currently selected folder then
| | 02:02 | 3ds Max will simply set to that project.
| | 02:06 | In other words, that will be the
new home base for all assets.
| | 02:10 | But if there isn't a project folder
inside, for example, if I click on this
| | 02:16 | archives, there is nothing inside that now.
| | 02:19 | If I click the OK button now what
would happen is 3ds Max would create an
| | 02:23 | entirely new set of project folders
inside this existing project folder.
| | 02:29 | I'd have nested project folders one
inside the other and I'd go right down the
| | 02:34 | rabbit hole and that wouldn't be a good outcome.
| | 02:37 | So make sure that you're selecting
the root level or the top level of
| | 02:42 | the project folder.
| | 02:43 | And again, if you don't already have
an existing project folder then you can
| | 02:46 | just create one wherever you like.
| | 02:48 | I'll click OK and now if I go back and
hover my mouse over that button you'll
| | 02:53 | see that the current Project Folder is
now the Exercise Files for the course,
| | 02:58 | and that's how you set a
project folder in 3ds Max.
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2. The 3ds Max InterfaceGetting familiar with the interface| 00:00 | Let's take a quick tour of the essential
components of the 3ds Max user interface.
| | 00:06 | Previously I mentioned the Caption Bar
up here, which is where you'll find the
| | 00:11 | most common file commands, like Open and Save.
| | 00:14 | There is also an Application menu
here and that gives us access to some of
| | 00:19 | the deeper file commands, like importing a
foreign file format, for example from AutoCAD.
| | 00:25 | The main menu in 3ds Max is kind of a
limited menu, it doesn't have all of the
| | 00:30 | commands that you will need.
| | 00:32 | A lot of these commands are
actually redundant to other places in the
| | 00:37 | interface, and there are in fact quite
a number of commands that don't show up
| | 00:41 | in the menus at all.
| | 00:42 | This should be familiar to most of
us and it's a cascading set of menus.
| | 00:47 | Below the Menu Bar is something
called the Main toolbar and this gives us
| | 00:52 | commands such as moving objects.
| | 00:55 | There are many toolbars in 3ds
Max and most of them are hidden.
| | 00:59 | If I right-click on an empty spot on
the Main toolbar I'll get a list of all
| | 01:05 | the possible toolbars.
| | 01:06 | For example, the Axis Constraints,
that's the one that we'll be using later.
| | 01:10 | The toolbars are dockable and I can just
drag them around and drop them wherever
| | 01:14 | I want, so it's quite convenient.
| | 01:16 | I've got another one here on the left-
hand side, it's called the Viewport Panel
| | 01:21 | Layout toolbar and it's kind of
actually empty, it's taking up a bit of space.
| | 01:26 | So I'm going to right-click and hide the
Viewport Layouts. I don't really need that.
| | 01:31 | The main area of the interface is taken
up by the so-called viewports and we've
| | 01:36 | got a Perspective view, which is like a
camera and then we've got Front, Top, and
| | 01:42 | Left views which are called
Orthographic views, and those are like engineering
| | 01:46 | design documents. They are just
2D representations of objects.
| | 01:51 | On the right-hand side is something
called the Command panel, and this is really
| | 01:55 | the heart of the program, and the
Command panel has sub-panels within it, we'll
| | 02:00 | be looking at all these.
| | 02:02 | The Command panel is also resizable,
you can drag in order to make it larger,
| | 02:07 | and it can be undocked as well.
| | 02:10 | You can just right-click and choose Float.
| | 02:12 | So this is helpful
sometimes if you have two monitors.
| | 02:18 | Go ahead and drag it back over there
and it will dock back to the interface.
| | 02:23 | At the bottom of the interface we've
got animation controls. We've got a
| | 02:26 | Timeline that's listed in frames,
there are bunch of buttons for doing things
| | 02:30 | like creating animation, there are
Transport Controls and also most importantly
| | 02:35 | at the extreme lower right-hand corner
are controls for the viewports themselves.
| | 02:41 | So that you can navigate within your scenes.
| | 02:43 | We'll be covering all of these in
greater detail later in the course.
| | 02:47 | For now that's just a quick introduction to
the main components of the 3ds Max interface.
| | 02:53 | What they're called, where
they are, and how they work.
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| Using the Create and Modify panels| 00:00 | Creating and adjusting objects in 3ds
Max is quite simple and interactive.
| | 00:05 | All you need to do is go to the
Create panel and that's opened by default.
| | 00:10 | Within that Create panel are a bunch of
sub-panels for creating different types
| | 00:13 | of objects, and the default one is Geometry.
| | 00:17 | In the language of 3D,
Geometry refers to models or objects.
| | 00:21 | So for example, I can create a Box and
click on that button, and to create the
| | 00:25 | box I'll go over to this Perspective
Viewport and click and hold the mouse and
| | 00:29 | drag it out, and I'm continuing
to hold the mouse as I do this.
| | 00:34 | And you can see, in the Create panel, that
I'm getting numbers that are indicating
| | 00:38 | the length and width of the box.
| | 00:41 | When I release the mouse then I can
drag upward to set the height of the box.
| | 00:45 | And when I'm finish with that box I
can click again to complete that box.
| | 00:50 | If I haven't clicked off of anything
then I can still go over here to these
| | 00:54 | parameters and adjust the Length,
Width, and Height of the box.
| | 00:59 | If I click again in the
viewports I can create another box.
| | 01:05 | And again, it's click and hold, then
release, and then drag up to set the height.
| | 01:10 | When I am finished making boxes, I can
choose a different tool such as the Select
| | 01:15 | Object tool up here, and that
will turn the Box Creation tool off.
| | 01:19 | I could also just right-click in the
viewport and that will exit out of Box Creation.
| | 01:24 | Once I've made objects then I can
adjust their parameters by going to another
| | 01:30 | panel called the Modify panel, and if
I select an object, once again, I have
| | 01:35 | access to its parameters, such
as Length, Width, and Height.
| | 01:40 | Select a different object and
adjust its parameters as well.
| | 01:44 | These are primitive objects, just
building blocks, I can go back to the Create
| | 01:48 | panel and make other primitives like a Sphere.
| | 01:52 | Sphere is easier because it only has a
radius, I'll just click and drag and release.
| | 01:57 | If I am finished making objects
of that type I can right-click.
| | 02:00 | If you're more comfortable with a
menu interface 3ds Max does provide
| | 02:04 | that functionality.
| | 02:06 | You can also go into the Create menu
and choose your object type such as the
| | 02:11 | Standard Primitives > Cone.
| | 02:15 | And for each one of these
primitive types you'll have slightly
| | 02:18 | different creation methods.
| | 02:19 | With a cone, I'll click and drag to set
the radius, release the mouse and drag
| | 02:23 | up to set the height of the cone, click
again and then drag to set the second radius.
| | 02:31 | Finally, click yet again to finish that
cone and then right-click to exit the tool.
| | 02:37 | So each primitive has slightly
different creation methods. Once you've created
| | 02:42 | an object you can go into its
Modify panel and adjust its parameters.
| | 02:47 | That's a quick introduction to creation
and modification of objects in 3ds Max.
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| Navigating in the viewports| 00:00 | Once you've got something in your scene,
you'll want to use 3ds Max Viewport
| | 00:04 | Navigation controls to view the
objects from different points of view.
| | 00:08 | This can be done from the icons at the
extreme lower right-hand corner of the interface.
| | 00:12 | For example, the Hand will let you
move left and right and up and down in any
| | 00:18 | viewport, either Perspective, or
in these Orthographic 2D viewports.
| | 00:24 | You've also got a Magnifying Glass,
which will let you move forward and back.
| | 00:30 | And also, most helpfully, an
Orbit tool, which is this one here.
| | 00:34 | So I'll click on Orbit and then
activate a viewport, and I want to make sure
| | 00:39 | that I click in the center of the
circle here, and the reason for that is
| | 00:43 | that as long as I click in the center of that
circle, than my horizon line will remain level.
| | 00:50 | If I click on the outside here, I'll
get what's known as a Dutch Tilt or a
| | 00:54 | Canted Angle, and that's
almost never a desirable outcome.
| | 00:58 | So how do we get back to where we were?
| | 01:00 | Of course I could try to tilt it back,
but I'll never really be sure if I get it
| | 01:04 | exactly right on the money.
| | 01:06 | There's no numerical input for this.
| | 01:09 | This leads us to a discussion
of undo for viewport controls.
| | 01:13 | 3ds Max, like many 3D programs,
has actually two separate undos.
| | 01:19 | There's an Undo buffer for scene
commands, like moving an object, and there's a
| | 01:24 | separate Undo buffer for
Viewport commands like Orbit.
| | 01:28 | So if I hit Ctrl+Z or if I use the Undo
button up here, that would actually not
| | 01:33 | undo the viewport move, and in fact, I
might undo something that I didn't intend
| | 01:38 | to, like creating a box or whatnot.
| | 01:40 | To undo a Viewport command, you can go
to the name of the viewport, in this case
| | 01:45 | Perspective, click on that and
then you've got an Undo command here.
| | 01:51 | And you notice that it's got a shortcut
here, which is Shift+Z. So I could hit
| | 01:55 | Shift+Z and that would do the same thing.
| | 01:57 | So that's how you can use the
viewport navigation icons in 3ds Max.
| | 02:01 | What you'll find though is that these
will tend to slow you down and it's better
| | 02:05 | and easier to use the hotkeys.
| | 02:06 | We'll cover that in the following movie.
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| Using hotkeys| 00:00 | Viewport navigation hotkeys are
incredibly useful in any 3D program.
| | 00:05 | It will free you up from having to
worry about clicking on icons just in order
| | 00:09 | to be able to move through the scene.
| | 00:11 | So you really will want to
memorize the viewport navigation hotkeys.
| | 00:15 | Luckily in 3ds Max, it's quite a simple matter.
| | 00:18 | It's all about the middle mouse button.
| | 00:20 | I'm going to choose the Select Object
tool so that you can see I do not have any
| | 00:25 | Viewport Navigation tools active, and
I'll hold down the middle mouse button,
| | 00:29 | and that lets me navigate left and
right and up and down in any viewport.
| | 00:34 | So I'm moving my point of view
left and right and up and down.
| | 00:39 | If I hold down the Alt key and the
middle mouse button in an active viewport,
| | 00:44 | then that lets me tumble, and this is
preferable to using the icon, because I'll
| | 00:49 | never get a Dutch Tilt.
| | 00:51 | I'll never get a Canted Angle this way.
| | 00:53 | The horizon line will always stay level.
| | 00:56 | And to move forward and back in
your scene, it's Ctrl+Alt+Middle mouse
| | 01:03 | button all at once, and that
lets you dolly forward or back in any viewport.
| | 01:10 | Little bit easier way to do this is
just to turn the mouse wheel, if you've got
| | 01:14 | one, and that will also dolly forward and back,
but as you see it's doing it in increments.
| | 01:19 | So if you need finer control,
it's Ctrl+Alt+Middle mouse.
| | 01:25 | Another really useful hotkey is to
minimize or maximize the viewport.
| | 01:30 | There's a button for that in the
extreme lower right-hand corner of the
| | 01:33 | interface, Maximize Viewport Toggle,
and I can click on that and it will
| | 01:39 | maximize the current viewport.
| | 01:42 | But that's just going to slow you down.
| | 01:44 | The hotkey is much faster, and it's
Alt+W, that will maximize a viewport.
| | 01:50 | Finally, I want to warn you about
something that could be problematic, and that
| | 01:55 | is orbiting in an Orthographic Viewport.
| | 01:58 | If I click on one of these Ortho views,
like a 2D Front View, and I tumble in it,
| | 02:03 | or orbit in it, with Alt and middle
mouse, it will be converted to something
| | 02:07 | called a User View, and this might be
useful to you if you're an engineer and
| | 02:13 | you're used to working with
isometric drawings and so on.
| | 02:16 | For most of us it's going to be confusing.
| | 02:19 | We can change the behavior of 3ds
Max so that this will not happen.
| | 02:23 | I'll go ahead and Undo those rotations
a couple of times, and I'm back to the
| | 02:30 | standard 2D Orthographic View.
| | 02:32 | I'm just going to set a 3ds Max
preference so that, that will not happen again.
| | 02:38 | Customize > Customize User Interface,
and I'll go to the section that says
| | 02:44 | Mouse, and I'll just activate this
switch that says Lock Orbit in orthographic,
| | 02:51 | and that way I won't need to worry
about that happening accidentally.
| | 02:57 | And now when I try to orbit in here I
get a little do not enter sign, and that
| | 03:01 | will make sure that those 2D
views are always locked to the grid.
| | 03:06 | Those are the most essential
keyboard shortcuts for navigation in the
| | 03:10 | viewports in 3ds Max.
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| Transforming objects| 00:00 | Let's look at manipulating objects in 3ds Max.
| | 00:04 | Moving and rotating objects is called
transformations, or Transforms, and those
| | 00:12 | tools they're found on the
main toolbar, Select and Move.
| | 00:17 | So if I click on that, now I've got
the Move tool active, and if I choose an
| | 00:21 | object I get this tripod, which is
called the Transform Gizmo or the Move
| | 00:29 | Gizmo, and it will let me move an object in
any one of the three directions of 3D space.
| | 00:36 | I've got X, Y, and Z, and I
can do that in any viewport.
| | 00:46 | Pretty simple, pretty basic.
| | 00:47 | Most 3D programs have a similar
method of manipulating objects, that's the
| | 00:52 | Move tool, very simple.
| | 00:54 | The shortcut for that by the way is W, and
again, that's very common in most 3D programs.
| | 01:01 | So if I've got the Select Object tool
active and I just press the W key on my
| | 01:06 | keyboard that will activate the Move tool.
| | 01:11 | Next to the Move tool is the Rotate tool,
and let me get in a little bit closer on this.
| | 01:18 | I'll right-click in my Perspective
View, that way I'll preserve the current
| | 01:22 | selection, and I'll maximize that view with
Alt+W, and I'll get in a little bit closer.
| | 01:28 | I can use the Z Key as one way to get in
closer to a selected object, Z for Zoom.
| | 01:35 | And the Rotate tool has 3 axes as well,
and I can rotate around X, Ctrl+Z to
| | 01:42 | Undo that, I can rotate around Y, I can
rotate around Z, and you can see as I do
| | 01:51 | this I'm getting numerical feedback in degrees.
| | 01:56 | Very simple, very straightforward.
| | 01:57 | The shortcut for rotate is E.
So W is Move and E is Rotate.
| | 02:05 | If I want to undo that rotation, I can
hit Ctrl+Z back to a neutral rotation.
| | 02:12 | You'll also notice that there are
numerical values at the bottom of the screen
| | 02:15 | here, and if I want to restore that
rotation back to 0, I can just type in a 0
| | 02:23 | down here, press Enter.
| | 02:25 | That's Move and Rotate.
| | 02:27 | There's also Scale on the main toolbar.
| | 02:30 | That's the third in the holy trinity
of Transforms in 3D, move, rotate, and
| | 02:34 | scale, or position, rotation, scale.
| | 02:37 | For reasons that will become clearer
when we talk about hierarchies, I want to
| | 02:41 | discourage the use of the
Scale tool at this point.
| | 02:44 | We could go ahead and stretch this
box in various ways using the Scale
| | 02:48 | Manipulator or Scale Gizmo, but
that could actually cause unforeseen
| | 02:53 | consequences later on.
| | 02:54 | I'm going to use Ctrl+Z to undo that,
and I'll mention at this stage that since
| | 03:00 | we have a procedural primitive or a
primitive box here, I can just go to the
| | 03:04 | Modify panel and change its Height
directly by clicking on one of these little
| | 03:10 | arrows, which is called a spinner, holding
down the mouse and just dragging that up and down.
| | 03:17 | That's a much better way of adjusting
the shape of a primitive, instead of
| | 03:21 | scaling, again, for reasons that
will become clearer when we talk about
| | 03:25 | hierarchies or linkages between objects.
| | 03:28 | When you have linked objects,
scaling can become a problem and we'll be
| | 03:32 | covering that later.
| | 03:34 | So that's the basics of how to
transform objects in 3ds Max using the Move
| | 03:38 | and Rotate tools.
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| Using axis constraints| 00:00 | I'd like to go little bit deeper
into the Transforms in 3ds Max to talk
| | 00:04 | about axis constraints.
| | 00:07 | As you've seen, you can use the Move
tool or the Transform Gizmo to position
| | 00:11 | objects in the scene.
| | 00:13 | The Transform Gizmo is actually just a
shortcut to a toolbar called Axis Constraints.
| | 00:19 | Let me open that up for you.
| | 00:21 | I'll right-click on an empty spot
on the main toolbar and choose Axis
| | 00:25 | Constraints, and you'll see as I
choose X, Y or Z on the Move Gizmo, that the
| | 00:33 | Axis Constraints toolbar is updating.
| | 00:36 | Sometimes the Transform Gizmo will
actually get in your way, and we will see
| | 00:40 | this later when we get
into Spline Curve editing.
| | 00:43 | It's important that you know that you
can turn the Transform Gizmo off as needed.
| | 00:49 | To do that, you could use
the X Key on the keyboard.
| | 00:53 | If I press X, the Transform Gizmo is
not displayed, but I can still see which
| | 00:58 | axis I'm constrained to.
| | 01:00 | You'll see that red line indicating the X axis.
| | 01:06 | I can use the Axis Constraints
toolbar to switch to the Y axis or the Z
| | 01:11 | axis, which is elevation.
| | 01:12 | Ctrl+Z to undo that, and additionally
I've got the ability to choose two Axis
| | 01:20 | Constraints, like XY for example, and
now if I click anywhere on my object I can
| | 01:26 | move it in X and Y, but not Z.
| | 01:30 | I'll press the X Key again to turn the
Transform Gizmo back on, and you can see
| | 01:35 | you can actually do the same thing with
the Transform Gizmo itself, by clicking
| | 01:39 | on one of these brackets here.
| | 01:41 | That will let you move in two axes at once.
| | 01:45 | It's a basic introduction to axis
constraints in 3ds Max, and again, it's
| | 01:50 | important that you know this,
because sometimes you'll need to turn the
| | 01:53 | Transform Gizmo off.
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| Choosing shading modes| 00:00 | In any 3D program you have the choice as
to how you can see objects in the viewports.
| | 00:07 | For example, do you want to see the
surface of the object or just its wires?
| | 00:11 | To illustrate this a little bit
better, let me create a ground plane.
| | 00:13 | Go to the Create panel,
let's add Primitives Plane.
| | 00:20 | Just click and drag that out, release the mouse.
| | 00:22 | So that you can see in fact, that there
are shadows in the default 3ds Max viewport.
| | 00:29 | Right-click to end plane creation.
| | 00:33 | So if I move an object up and around
you can see it's actually casting a shadow.
| | 00:39 | If you're working on more modest
hardware, you don't have the fancy video card
| | 00:44 | and if your scene is running a little
bit sluggish, or if for whatever reason,
| | 00:48 | you can choose different Shading modes
from the item on the far right of the
| | 00:54 | Viewport Panel menu, and
it currently says Realistic.
| | 00:58 | So if I click on that I can choose
different modes, such as Shaded, and that's a
| | 01:04 | simpler display mode, which will run
faster especially on more modest hardware.
| | 01:11 | We could also choose Wireframe, and
in fact, there are a lot of really cool
| | 01:17 | things you can do in here, for
example, there are Stylized modes.
| | 01:24 | We can see what that looks
like in a Colored Pencil.
| | 01:28 | That's pretty interesting, and in fact,
you could actually render it this way.
| | 01:33 | I'm going to set this back to Shaded.
| | 01:36 | We can do that in any viewport.
| | 01:38 | We can choose a Wireframe or a
Shaded mode in any view, through the menu.
| | 01:44 | However, you probably going to want
to use the shortcut keys, just going to
| | 01:48 | be faster and easier.
| | 01:50 | F3 on your keyboard will switch
between Wireframe and a Shaded mode.
| | 01:54 | That just toggles the state of the shading.
| | 01:59 | Click on a viewport and press F3.
| | 02:00 | A lot of times when you're modeling, you
will find that you need to see not just
| | 02:05 | the shading, but also the
wireframes at the same time.
| | 02:08 | Let me maximize this Perspective view
with Alt+W. If I select an object and go
| | 02:17 | to its Modify panel, like this Sphere,
you notice that we've got settings for,
| | 02:22 | for example, level of detail, the
number of Segments to a sphere.
| | 02:28 | You'll see as I click and hold this
spinner and drag it up and down, I don't
| | 02:31 | really see much change in the viewport.
| | 02:34 | That's because I can't see the wires.
| | 02:36 | If you press F4 on your keyboard, you'll
be able to see wires and shading at the
| | 02:43 | same time, and this is very helpful.
| | 02:47 | It's important that you know what the
level of detail of your model is, and
| | 02:52 | if you can't see the wires then you don't
really know what the structure of that model is.
| | 02:57 | So I recommend when you're modeling,
it's a good idea to view it in this mode
| | 03:01 | which is called Edged Faces,
and you'll see that up here.
| | 03:06 | It says Shaded+Edged Faces.
| | 03:08 | Once again, F3 toggles between
Wireframe and Shaded, and F4 enables and
| | 03:14 | disables Edged Faces.
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| Configuring the viewports| 00:00 | As you work in 3D, you're probably going to
want to layout the viewports in different ways.
| | 00:05 | So far we've only seen two possible
viewport layouts, the standard four
| | 00:09 | viewports and then a single
viewport maximized with the Alt+W keys.
| | 00:15 | There are a couple different ways for
you to customize the viewport layout, so
| | 00:18 | that for example, you can have one
big viewport and three smaller ones.
| | 00:23 | Right now I've hidden the toolbar to
do that, but let's re-enable it and I'll
| | 00:28 | right-click on the main toolbar
and choose the Viewport Layout Tabs.
| | 00:33 | And now I've got a toolbar over here
that has only one option in it currently,
| | 00:41 | but if I click on the arrow,
I can choose different layouts.
| | 00:46 | So for example, as I said, I can do one
large viewport and three smaller ones,
| | 00:50 | and when I click on that it's now
added to the list of possible layouts here.
| | 00:57 | That's kind of useful, because I can
click to a Quad Layout or I can click to
| | 01:02 | that two Column Layout, just
by clicking on that button.
| | 01:07 | And so as you add more of these here
it'll sort of stack up, come back to the
| | 01:13 | Standard Four Viewport Layout.
| | 01:14 | There is another way to do this as well,
I can turn that Viewport Layout Tab
| | 01:21 | off, I can go into the Configuration
for the viewports. I'll click on the plus
| | 01:29 | sign in any viewport and choose
Configure, and there's a lot going on in here.
| | 01:36 | We can completely customize everything in
the viewports from within this dialog box.
| | 01:41 | So for example, I could go to the Layout, and I
could do things like choose a different view.
| | 01:47 | You can click here and say,
instead of seeing the Front,
| | 01:50 | I want to see the Back, for example.
| | 01:53 | I'll click again and
restore it back to the Front.
| | 01:57 | Those are the two different ways
that you can change the panel layout in
| | 02:01 | 3ds Max.
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|
|
3. Modeling BasicsSurveying different modeling methods| 00:00 | Before we dive into modeling in 3ds Max,
let's take a look at three different
| | 00:05 | ways of modeling an object in a 3D program.
| | 00:09 | If you know about the different types
of models and how they work, then you can
| | 00:12 | better make decisions about which
tool to choose for the particular job.
| | 00:17 | On the left is a polygon model.
| | 00:21 | The hallmark of a polygon model is
that it's built out of all straight lines,
| | 00:25 | and if I select an object within
that model, you'll see that it's made of
| | 00:30 | only straight lines.
| | 00:31 | I'll press the F4 key, so we
can see that a little bit better.
| | 00:36 | Polygon models excel at shapes that don't
deform and that have a kind of rigid appearance.
| | 00:44 | It's the simplest of the modeling types.
| | 00:47 | In the center here we have a curve-based model.
| | 00:50 | If the Modified panel is active and I
select the base of this cocktail table,
| | 00:56 | you'll see this little panel opening up
that says NURBS, that's an acronym that
| | 01:01 | stands for Non-Uniform Rational Basis Spline.
| | 01:06 | NURBS is curve-based modeling technique.
| | 01:09 | So for example, if I go over to this
panel, I can click on Curve, and I can
| | 01:13 | select one of these curves.
| | 01:16 | There's one now, click on that, and if
I move it, you can see that I can change
| | 01:21 | the shape of this curve-based model,
or I can maybe scale it and do different
| | 01:26 | things to it to change it, and the
surface is derived from those curves.
| | 01:31 | That's the primary characteristic of a
NURBS model, it's a surface based upon curves.
| | 01:38 | On the far right I've got something
called a subdivision surface model, and this
| | 01:43 | is the best choice for
character and creature modeling.
| | 01:46 | If you need to model an organic
living thing, then subdivision surfaces is
| | 01:51 | the best way to go.
| | 01:52 | There is a lot going on over here in
this panel, but I just want to show to
| | 01:56 | you that if I go into a Vertex mode here, and
turn on this option, so I can see the end result.
| | 02:03 | What you're looking at here is the
structure of a subdivision surface model and
| | 02:11 | the key to SubDs, as they're called, is
you have a rough polygon approximation of
| | 02:18 | that surface, that's called the
Control Cage, and then underneath that you've
| | 02:22 | got the actual finished model,
which is the surface here.
| | 02:27 | In a subdivision surface model, raw
polygons are used to generate a more highly
| | 02:32 | detailed surface. Those are the three
main types of models, and those are the
| | 02:37 | three that we will be looking at in 3ds Max.
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| Setting units| 00:00 | In this chapter we'll be looking at the
basics of modeling in 3ds Max, and this
| | 00:05 | is our first exercise and it's just
this interesting twisty archway, that's
| | 00:10 | going to be a good illustration of
two basic concepts in 3D modeling.
| | 00:15 | The first is procedural modeling and
it's a very high-level approach in which
| | 00:19 | you are performing very large
adjustments, and it's based upon deformers and
| | 00:25 | other types of effects that you can
add to change the shape of the model.
| | 00:28 | For example, the number of twists in
this model, I could do that just by
| | 00:34 | adding a twist deformer and adjusting
the number of twists, and that's a very
| | 00:38 | high-level approach.
| | 00:39 | We'll also be looking at a low-level
approach, which is a sub-object modeling or
| | 00:44 | component modeling, in which we can
actually go down into the individual parts
| | 00:48 | of the model and select them and
manipulate them directly, and that's how I've
| | 00:53 | created the base of this archway.
| | 00:55 | I'm going to start fresh by resetting 3ds Max.
| | 00:59 | I'll go to the
Application menu and choose Reset.
| | 01:03 | This is an important command, because
what it does is actually flush everything
| | 01:07 | out of memory and restore 3ds Max
back to default settings. As if you have
| | 01:12 | closed the program and reopened it, click Reset.
| | 01:17 | Before I build anything, I
need to get my units set up.
| | 01:21 | In 3D, there actually is a sort of fake
virtual world that has a real size, and
| | 01:29 | when you build something, you want
to build it to some scale convention.
| | 01:33 | In other words, if it were a human
being for example, it would be someone like
| | 01:37 | five or six feet tall.
| | 01:38 | It's important that you get your scale
sorted out before you construct anything,
| | 01:42 | otherwise, you may have problems later
down the line, when you have objects
| | 01:46 | modeled to different scales, and you
need to try to put them all under the same
| | 01:49 | scene and it's a mess.
| | 01:51 | I'll go to the Customize
menu and choose Units Setup.
| | 01:55 | In this dialog you'll see a section
that says Display Unit Scale and that's an
| | 02:01 | indicator that what you're
changing here is just the display.
| | 02:04 | In other words, what is the unit of
measurement that you want to choose to
| | 02:09 | measure objects in your scene. Do you
want to use the Metric system or perhaps
| | 02:14 | the US Standard Imperial Units?
| | 02:16 | I'm going to choose Feet/Decimal Inches.
| | 02:20 | Below that you will see
Default Units Feet or Inches.
| | 02:24 | And this just determines how 3ds
Max will interpret a keystroke.
| | 02:29 | If I type in 12, in this case, it
would interpret that as 12 feet.
| | 02:33 | If I chose Inches and typed in a 12, it
would interpret that as 12 inches. I'll
| | 02:38 | leave it at Feet and click OK.
| | 02:41 | Now if I construct an object like a box,
you'll see in the Create panel or the
| | 02:46 | Modify panel, I'm seeing
values in Feet and Inches.
| | 02:51 | I'll go to the Modify panel and set
these to 3, press the Tab key, 3 and 3.
| | 02:59 | Now I've got a cube that's
exactly 3 feet in all directions.
| | 03:02 | I have options about how
I enter these values in.
| | 03:05 | For example, if I choose the Height
field and I type in 18 inches and press
| | 03:10 | Enter, 3ds Max will interpret
that as 1 foot and 6 inches.
| | 03:15 | Well likewise, if I typed in 2.5,
3ds Max interprets that as 2 feet and
| | 03:22 | 6 inches.
| | 03:25 | I can go back into my Unit Setup and
change my unit of measurement, and that will
| | 03:29 | not affect the actual size
of the object in the scene.
| | 03:33 | In other words, objects have an
absolute size and changing the units does
| | 03:38 | not change their size.
| | 03:40 | Go back to the Customize menu, choose
Units Setup, and I can swap this over to
| | 03:45 | Metric, and when I press OK, now
immediately, all the values are reading out in
| | 03:50 | Metric values; .914 meters, instead of
3 feet, and I can change this back and
| | 03:56 | forth at will, and it won't break my
scene, it won't cause any problems.
| | 04:01 | This is great because people in
different countries can work on the same scenes
| | 04:04 | and choose whatever unit of
measurement is convenient to them.
| | 04:08 | Let's quickly take a look at this
sub-dialog call the System Unit Setup;
| | 04:12 | I'm going to click on that.
| | 04:15 | The System Unit Setup controls
the internal accuracy of 3ds Max.
| | 04:20 | Usually you won't want to change this,
and you certainly wouldn't change it after
| | 04:24 | you've started modeling.
| | 04:26 | You'd only change this value before you
begin modeling, because if you change it
| | 04:30 | later on bad things can happen.
| | 04:33 | If you change the accuracy of the
program it might cause models to crumple or
| | 04:38 | things to not render when you try to
output them to an image, and so on.
| | 04:42 | This setting should usually be
set at 1 inch, which is the default.
| | 04:47 | The only time you'd want to change this
is if you needed to model something very
| | 04:50 | large, and by that I mean
something larger than a city.
| | 04:54 | The other time that you might need to
change this is if you're working with a
| | 04:58 | game engine or some real-time simulation
that requires a particular system unit scale.
| | 05:04 | However, 99% of the time you want to
just leave it at inches, and that's
| | 05:09 | appropriate for scenes that are modeled
smaller than, let's say, a square mile or so.
| | 05:16 | That's our Unit Setup.
| | 05:18 | And the next thing that we'll want to
do is setup the grid, because the grid is
| | 05:21 | in fact an independent consideration.
| | 05:23 | We'll look at that next.
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| Setting home grid dimensions| 00:00 | The size and spacing of the grid
in the viewports in 3ds Max is a very
| | 00:04 | important consideration.
| | 00:06 | We need to be able to tell from a
glance how large something is, just by
| | 00:10 | looking at the grid.
| | 00:11 | That's a separate consideration
from the Units of Measurement.
| | 00:15 | I'll zoom in a little bit here in the
front viewport by just turning the mouse
| | 00:18 | wheel, and I'll position this cube a little bit.
| | 00:22 | What I want you to see here is that
this cube, although it is 3' x 3' the
| | 00:28 | gridlines are not lining up with that.
| | 00:30 | What I'd like to see is a gridline
every 1 foot, strangely that's not the
| | 00:35 | default in 3ds Max.
| | 00:37 | Every time you start a new scene,
you'll need to check in on the Grid Settings.
| | 00:42 | The Grid Settings can be adjusted from
the Tools menu, Grids and Snaps > Grid and
| | 00:48 | Snap Settings. There's actually an easier way
to get to that dialog, which is simply
| | 00:53 | just do a right-click on any one of
these magnet icons on the main toolbar.
| | 00:57 | I'll right-click that and it opens
the Grid and Snap Settings dialog.
| | 01:02 | What we're concerned with here at the
moment is the Home Grid, I'll click on that.
| | 01:06 | And now you can see what's going on here.
| | 01:09 | The Grid Spacing is not every
1 foot, it's every 10 inches.
| | 01:14 | If I want to have a grid line every 1
foot, I'll type in 1 here and press the
| | 01:19 | Tab key. And there we go.
| | 01:21 | That's much better.
| | 01:23 | Then the next thing down here is, how
often do we want to see a darker Grid Line?
| | 01:29 | So you'll see we've two
different colors of Grid Lines.
| | 01:32 | We got lighter Grid Lines and darker ones.
| | 01:35 | This is fine as it is now.
| | 01:37 | I am getting a Minor Grid Line every
1 foot, and the Major Grid Line every one
| | 01:42 | times 10, or every 10 feet.
| | 01:45 | Finally, at the bottom here, is
the Perspective View Grid Extent.
| | 01:49 | How far does the Perspective Grid Extend
from the origin or the center of the world?
| | 01:55 | And currently, it's only 7 feet.
| | 01:57 | I'll set that to 20 feet and press the Tab key.
| | 02:02 | There I set my grid up and close the
Grid and Snap Settings, and I am ready
| | 02:06 | to begin modeling.
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| Understanding the Level Of Detail| 00:00 | We're going to start shaping up our
archway and along the way we're going to
| | 00:04 | learn little bit about Level Of Detail.
| | 00:07 | I've got a box in this scene already.
I'm going to keep that box as a reference
| | 00:13 | for a human sized object.
| | 00:15 | I'll set the Height to be 5.5 feet
and the Width 0.5, and Length 2 feet.
| | 00:25 | Now I've got box that's approximately
the size and shape of a human, and I'll
| | 00:29 | keep that as a reference, so move
that out of the way a little bit.
| | 00:35 | Now I'm ready to build my arch proper.
| | 00:37 | Go to the Create panel, click Box,
drag out a box, right-click to complete
| | 00:45 | Box Creation Mode.
| | 00:47 | I'll go ahead and rename
it and change its color.
| | 00:50 | I can do that from the Create panel, or from
any of the other panels, like Modify panel.
| | 00:55 | I'll rename this arch and I can change
its color by clicking on this Swatch here.
| | 01:02 | This is not the material of the object,
this is merely the wireframe color
| | 01:06 | or the object color.
| | 01:08 | You'll see up at the top we can choose
between a 3ds Max palette and an AutoCAD palette.
| | 01:12 | I am going to use the AutoCAD palette
because it gives me more options, and I'll
| | 01:16 | set this to be a neutral gray.
| | 01:19 | By the way, I'm also going to switch off
the switch that says, Assign Random Colors.
| | 01:24 | That way the next time I make an object it
will also be assign this neutral gray color.
| | 01:30 | I'll start by setting the dimensions of the box.
| | 01:32 | The Length and Width I'll make
2 feet, press 2, press the Tab key.
| | 01:38 | This is going to be a box that's going
to be eventually be bent and twisted into
| | 01:42 | shape in order to make the archway.
| | 01:44 | Therefore it will need to be pretty tall.
| | 01:46 | I'll give it a Height of about 30
feet, and I'll maximize that view with
| | 01:51 | Alt+W. Let's talk about Level Of Detail.
| | 01:56 | Level Of Detail refers to how heavy
the model is or how much detail is
| | 02:02 | present in the model.
| | 02:03 | And this one has a very low
Level Of Detail currently.
| | 02:06 | I'll press the F4 key so that we can
see the Edged Faces, and this cube is
| | 02:12 | constructed out of six flat faces.
| | 02:15 | What I am going to do eventually is
bend it and twist it, and in order to make
| | 02:19 | that happen I need more detail on the model.
| | 02:21 | I'll increase the Height Segments here,
I can click and hold the mouse button
| | 02:26 | and drag upward and I'll set those
Height Segments to, let's say, about 30.
| | 02:31 | Now I've got enough detail that if I want
to bend this thing it will actually bend.
| | 02:36 | I'm going to add something call a Modifier,
that will deform the shape of the current model.
| | 02:42 | In the Modify panel, you'll see Modifier
List, and if I click the arrow, I'll get
| | 02:48 | a list of many different Modifiers, and
the one that I want is actually near the
| | 02:53 | top, Bend, and now I've got
a Bend Angle and Direction.
| | 02:58 | And once again, if I click and hold my
mouse on one of these spinners and drag
| | 03:03 | it, I can adjust the Bend Angle,
and that's working just fine.
| | 03:06 | Because in fact, this box has
lots of detail to it, it's got enough
| | 03:11 | segmentation that it's able to bend.
| | 03:13 | But if I were to change the Level Of Detail
then it wouldn't necessarily bend so well.
| | 03:18 | Here in the Modify panel I have got
something called the Modifier Stack and this
| | 03:22 | is a layers-based interface.
| | 03:24 | You can see I've got a
Box and above that a Bend.
| | 03:28 | If I click on Box, I've now descended
down into that level of the Modifier Stack,
| | 03:35 | and I can do things like change the
height and the number of segments.
| | 03:39 | If I reduce the number of Height
Segments then you'll start to see the effect of
| | 03:43 | a lower Level Of Detail.
| | 03:45 | Once I get down low enough it's start
getting pretty blocky, and if I go down
| | 03:49 | to only one segment then it's not even a bend
anymore, it's just becomes this weird skewed box.
| | 03:55 | Polygon Models are only built out of
all straight lines and when you make a
| | 03:59 | Primitive here in 3ds Max it's a Polygon Model.
| | 04:02 | In order to get the illusion of
curvature you have to have lots of
| | 04:06 | short straight lines.
| | 04:07 | I'll set my Height Segments back up to 30.
| | 04:11 | Level Of Detail is very important.
| | 04:13 | We're lucky here because this is a
procedural model and we can change the Level
| | 04:17 | Of Detail adaptively.
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| Working with the modifier stack| 00:00 | We've got a got a box and
we've added a bend modifier to it.
| | 00:04 | Let's look at what we can do with that
bend modifier and along the way we'll
| | 00:08 | learn about the modifier stack itself.
| | 00:11 | The first thing you might notice is
that there's a little light bulb icon
| | 00:14 | next to the modifier.
| | 00:15 | If I click that icon, I
can turn the modifier off,
| | 00:20 | or turn it back on again.
| | 00:22 | I can also delete modifiers.
| | 00:24 | If I don't want it, I can select it, and then
press the Trash Can and that will remove it.
| | 00:30 | I'll undo that with the Undo button.
| | 00:32 | I can obviously control
different parameters such as the Angle.
| | 00:37 | What I want to happen here with this
arch is I want it to be straight and then
| | 00:42 | bend at the top and then
straight back down again.
| | 00:46 | And I can do that using a combination
of the Limits shown here, and also the
| | 00:52 | position of the so-called Modifier Gizmo.
| | 00:56 | To get at this Gizmo, I'll press the
plus sign on the modifier, click on that
| | 01:01 | and you will see Gizmo.
| | 01:04 | When I click Gizmo, it highlights in
bright yellow, and that's an important
| | 01:08 | indicator that we've now entered into
a special mode called sub-object mode.
| | 01:14 | When you're in sub-object mode,
you can't select any other objects.
| | 01:18 | You're down inside the structure of this
model and you cannot select a different object.
| | 01:24 | You can click on this other object all
day long and nothing will happen, as long
| | 01:28 | as you're in sub-object mode.
| | 01:31 | Gizmo sub-object mode lets me
change the position of the Bend effect.
| | 01:37 | I'll click on the Z axis of my Move
tool and drag that up, and you can see the
| | 01:42 | effect of moving the Bend Gizmo.
| | 01:46 | This yellow outline here
is the bend modifier itself.
| | 01:51 | What I want to do is I want to have
the Bend effect start up here and I want
| | 01:57 | this part to be straight.
| | 01:59 | And to accomplish that, I
can use Limits on the modifier.
| | 02:04 | When you turn on Limit Effect, it'll
look like there is no modifier at all,
| | 02:09 | and that's because the
Limits are set to 0 and 0.
| | 02:13 | But if I change these values by dragging,
I can adjust the Limits, I can type in
| | 02:19 | a value as well, like I can set
that Upper Limit to let's say 10 feet.
| | 02:24 | That means that the modifier is only
affecting the box up to 10 feet away in linear units.
| | 02:32 | There's a Lower Limit here as well.
| | 02:34 | I'm just going to leave
that at 0 for the moment.
| | 02:37 | Now if I want this to be symmetrical, I just
need to do a little bit of simple math here.
| | 02:41 | I'll set the Bend Angle to exactly 180.
| | 02:45 | I know that the Upper Limit is set to 10 feet.
| | 02:48 | If I wanted, let's say, 10 feet of
straight, and then 10 feet of bent, and then 10
| | 02:53 | feet down, I can do that because
my box is exactly 30 feet tall.
| | 02:59 | I can move this Gizmo down, and if I
move it down to exactly 10 feet, then I'll
| | 03:04 | get a symmetrical structure here.
| | 03:08 | You'll notice as I move it up and
down, the numbers are changing at the
| | 03:12 | bottom of my screen.
| | 03:14 | So that's the Z position of the Gizmo,
and if I want it to be exactly 10 feet,
| | 03:19 | I'll just go down here to Z
and type in 10 and press Enter.
| | 03:25 | When I'm finished, I can exit
out of Gizmo sub-object mode.
| | 03:29 | Those are the basics of working
with the modifier stack, enabling and
| | 03:34 | disabling modifiers, changing the
Gizmo position in sub-object mode, and
| | 03:39 | playing around with the limits.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding dependencies| 00:00 | The modifier stack in 3ds Max allows
you to, as the name implies, stack as many
| | 00:05 | modifiers as you need to.
| | 00:08 | However, you need to understand that the
order in which they're stacked is important.
| | 00:12 | The structure flows from the bottom up.
| | 00:15 | The chronological order that you add
them is not important, but the final result
| | 00:20 | of which is stacked on top
of which is very important.
| | 00:24 | To illustrate this, I'm
going to add a Twist Modifier.
| | 00:27 | Click on the Modifier list and scroll
down looking for Twist and add that.
| | 00:34 | And now you see I've got a new orange
box around when I have the Twist Modifier
| | 00:39 | selected and I'll adjust the Twist Angle.
| | 00:43 | And you'll see this is not
really what I was going for.
| | 00:46 | What I wanted was the box to
be twisted around and then bent.
| | 00:51 | That means that the Twist would need
to be lower in the stack than the Bend.
| | 00:57 | Okay, well that's easy enough to do
because in fact, I can just select that and
| | 01:01 | drag it and you see that blue line,
and when I release the mouse, boom!
| | 01:06 | Now I've just changed the
order of operations in the stack.
| | 01:10 | And this is referred to as a dependency.
| | 01:13 | The Bend is dependent upon the
Twist because it's later in the stack.
| | 01:17 | Now you'll notice that this Twist
Modifier looks kind of funny and that's just a
| | 01:23 | byproduct of the way that I did it.
| | 01:24 | There's a better way to do this, in fact,
which would be clearer and less confusing.
| | 01:29 | I'm going to delete that Twist by just
selecting it and then clicking the trashcan.
| | 01:35 | If I add the Twist at the appropriate
location in the stack of where I want it
| | 01:40 | to be, then I won't see that funny icon.
| | 01:43 | If I select the box in the stack and
then add the twist, it'll be added above
| | 01:48 | the box but below the bend.
| | 01:52 | And now this is going to be a lot
easier for us to figure out and understand.
| | 01:56 | As I adjust the Twist angle now, you
can see this orange box is showing us the
| | 02:01 | effect of the Twist.
| | 02:04 | Now I can also enable and disable
modifiers to check each one in turn.
| | 02:08 | For example, I can turn the Bend off
and just sort of isolate this and see
| | 02:13 | what the Twist is doing by itself, or I could
isolate only the Bend by turning the Twist off.
| | 02:21 | There's another way I can do it too,
which is this very important button
| | 02:25 | here, Show end result.
| | 02:27 | And if it's on, then you will see the
end result of everything in the stack, all
| | 02:31 | the modifiers we processed
and displayed on the screen.
| | 02:35 | But if Show end result is turned off,
then you'll only see the result at the
| | 02:41 | currently selected modifier level.
| | 02:44 | If I go down to Box, I'll
only see the effects of the Box.
| | 02:48 | Click on Twist, I'll see only that.
| | 02:50 | Click on Bend and I will
see everything below the Bend.
| | 02:54 | That's Show end result and it's usually on.
| | 02:58 | Now I can make some adjustments here.
| | 02:59 | Because I have all these
modifiers and it started its life out as a
| | 03:03 | procedural primitive, I can go down
and do things like select the Box and
| | 03:08 | reduce its thickness.
| | 03:10 | Maybe I only want a
Length and a Width of 1 foot.
| | 03:14 | Press the Tab key, type in a 1, or I could
go to the Twist Modifier and adjust its angle.
| | 03:19 | For example, I could say I want
an angle of exactly 720 degrees.
| | 03:26 | I could also limit the effect
just as I did with the Bend.
| | 03:29 | Perhaps at the bottom I
want it to be not twisted.
| | 03:33 | That means I could go into the Twist >
Gizmo sub-object mode and move that up.
| | 03:39 | And if I think about this for a second,
maybe I want to have let's say 2 feet of
| | 03:43 | non-twisted shape down here and then
twisted all the way through, and then the
| | 03:49 | bottom 2 feet here also not twisted.
| | 03:52 | So that means, let's put the Gizmo at a
height of 2 feet, type in a 2 here, turn
| | 03:59 | on Limits, and then set the Upper Limit
to 30 feet -2 -2, and that of course
| | 04:06 | would be 26 feet, Upper Limit of 26.
| | 04:11 | And I can turn off Gizmo sub-object
mode and now I've got a fully procedural
| | 04:16 | model that I can adjust at will.
| | 04:18 | For example, I can go back down to the
Box, increase the number of segments;
| | 04:22 | maybe I want 50 segments instead.
| | 04:25 | That's just a little bit about working
with dependencies in the modifier stack.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Collapsing the modifier stack| 00:00 | This is a purely procedural model that
gives us a lot of flexibility to change
| | 00:05 | the model on a very large scale.
| | 00:08 | In other words, I can change global
parameters like the amount of Bend very easily.
| | 00:15 | And this is a purely nondestructive workflow.
| | 00:18 | That's pretty cool because that means I
can change any of these things and there
| | 00:22 | are no negative consequences from that.
| | 00:25 | I could change Level Of Detail, I
could change parameters like Bend and Twist
| | 00:29 | and nothing is going to break
because it's all purely procedural.
| | 00:34 | And when 3ds Max saves and loads
a procedural model, it's actually
| | 00:38 | following instructions.
| | 00:40 | In other words, it's not recording the
exact position of every point on this model.
| | 00:45 | Rather, it's recording very simple
instructions, like make a box, give it this
| | 00:50 | number of segments, twist it this
amount, and bend it around this amount.
| | 00:55 | That workflow is very useful in some
cases, but eventually, you'll find that
| | 01:00 | it's limiting because you need to
select individual parts of the model and move
| | 01:05 | them around and manipulate them independently.
| | 01:07 | To do that in 3ds Max, you
can collapse the modifier stack.
| | 01:12 | And that's a destructive act.
| | 01:14 | When you collapse the modifier stack,
you remove all modifiers, and what you're
| | 01:19 | left with is a raw shape.
| | 01:21 | Other programs have similar processes.
| | 01:24 | In Maya, for example, it's called
deleting the construction history.
| | 01:28 | It's the same idea.
| | 01:29 | You're taking basic instructions and then
converting it down to something a lot simpler.
| | 01:35 | And that then gives you the
ability in 3ds Max to manipulate
| | 01:39 | independent components.
| | 01:41 | To collapse the modifier stack, the
easiest way is to simply select the object
| | 01:47 | and then right-click in the viewport
and you'll get the pop-up quad menu.
| | 01:52 | This is a context-sensitive menu.
| | 01:55 | What you see here will depend
upon what you're currently doing.
| | 01:59 | Down in the lower right-hand corner
is Convert To, and the one that you'll
| | 02:03 | usually choose here is Convert To Editable Poly.
| | 02:06 | An Editable Poly is an object type
that gives you a lot of advanced tools for
| | 02:12 | adjusting the shape of a polygon object.
| | 02:15 | I'll go ahead and release the mouse,
and as soon as I do that, now you'll see
| | 02:20 | something very different has
happened in the modifier stack.
| | 02:23 | No longer do I have a box, no
longer do I have a twist or a bend.
| | 02:28 | Instead, that's all been erased and what
I'm left with is an editable poly object.
| | 02:34 | It has a lot of tools and we'll be
covering some of these later in the course.
| | 02:39 | At this point, we've converted it to an
editable poly, and now we're ready to go
| | 02:44 | in and select sub-objects and
move them around in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with sub-objects| 00:00 | Having converted this object to
editable poly, now I can go in and select
| | 00:05 | individual parts and manipulate them and
sculpt the object with a little bit more finesse.
| | 00:11 | There are actually lots of
different ways of doing that.
| | 00:13 | In any event, I need to enter a sub-object mode.
| | 00:16 | If I click on the plus sign over here, you'll
see the sub-object modes listed in text form.
| | 00:24 | The most important ones are Vertex, Edge,
and Polygon, and those correspond to
| | 00:30 | point, line, and plane in geometry.
| | 00:33 | Vertex is just a fancy word for point.
| | 00:37 | And when I go into Vertex sub-object
mode, you'll see all the points in the
| | 00:40 | object are now shown in blue.
| | 00:43 | And if I drag a selection rectangle,
they'll be highlighted, and I can move them
| | 00:48 | and manipulate them.
| | 00:49 | Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 00:51 | You'll notice that when I selected
Vertex up here, that an icon lit up down here.
| | 00:57 | I can choose a sub-object mode either
from these text labels or from the icons.
| | 01:03 | For example, I can click on Polygon and
make a selection and now it's the same
| | 01:08 | as if I clicked up here to
enter Polygon sub-object mode.
| | 01:12 | Additionally, sub-object modes can be
entered from the Graphite Ribbon, which I
| | 01:18 | previously closed just to
streamline the interface a bit.
| | 01:21 | I'm going to open that back up
again, Graphite Modeling Tools.
| | 01:26 | These tools only work with editable poly.
| | 01:29 | If it's any other type of object, when
you click Graphite up here, you won't
| | 01:34 | see any of this stuff.
| | 01:36 | And you'll see that we can enter
various sub-object modes from here as well.
| | 01:41 | So what do I want to do here?
| | 01:42 | Well I just want to select a couple of
these at the bottom, get in a little bit
| | 01:46 | closer, and drag a selection
rectangle around all these near the bottom.
| | 01:50 | I just want to scale those up a little bit.
| | 01:54 | I'll use the Scale tool to do that, and
I'll click just exactly in the center of
| | 01:59 | that scale gizmo and I
can change the size of that.
| | 02:03 | Now if you remember, I mentioned
earlier that scaling can be problematic. This
| | 02:07 | form of scaling is not problematic, and in fact,
this is the way that we need to do a scale.
| | 02:12 | We'll talk about that more
in the chapter on hierarchies.
| | 02:15 | I'll hit Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 02:17 | Let me close the Graphite Ribbon to
give myself a little bit more space.
| | 02:21 | I'll go back out to the four viewport
layout by hitting Alt+W on my keyboard.
| | 02:27 | And what I want to show to you is that
if I scale from the center of the Scale
| | 02:33 | Manipulator here, you'll see
it's scaling in all three axes.
| | 02:37 | What I'd really like to do here is to
scale only in X and Y in the world coordinates.
| | 02:44 | Let me hit Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 02:46 | I don't want to scale vertically.
| | 02:48 | Get in a little bit closer here.
| | 02:51 | You'll see that as I move my mouse
over the gizmo, if I go to the edge of the
| | 02:56 | gizmo, I can select just two axes
and scaling only those two axes.
| | 03:01 | Click on that and release the mouse.
| | 03:04 | When I'm finished, I want to exit
Polygon sub-object mode and I can go back out
| | 03:10 | a little bit and admire my work.
| | 03:13 | There is a lot more to
modeling obviously in 3ds Max.
| | 03:16 | This chapter has been a basic
introduction to setting up a scene, setting units,
| | 03:21 | and basic operation of the
modifier stack and sub-object editing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
4. Modeling with Splines Creating shapes| 00:00 | Over the next two chapters we'll be
looking at constructing objects from shapes,
| | 00:06 | or from curves, and we'll be
working with these curves here.
| | 00:11 | For example, these primitives and also
free form lines, and then we'll use those
| | 00:15 | to construct something called a
loft, and that's what you see here.
| | 00:19 | This art glass piece has been
created as a loft from these three shapes.
| | 00:25 | I'm going to go ahead and reset 3ds Max,
and start from scratch, and restore 3ds
| | 00:31 | Max back to default settings.
| | 00:33 | As if you would close the
program and reopened it.
| | 00:36 | Now I've got a blank scene.
| | 00:38 | I'm going to hide that
ViewCube too while I'm at it.
| | 00:42 | Before I begin I want to set
up my units of measurement,
| | 00:45 | Customize > Unit Setup. Because this object is
going to be pretty small to fit on a table top,
| | 00:52 | I can go ahead and use Inches as
my default units, and click OK.
| | 00:57 | Next I'll want to set up the grid.
| | 00:59 | Right-click on any one of the magnet icons
on the main toolbar, and go to Home Grid.
| | 01:05 | I'll have a minor grid line every 1
inch by setting the Grid Spacing to 1.
| | 01:10 | Press the Tab key and I want a major
grid line every 12 inches or every 1 foot.
| | 01:16 | I'll set Major Lines every Nth Grid
Line to 12, and in the Perspective View
| | 01:23 | I'll set it to 24 inches, and now
I've got a stage in the Perspective View
| | 01:28 | that's 24 inches from center to edge,
and this is how I can set it up for
| | 01:33 | imperial units in inches.
| | 01:36 | Now I'm ready to create some shapes.
| | 01:38 | For that art glass vase I
need a circle and a star.
| | 01:43 | The shapes are found in the Create panel,
in their own sub-panel labeled Shapes.
| | 01:49 | 3ds Max considers a shape
to be a spline or a curve.
| | 01:53 | We've got shape primitives such as a circle.
| | 01:57 | I'll click and create this in the top view,
just because that's the most convenient.
| | 02:01 | It doesn't really matter where I create it.
| | 02:03 | It's just cleaner and neater in the
scene if I created in the top viewport.
| | 02:07 | I'll right-click to exit Creation and
then immediately go to the Modify panel.
| | 02:13 | And take a look at this, I've got a
Radius of 1 foot 5 inches and it's not even
| | 02:19 | anywhere close to my Perspective View Grid.
| | 02:23 | This is just part of the byproduct of
working in 3ds Max because the grid is adaptive.
| | 02:29 | If I zoom forward or back with the
wheel, you'll notice that the lines of the
| | 02:34 | grid adapt to the distance that I'm at.
| | 02:37 | So as I go further out,
eventually those minor lines disappear.
| | 02:42 | That can make it kind of difficulty for
you to figure out how large things are.
| | 02:46 | Just make sure you're checking the
numeric values, and if you need to, you can
| | 02:49 | make a reference box that's 1 foot
on a side or something like that.
| | 02:52 | I'm going to set this to 2 inches in Radius.
| | 02:56 | Type in a 2 and press Enter, and
I'll move it nearer to the center of the
| | 03:01 | world, just by grabbing the Move tool,
typing in some zeros down here in this
| | 03:06 | Transform type in area.
| | 03:08 | X of 0, Tab, and Y of 0.
| | 03:13 | Now it's centered on the world.
| | 03:14 | Move it over a little bit.
| | 03:16 | That's easy enough. It's a
circle, nothing more to that.
| | 03:19 | I'll go back to the Create panel
and I'll also make a Star primitive.
| | 03:24 | Click on Star, and drag that out in the
Top View, and when I release the mouse,
| | 03:31 | 3ds Max is also expecting me to set
other parameters, not just one radius but
| | 03:36 | also a second radius.
| | 03:38 | I'll click again to set that second radius.
| | 03:41 | Now I've created the star.
| | 03:43 | If I'm finished, I'll right-
click to exit Star creation.
| | 03:47 | You might need to right-click twice.
| | 03:49 | I can go into the Modify panel
and adjust the Star parameters.
| | 03:53 | For example the number of
Points, maybe I just want 5 points.
| | 03:57 | It would also be nice if
these weren't so hard-edged.
| | 04:01 | I want a rounded corner on these.
| | 04:03 | I can do that by adjust
these Fillet Radius values.
| | 04:07 | Fillet Radius 1 is the outer corners,
Fillet Radius 2 is the inner corners.
| | 04:13 | Just make sure that you don't
push this too far because you'll get
| | 04:17 | interesting results.
| | 04:18 | In other words, the shape
is now self-intersecting.
| | 04:22 | That's not going to work in this case.
| | 04:24 | So I want to have a very small Fillet
Radius, for both Radius 1 and Radius 2.
| | 04:31 | That's all there is to it
to create shapes in 3ds Max.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating lines| 00:00 | We've created a couple of Spline
primitives, also known as shapes in 3ds Max.
| | 00:06 | I also want to create a freeform line that
I can edit and make any shape that I want.
| | 00:12 | Before I do that, I'm going to zoom
all viewports to enclose all geometry,
| | 00:17 | because I'm not sure where I am
in the Front View or Left View.
| | 00:22 | If I want to zoom all the viewports, so
that all of the objects are visible, I
| | 00:28 | can hold down Shift+Ctrl and press the Z key.
| | 00:32 | Ctrl+Shift+Z zooms all viewports to
enclose all geometry, and now I know in the
| | 00:38 | Front View that I am more or less in
the right zone, even if I can't see the
| | 00:43 | objects selected, and I'm going to
make my object about a foot tall.
| | 00:47 | So I've zoomed back a little bit,
and remember I set the grid earlier to
| | 00:51 | show inches in feet.
| | 00:53 | This is about 1 foot in height here,
and I'll go over to the Create panel, and
| | 00:58 | under Shapes I'll click Line.
| | 01:01 | I'll start at the bottom and click once
to create a point, and I'll just go up
| | 01:07 | here about a foot up in the air and
click again to create a second point, and
| | 01:12 | I'm done making points.
| | 01:14 | Therefore, I'll right-click and I will
exit that particular object, and I can
| | 01:20 | right-click again to complete line creation.
| | 01:23 | Now if you look closely
on this, it's not perfect.
| | 01:27 | I try my level best to click on the
center here, but I didn't quite make it.
| | 01:31 | This will give me an
opportunity to show you how to use Snaps.
| | 01:35 | I'll do that over again by deleting that,
press the Delete key on the keyboard
| | 01:39 | to delete that object, and I'll turn on Snaps.
| | 01:43 | If I click on the 3D magnet icon,
by default, that'll allow me to snap to
| | 01:49 | grid intersections.
| | 01:51 | However you might want to right-click
on that, just to make sure that Grid
| | 01:55 | Points is the only item chosen in the Snaps.
| | 01:59 | Once again I'll click Line, and as I move
my mouse around, you'll see that I get a
| | 02:04 | nice, big yellow Snap icon.
| | 02:07 | Click once to create the first point.
| | 02:09 | Click again to create the second point,
and then right-click to finish the line
| | 02:14 | and right-click again to exit the Line tool.
| | 02:18 | Now you may notice that you see some
funny business here with the line, and it
| | 02:22 | may not display well because this
selection bracket is kind of hiding it,
| | 02:27 | don't be alarmed by that.
| | 02:29 | And you also might notice that the grid and
the snaps sometimes don't play well together.
| | 02:34 | But if I just turn the Snaps
off, everything should be fine.
| | 02:39 | I'll dolly back in my Perspective View
and I've got a line, perfectly straight,
| | 02:45 | and it's because I clicked and did not
drag the mouse when I created the line.
| | 02:51 | Just to illustrate, if I go click on
Line and hold down the mouse as I create,
| | 02:57 | you'll see I'm getting curved lines.
| | 02:59 | We don't want that this time.
We just want a straight line.
| | 03:02 | So I'll delete that.
| | 03:04 | That's all there is to creating a line
in 3ds Max and next we'll work with it
| | 03:09 | and change its shape.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Working with Editable Spline| 00:00 | We've got three shapes in our scene,
two out of three of those are still
| | 00:04 | primitives, for example this star.
| | 00:07 | I'm going to reduce the Radius a little
bit and then I'll convert it to Editable
| | 00:11 | Spline which will collapse its modifier
stack, delete all parameters, and allow
| | 00:17 | me to select individual points.
| | 00:19 | I'll maximize the view with Alt+W,
and Press+Z key to zoom in on that star.
| | 00:25 | If it's selected, I can right-click
anywhere in the viewport and choose Convert
| | 00:28 | To > Convert to Editable Spline.
| | 00:31 | As soon as I release the mouse, you'll
see that it's no longer a Star Primitive,
| | 00:35 | it's now a different type
of object, Editable Spline.
| | 00:39 | Very similar to what we saw in the last
chapter with converting a 3D Primitive
| | 00:43 | into Editable Poly, so basic same idea here.
| | 00:46 | And now I can actually go in and
select individual points, click on Vertex
| | 00:50 | sub-object mode, either in the Selection
rollout here or in the sub-object modes
| | 00:56 | in this stack, and then I can select
individual points and move them around
| | 01:01 | using the Move tool.
| | 01:03 | I definitely want to do this in the top
viewport, and that's because if I move
| | 01:08 | these points in the front or left
viewports it wouldn't be flat any more, and I
| | 01:12 | want it to remain flat.
| | 01:14 | Now I've got an asymmetrical shape.
| | 01:16 | I'll exit out of sub-object mode and
I'd also like to show to you the fact
| | 01:22 | that the line that we created
previously is the same object type as this
| | 01:27 | converted Editable Spline.
| | 01:29 | I'll hit Alt+W to go back to my four
viewport layout, and click on the line and
| | 01:34 | you'll notice that the
Modify panel here looks the same.
| | 01:38 | In fact, let me make this a little bit
bigger by pulling this out, and you'll
| | 01:42 | see that these two have all of the same tools.
| | 01:46 | This one started its life out as a
freeform line. This one started out as a
| | 01:51 | shape that was converted.
| | 01:53 | But they both end up being the same
thing which is an Editable Spline.
| | 01:56 | Don't be thrown off by the fact that
this one says Line up here and this one
| | 02:02 | says Editable Spline, because in
fact those are just two different names,
| | 02:06 | for the same thing.
| | 02:08 | In the next movie we'll look in a
little bit more detail at controlling the
| | 02:11 | shape of an Edible Spline.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using different vertex types| 00:00 | To get full control over the shape of
an Editable Spline, you'll also need to
| | 00:04 | work with vertex types.
| | 00:06 | They are four different types of
vertices on an Editable Spline.
| | 00:10 | If I go into Vertex sub-object mode for
my star, and select some of these, you'll
| | 00:14 | see that they are all Bezier points.
| | 00:18 | Grab the Move tool and move these
little green handles around, and that
| | 00:24 | indicates that it's a
Bezier Curve or Bezier Vertex.
| | 00:27 | You're probably familiar with that from a
program like Illustrator on Photoshop.
| | 00:32 | Almost all computer graphic programs
have some implementation of the classic
| | 00:36 | Bezier Spline, which has incoming and
outgoing handles to adjust the shape of the
| | 00:41 | curve on either side of the Vertex.
| | 00:44 | In 3ds Max, we have other types of
vertices as well. To convert between vertex
| | 00:49 | types just select one or more
vertices and then right-click anywhere in the
| | 00:54 | viewport, you'll get the quad menu,
and in the upper left quadrant you can
| | 00:59 | choose a different vertex type.
| | 01:00 | For example, Corner, if I choose a
corner point then it's a sharp corner. I'll
| | 01:06 | do this one too, right-click, choose
Corner, and a segment between two points
| | 01:13 | will be a straight line if both
of those points are corner points.
| | 01:18 | So if all you need are straight lines
you can just select all the points and
| | 01:20 | convert them to Corner.
| | 01:23 | Another really useful vertex type is
Smooth, I'll right-click and choose Smooth,
| | 01:29 | and a Smooth point as the name implies
is smooth, it's a nice soft curve, and it
| | 01:34 | doesn't have any tangent
handles for you to worry about.
| | 01:38 | So on some regards it's simpler.
| | 01:40 | However, you'll notice with a
Smooth point that it does affect other
| | 01:45 | segments, in other words, I'm moving
that point, and it's not just affecting
| | 01:48 | this segment and this one, but it's also
affecting segments farther away than you might expect.
| | 01:53 | The fourth type of vertex is the
Bezier Corner, that's a special case of a
| | 01:59 | Bezier in which the incoming and
outgoing tangents are not locked and I can
| | 02:04 | move them independently.
| | 02:06 | You'll notice, by the way, with a Spline
that the Transform Gizmo does not appear
| | 02:11 | at the location of a tangent handle.
| | 02:15 | And so now as I move this, you'll notice
that it's only moving in X. If I need it
| | 02:19 | to move in X and Y then I can just click
in the center of the Move Gizmo and now
| | 02:24 | I'm back to moving in X and Y.
I'll convert those back to Bezier.
| | 02:30 | You'll also notice that sometimes the
curves become asymmetrical, the handles
| | 02:36 | are different lengths on either side.
If you need to restore the handles to be
| | 02:40 | the same length, then you can right-
click and convert to smooth and then
| | 02:45 | right-click and convert back to Bezier,
and now the two handles are equally same
| | 02:50 | length, get in a little bit closer on that.
| | 02:54 | One last thing I need to mention to you
is, it may be necessary for you to get
| | 02:59 | rid of the Transform Gizmo in
order to work. Here's an example.
| | 03:03 | Let's say I want to get at this green tangent
handle here, and I want to move it left and right.
| | 03:10 | Because it's underneath the Transform
Gizmo I actually cannot move it in X.
| | 03:15 | Because as soon as I click there with
my mouse I'm telling 3ds Max that I want
| | 03:19 | to constrain the movement to Y. So I
cannot move it in X if the Transform Gizmo
| | 03:27 | is directly positioned over the top of it.
| | 03:30 | In this case I'll need to hide
the Transform Gizmo and use the Axis
| | 03:33 | Constraints toolbar.
| | 03:35 | To hide the Gizmo, I'll press the X
key on the keyboard, and to get the Axis
| | 03:40 | Constraints toolbar right-click on the
main toolbar and choose Axis Constraints.
| | 03:46 | And now in the Axis Constraints toolbar,
I can choose X and Y as my constraints
| | 03:52 | and now I can edit this as I needed to before.
| | 03:56 | One last point about hiding the
Transform Gizmo, there is a separate command in
| | 04:01 | the Views menu that says Show
Transform Gizmo, and if you turn that off then
| | 04:06 | the Transform Gizmo and the little
axis tripod will also disappear and you'll
| | 04:11 | be left with nothing.
| | 04:12 | I don't recommend that.
| | 04:14 | Turn that back on again.
| | 04:16 | Just use the X key which will hide the
Gizmo but still show you this red axis
| | 04:21 | tripod so you'll know which
constraints you're currently in.
| | 04:25 | Exit out of sub-object mode, and that's
a little introduction to using different
| | 04:31 | vertex types in an Editable Spline.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
5. LoftingLofting a vase| 00:00 | In this chapter, we'll be making this art
glass vase using the loft compound object.
| | 00:07 | In 3ds Max, a loft is slightly
different than it is in some other programs.
| | 00:11 | If you've used to Maya, or more traditional
NURBS modeling, a loft is usually just a
| | 00:17 | surface that's drawn between two curves.
| | 00:21 | Well in 3ds Max, a loft has one
additional requirement which is that it must
| | 00:26 | have a path, and this line here
is the path of the 3ds Max loft.
| | 00:32 | The loft must have exactly one path, and
it must have one or more shapes which
| | 00:38 | are the Profile Curves.
| | 00:41 | Okay, I'm going to open up the scene
that just has only the splines in it.
| | 00:45 | Here is the scene that just has only the
shapes in it, and I'm ready to create a loft.
| | 00:50 | To do this, I'll select the path.
| | 00:53 | I'll tell you what,
| | 00:55 | I'll make this bigger by hitting Alt+W
so we can see it a little bit better.
| | 01:00 | So I've got that path selected and now
I want to go to the Create panel, and
| | 01:05 | I'll go to a new category
that you haven't seen before.
| | 01:09 | Under Geometry, select this
pulldown list and go to Compound Objects.
| | 01:18 | As the name indicates, a compound object
is made out of two or more other objects.
| | 01:24 | When I've activated that panel, now
you'll see some of these are lighting up and
| | 01:28 | some of them are grayed out.
| | 01:30 | I need to have the path selected at this
point or I will not be able to create the loft.
| | 01:34 | You'll notice that if I click off
of that path, now loft is grayed out.
| | 01:40 | Again, you got to have it selected first.
| | 01:42 | Then click the Loft button.
| | 01:44 | And at this point now, you have to
select the profile curves, or the shapes.
| | 01:49 | You'll see down here in
the Create panel, Get Shape.
| | 01:53 | Click that Get Shape button, and then click
on one of the profile curves like this circle.
| | 01:59 | And as soon as I've done that now,
you'll see I've got a cylinder.
| | 02:04 | Now my object color is currently black.
| | 02:06 | I'll just go and change that.
| | 02:10 | You can see that better now.
| | 02:12 | Very simple!
| | 02:14 | I've got a loft now.
| | 02:15 | It's a compound object made
out of a line and a circle.
| | 02:19 | Let's make it more interesting
by adding another profile curve.
| | 02:23 | To do this, I am going to get in a
little bit closer, and I want to go into
| | 02:27 | Wireframe Mode so we can see
this a little bit more clearly.
| | 02:29 | So I'll press F3 on my keyboard.
| | 02:32 | Notice that there's a very small
yellow X down here, that's our current
| | 02:38 | position along the path.
| | 02:41 | I can change that position
by adjusting this value here.
| | 02:44 | This is a percentage of distance along the path.
| | 02:48 | If I set that value to 50 and press Enter,
now it's moved up to half way along the path.
| | 02:56 | I've now set it up so that if I choose another
shape, it will be positioned at that location.
| | 03:03 | I'll click Get Shape, and then
click on my star and there you go!
| | 03:09 | Now I've got two shapes along the path.
| | 03:12 | I'll press F3 again, so we can see that better;
| | 03:16 | I've got two shapes on one path.
| | 03:20 | I can right-click to exit that creation
and then I can go into the Modify panel,
| | 03:25 | and I can in fact do those same things again.
| | 03:27 | I can choose a location along the path.
| | 03:30 | I will need to be in Wireframe Mode to see it,
and I will probably have to get in very close.
| | 03:34 | But I can do all those same
things from within the Modify panel.
| | 03:38 | I can choose a position along
the path and then get a new shape.
| | 03:42 | But I basically got the shapes that I need now.
| | 03:45 | Hit F3 to go back to Shaded Mode.
| | 03:47 | In the next movie, we'll work on the
aesthetics of this and moving the shapes
| | 03:52 | around along the path and
changing their parameters.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting loft parameters| 00:00 | I've got a basic loft, let's play
around with some of the parameters of that
| | 00:05 | loft and to make it more
beautiful and aesthetic.
| | 00:09 | I'll select it, and before even change
its Level Of Detail or any of its loft
| | 00:14 | parameters over here, I want to show
you that there is still a live dependency
| | 00:19 | back to the original shapes.
| | 00:21 | The original profile curves
are still connected to this loft.
| | 00:24 | For example, if I select this
circle and adjust its Radius, you can see
| | 00:29 | immediately, it's
connected to the loft. Very cool!
| | 00:34 | Now note that if I move this circle
that doesn't affect the shape of the loft,
| | 00:39 | and that's different than a
traditional loft in other programs.
| | 00:42 | In 3ds Max the object transforms of
the shapes and the path do not affect
| | 00:48 | the shape of the loft.
| | 00:50 | However the sub-object transforms do
affect the shape of the loft, in other
| | 00:55 | words, if I were to move points around
on my star, that would change the shape
| | 01:00 | of the lofted vase.
| | 01:01 | I'll go to the Top View to do that, Alt+W,
select my star and go into Vertex
| | 01:09 | mode, select some points on that and
move them, and you can see that there is a
| | 01:13 | live connection back to the loft object.
| | 01:17 | As long as I haven't deleted the shapes
and the path, then that dependency will
| | 01:21 | still be in effect. Exit out of sub-
object mode, go back to the loft, maximize
| | 01:28 | that view with Alt+W, and let's play
around with some of the Loft parameters.
| | 01:33 | The most basic one is Capping.
| | 01:36 | By default, I get a cap at the
start and the end of the loft.
| | 01:40 | Because this is supposed to be a vase,
I don't want to have a cap at the top
| | 01:44 | here, that in fact, is the end of the loft.
| | 01:48 | The first point that I created was
at the bottom, so that's the start.
| | 01:51 | The second point on the path
is the top which is the end.
| | 01:55 | I'll turn that Cap End off and now
I've got a hollow shape, cap at the
| | 02:01 | bottom, but not the top. Cool!
| | 02:05 | Now I want to work with Level Of Detail.
| | 02:07 | To see this better, I want to be in a
Wireframe mode, or at the very least have
| | 02:11 | Edged Faces visible.
| | 02:12 | I'll press F4 so I can see the wires.
| | 02:16 | Get in a little bit closer on that.
| | 02:20 | Level Of Detail for a loft is
controlled through these Shape Steps and Path
| | 02:24 | Steps in the Options.
| | 02:26 | Shape Steps is how many divisions
between two points on the original shape.
| | 02:32 | If I reduce that down, we'll
get a much lower Level Of Detail.
| | 02:37 | Path Steps is the Level Of Detail
running along the path, and Adaptive is
| | 02:42 | turned on by default.
| | 02:44 | What that's going to do is try to fill in a
certain number of polygons to make it look good.
| | 02:50 | It doesn't always work out that way.
| | 02:51 | If I increase the Path Steps quite a lot,
something like 50, you'll notice that the
| | 02:57 | density of edges is much greater
here at the bottom than it is up here.
| | 03:01 | If I wanted a consistent sizing to
these polygons or consistent length to
| | 03:07 | those edges, I could turn Adaptive
Path Steps off and that gives me a little
| | 03:13 | bit more predictable result.
| | 03:16 | That's a basic introduction to editing
Loft parameters, changing the Level Of
| | 03:21 | Detail, and also adjusting dependent splines.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing a path| 00:00 | We've set some basic parameters for the loft,
now let's dive into making it more beautiful.
| | 00:06 | The first thing I want to do here is to
change the shape of the path so that I
| | 00:10 | have a curved path rather
than this straight line.
| | 00:13 | Sometimes it's difficult to select
things in the viewport, especially if things
| | 00:17 | are hiding behind other things.
| | 00:18 | There is an alternate method of
selection called the Scene Explorer.
| | 00:22 | Let's take a look at that.
| | 00:24 | It's under Tools > New Scene Explorer.
| | 00:29 | This is an outline of all
of the objects in the scene.
| | 00:33 | And if I click on something in the Scene
Explorer it will be selected in the viewports.
| | 00:38 | Now I have got that line selected.
| | 00:40 | I can grab the Move tool and just move
that line out of the way, leaving the
| | 00:45 | loft where it was at the origin,
which is the center of the world, and by
| | 00:49 | convention that's where we
want the model to end up.
| | 00:53 | Close the Scene Explorer.
| | 00:56 | Now I am ready to edit that line.
| | 00:57 | What I want is a curve.
| | 00:59 | I'll go to the Front Viewport, Alt+W
and with that line selected, I'll choose
| | 01:07 | Vertex sub-object mode.
| | 01:10 | These are both corner points.
| | 01:12 | If I select it and move it, you will
see we are just getting a straight line
| | 01:17 | between those two points, Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 01:21 | I do recommend that you have corner
points at either end of a loft path.
| | 01:25 | If those points are anything other
than a corner, you might get unpleasant
| | 01:29 | results with your loft crumpling in on
itself or twisting around and doing weird things.
| | 01:35 | Keep these as corner points.
| | 01:38 | To create curvature, I'll need to add
more points along the path, and that's
| | 01:42 | done with the Refine tool.
| | 01:44 | With the line selected, in sub-object mode,
I'll go to the Geometry rollout and click Refine.
| | 01:52 | Then I can just click
anywhere to create a point.
| | 01:56 | Let's make two points.
| | 01:59 | When I am finished refining,
I'll right-click to exit that tool.
| | 02:03 | These have been created
as corner points as well.
| | 02:05 | So if I move that around, you will
see I am getting an angular result.
| | 02:10 | I'll convert those two to Bezier
to get more softer or rounder shape.
| | 02:16 | Select those two points, right-click
in the viewport to get the quad menu and
| | 02:21 | convert those points to Bezier, and
now I've got a much softer, rounded shape.
| | 02:27 | Press the F4 key to turn off those
edged faces for a moment so we can see that
| | 02:30 | a little bit better.
| | 02:34 | If I move these points around, you will
see it's changing the shape of the loft.
| | 02:38 | Be careful with this because if the
path is too curved then the loft will
| | 02:44 | actually self-intersect or crash through itself.
| | 02:48 | Also notice that the bottom of the vase
is not flat with the world, you can see
| | 02:53 | that over here as well.
| | 02:55 | To make sure that it is flat, we just
want to make sure that we have two points
| | 03:00 | in a row here and
basically a straight line segment.
| | 03:05 | I can move that down a little bit.
| | 03:13 | Very good!
| | 03:14 | We've edited the shape of the path and
I'll exit out of sub-object mode now and
| | 03:20 | next we will control the
positions of shapes along a path.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Manipulating loft sub-objects| 00:00 | Let's adjust the positions
of shapes along a loft path.
| | 00:05 | What you will see in this case is I
have a circle at 0% along the path and I
| | 00:12 | have got a star up here at 50% along the path.
| | 00:15 | We can position these at different
locations along the path very easily.
| | 00:19 | We maximize that with Alt+W. I'll go to
the Modify panel and open up the loft
| | 00:27 | sub-objects and you will see Shape and Path.
| | 00:29 | The only thing I really care about now
is Shape, and if I click on Shape then I
| | 00:36 | can select a shape along the path and
this is easiest to see if you don't have
| | 00:42 | wireframes turned on.
| | 00:43 | If I had wireframes on,
it'd be kind of hard to see.
| | 00:47 | Before you do this, I want to warn you
that this is one of the very few things in
| | 00:51 | 3ds Max that is not undoable.
| | 00:54 | Once you select that shape and move
it, you cannot undo the operation.
| | 01:00 | If it's a critical operation, I
recommend that you save before you do this.
| | 01:06 | Okay, so I'll just move that, boom!
| | 01:09 | And what I have done now is I've
positioned that star at 100% along the path
| | 01:15 | as shown here, and in fact I could also adjust
this spinner directly if that were my desire.
| | 01:22 | I can select the circle too and pull
that up, and that's giving me more of the
| | 01:28 | result that I was trying to get
which is this floral design. Cool!
| | 01:34 | Another thing I want to mention here is
that sometimes you may get twisted lofts,
| | 01:39 | and you'll need to adjust
the rotation of a shape.
| | 01:44 | If I select that star, go to the
Rotate tool, I can rotate it, and
| | 01:53 | sometimes this will happen whether
you want it or not and it will kind of
| | 01:56 | turnaround inside out.
| | 02:00 | This is a way for you to correct that problem,
| | 02:03 | and also just to fine-tune the
structure. If I go to Wireframe or Edged Faces
| | 02:10 | by pressing F4, as I rotate that shape you can
see how it's affecting the polygon structure.
| | 02:23 | That's a very simple introduction to
manipulating Loft shapes along the path.
| | 02:23 | Very good!
| | 02:28 | I just want to remind you once
again with a big warning that that is a
| | 02:31 | non-undoable operation.
| | 02:34 | And next, we will add a scale
deformation which will allow us to change the size
| | 02:40 | of a shape as it travels down the path.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a scale deformation| 00:00 | We've got a basic loft, but this
doesn't have very much finesse to it, it's
| | 00:05 | not very aesthetic.
| | 00:06 | What I really want to have is a really
elegant taper to the thickness here and I
| | 00:12 | want it to be larger at the
bottom so that it won't be top-heavy.
| | 00:16 | You might think that a good way to do
that would be to add more circles as
| | 00:21 | shapes along the path.
| | 00:23 | However, that would not be an efficient way.
| | 00:26 | Instead, I am going to use something
called a scale deformation, which is built
| | 00:30 | right into the loft.
| | 00:32 | I'll select that loft and go over to the
Modify panel, and at the very bottom you
| | 00:37 | will see Deformations.
| | 00:40 | The only one we care about right now
is the scale deformation and it's by far
| | 00:44 | the most intuitive of all of them.
| | 00:46 | To add that deformation, I'll click the Scale
button, and now I've got a window opening up.
| | 00:53 | You resize that window.
| | 00:55 | What you are looking at here is a graph.
| | 00:58 | On the left is the beginning of the path,
and on the right is the end of the path.
| | 01:04 | The vertical dimension up and down is the
scale of shapes as they travel down the path.
| | 01:11 | I'll use the Zoom Region tool here just
to zoom in on this area from 0 to 100%.
| | 01:18 | And I'll grab this Move Control Point
tool up here, grab one of these points and
| | 01:22 | move it down, and you can see
very clearly what it's doing.
| | 01:27 | At the very beginning of the path,
we've got a very small scale, a scale of in
| | 01:33 | this case only about 6% or 7%, as
shown by this numeric readout here.
| | 01:38 | If I want to restore it back
to 100%, I can just type in 100.
| | 01:43 | The dashed lines here that you see
indicate the positions of shapes along the
| | 01:48 | path and also of vertices along the path.
| | 01:53 | What I need to do is add more
control points to this red curve.
| | 01:57 | To do that I can go up here to Insert Points.
| | 02:01 | By default I'll get a Corner Point,
but what I really want are Bezier Points.
| | 02:06 | You'll notice there is a little
triangle down here at the bottom of that icon
| | 02:10 | that means it's a flyout.
| | 02:12 | If I hold that down, I can
choose a different option.
| | 02:15 | Here we go, insert Bezier
Point, that's what I really want.
| | 02:19 | And then when I click any where
here I am creating a new Bezier Point.
| | 02:23 | Let's create a couple of those.
| | 02:24 | Then I'll go back to the Move
Control Point tool and move these around to
| | 02:29 | start shaping my model. Very cool!
| | 02:40 | Let's say I wanted to sort of
bubble out of the bottom here.
| | 02:44 | This is a corner point here, but what
I really need then is a Bezier Corner
| | 02:48 | because I want to have a
handle that I can adjust.
| | 02:51 | I can right-click on one of these
control points and convert it, Bezier Corner,
| | 02:57 | and then move that up.
| | 02:59 | There we go, that's what I was trying
to go for, I was trying to get this sort
| | 03:02 | of larger base at the bottom.
| | 03:08 | That's pretty easy,
pretty straightforward stuff.
| | 03:10 | You'll notice, by the way, that the
handles are not of equal length.
| | 03:14 | If that's a problem, then you can
convert it to Corner, and then convert it back
| | 03:20 | to Bezier that will equalize
the lengths of the handles.
| | 03:26 | Maybe at the end I don't want it to
be 100% in size and maybe I'll bring
| | 03:30 | this down, and this is all nondestructive
and I can go back and change this at any time.
| | 03:45 | Examine that from different points of view.
| | 03:49 | That's pretty good!
| | 03:52 | There isn't much of that.
| | 03:53 | I can zoom these out here so I can see
the entire curve and I can use this hand
| | 03:59 | to move around, and that's really
all there is to it to creating a scale
| | 04:02 | deformation to modulate the size of a
shape as it travels down a loft path.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding a Shell modifier| 00:00 | I have worked on this a little bit
more to give it a slightly better shape.
| | 00:04 | The last thing I really need to do in
terms of the structure of this loft is to
| | 00:08 | give it some thickness.
| | 00:10 | Let me get in closer here so you
can see what I'm talking about.
| | 00:16 | If we get in close enough, you will
see that this is an infinitely thin
| | 00:20 | surface, it has no thickness at all.
| | 00:23 | It's just a shell of polygons.
| | 00:26 | It needs to have an
interior and an exterior surface.
| | 00:30 | 3ds Max makes it very easy for you to do that.
| | 00:34 | There is a Modifier designed
just for that purpose called Shell.
| | 00:37 | Go to the Modifier List,
scroll down looking for Shell.
| | 00:46 | Boom!
| | 00:48 | All right, we've got the Shell but you
can see that it's looking pretty thick.
| | 00:51 | All I need to do is adjust these Inner and
Outer Amounts to get the result that I want.
| | 00:57 | Maybe I want it to be an Outer
Amount of 0 and an Inner Amount of maybe a
| | 01:02 | quarter of an inch or something like that.
| | 01:07 | As long as the surface is not self-
intersecting or passing through itself
| | 01:10 | then everything is fine.
| | 01:13 | Wow! That was easy, and you can do
this for any object in 3ds Max.
| | 01:19 | You can turn a plane into a box by just
adding a Shell modifier, or any complex shape.
| | 01:24 | If you need to, you can even go in
and play around with some of the fancy
| | 01:29 | stuff in here like the number of segments and
so on, but in fact this is fine just as it is.
| | 01:34 | That Shell modifier is a very easy way
for us to add realism because if this
| | 01:39 | were, for example, a real piece of glass,
it would need to refract light and that
| | 01:44 | means it would need to have some thickness.
| | 01:46 | Shell makes it very easy for you to do that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Finishing the model| 00:00 | We just about completed our art glass
vase, there are just a couple of finishing
| | 00:05 | touches to put on this.
| | 00:07 | If you look really closely you might see
some kind of interesting modeling effects.
| | 00:14 | It's not really desirable outcome.
| | 00:18 | All I need to do is adjust the level
of detail on the model to clean that up.
| | 00:22 | Go back to the Modify panel, back to
the Loft, and even with the Shell on there
| | 00:29 | I can still see the end result
because I've got Show end result turned on.
| | 00:34 | You can turn that on and off as needed.
| | 00:38 | What I really need to do is increase
the number of Shape Steps here to get a
| | 00:42 | softer, more pleasing result here.
| | 00:46 | And it's going to vary. It's going
to be different for every model.
| | 00:51 | You need to just find the sweet spot here.
| | 00:53 | If I go up too high, then it's too heavy.
| | 00:57 | If I go down too low, then I start to
see these weird artifacts, and you can't
| | 01:03 | really tell where the edges are in a
shaded view, so you may need to have more
| | 01:08 | than one view open at a time.
| | 01:10 | I'll hit Alt+W, and I'll go a little
bit closer in on the Front Viewport in a
| | 01:15 | Wireframe View, so I can get a sense of
the density or Level Of Detail of that model.
| | 01:21 | And I'll just increase those Shape Steps up
until the model looks clean and no further.
| | 01:26 | I don't want to increase it beyond
where it looks good because then I'm just
| | 01:31 | unnecessarily burdening my
computer with too much data.
| | 01:36 | It looked like a Shape Steps
of about 7 worked for me. Cool!
| | 01:42 | I would make any final adjustments to
the model and then save it in this state.
| | 01:49 | I am going to Save As, and I'll call
this one vaseLoft, and I'm putting the word
| | 01:58 | Loft in there for a reason because I'm
going to convert this to an Editable Mesh
| | 02:02 | as my final output and once I've done
that, that'll delete the loft and the
| | 02:08 | shell and all of that stuff, and I
won't be able to make changes very easily.
| | 02:12 | Therefore I'm going to version my work.
| | 02:15 | I'll make a version that's a Loft, press Enter.
| | 02:20 | I'll convert it to a raw mesh object,
either Editable Poly or Editable Mesh.
| | 02:27 | If I save it to Editable Poly then I'll
have a lot of advanced tools available to me.
| | 02:32 | If I save it to Editable Mesh,
it'll be a very simplified structure.
| | 02:38 | In other words, it's an older and
dumber object format that's very universal.
| | 02:43 | For final output, it doesn't really
matter which I do, Editable Mesh is a little
| | 02:48 | bit better performance, so I'll choose that.
| | 02:51 | And now I've erased the Loft and erased
the Shell and all I'm left with is this
| | 02:57 | raw shape, or raw mesh.
| | 03:02 | I don't need any of these Editable
Splines any longer, they are not connected
| | 03:06 | to the mesh anymore.
| | 03:07 | So I'll go ahead and delete those with
the Delete key and then save out as a
| | 03:12 | new version, I'll call this one
vaseMesh, and that's what I would use in my
| | 03:20 | master scene if I were to bring
this into an architectural rendering or
| | 03:23 | something like that.
| | 03:24 | I would want to use the Mesh object
rather than the Loft because it's more
| | 03:28 | efficient, there's nothing to
calculate, it's just a raw shape.
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|
|
6. Modeling with PrimitivesSetting up the scene| 00:00 | In this chapter, we'll learn about
building objects using simple primitives.
| | 00:05 | This modern bookshelf is a good
example because it has a modular structure.
| | 00:09 | We can just use these parts and repeat
them to build the whole piece, and then at
| | 00:13 | the end we'll group it
together so that it's a single unit.
| | 00:17 | To begin, I'll go ahead and reset 3ds Max.
| | 00:24 | As always, I'll start by
setting my Units and Grid,
| | 00:28 | Customize > Units Setup. I'll use Feet and
Decimal Inches with Inches as the default units.
| | 00:36 | I'll right-click on any one of the
magnets up here to get the Grid and Snaps
| | 00:40 | dialog, and go to the Home Grid, and I
want to set this up for imperial units with
| | 00:46 | a minor grid line every 1 inch, hit
the Tab key, a major grid line every 12
| | 00:51 | inches, hit the Tab key again, and for
the Perspective View, let's give it 24
| | 00:57 | inches from center to edge. Very good!
| | 01:01 | Now I've got that set up.
| | 01:03 | We'll be basing our 3D model on a
bookshelf from the real-world, and in fact,
| | 01:07 | I've already got the dimensions for
that, that will be helpful when we're
| | 01:10 | building this piece.
| | 01:12 | Here are the dimensions of the bookshelf.
| | 01:14 | This information is included with
the exercise files as a text file in
| | 01:18 | the Chapter 6 folder.
| | 01:19 | Now that we've got our scene setup,
we are ready to start constructing the model
| | 01:23 | in 3ds Max.
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| Creating chamfer boxes| 00:00 | We're ready to begin constructing our bookshelf.
| | 00:03 | I could use the standard box to do
this, but as you will see, if you get in
| | 00:08 | really close on a box,
the edges are razor sharp.
| | 00:12 | This corner is an exact 90 degree angle,
and objects in the real world really
| | 00:16 | have a slight rounded corner,
also known as a fillet or a chamfer.
| | 00:22 | I could add that to my primitive box
using a Modifier, however there is an
| | 00:26 | easier way because 3ds Max provides an
extended primitive called a chamfer box.
| | 00:32 | I'll delete that standard box, go up to
the Create panel, the Geometry section,
| | 00:37 | and I'll click here on this arrow to
get the pulldown list and choose Extended
| | 00:42 | Primitives, and here you will see ChamferBox.
| | 00:46 | Click on that, and in the Perspective
View, I'll click and hold the mouse to
| | 00:50 | set a footprint for the ChamferBox, release
the mouse and drag upward to set its height.
| | 00:56 | Click and then drag left to
right to set the Fillet amount.
| | 00:59 | It doesn't matter what that Fillet
value is right now, it just has to have
| | 01:03 | some non-zero value.
| | 01:05 | I'll click to create the ChamferBox,
that finishes the box, and then I'll
| | 01:09 | right-click to exit the tool.
| | 01:11 | Now since I know the dimensions of this
piece already, I'm going to go directly
| | 01:15 | to the Modify panel and plug the values in.
| | 01:18 | For the Length, we'll have a value
of 1 foot and 2 inches, and I'll just
| | 01:23 | type in 1'2, press Enter. Press the Tab key.
| | 01:29 | For the Width, it's going to be 3 inches,
just enter a value of 3, and since the
| | 01:34 | Default Units are Inches, just press
Enter and that's interpreted as 3 inches.
| | 01:39 | Hit the Tab key for the Height, and
that's just going to be only 1 inch as it is
| | 01:43 | just the very base of the bookshelf.
| | 01:47 | Okay let's get in really close on
this in order to adjust this Fillet value.
| | 01:53 | I'll maximize the view with Alt+W so we
can see that better, and press F4 so we
| | 01:58 | can see Edged Faces, and additionally,
the selection brackets here can be a
| | 02:03 | little bit distracting, so I can turn
those off using the J key, and that toggles
| | 02:08 | selection brackets on and off.
| | 02:10 | Okay, so now if I adjust this Fillet
value, we can see what we are doing.
| | 02:15 | We want a very small value here.
| | 02:18 | Let's give it about an eighth of an inch.
| | 02:21 | So I'll give that a value
of .125 inches.
| | 02:25 | All right, so that's my first piece.
| | 02:28 | I'll go back out to the four-viewport
layout with Alt+W. I'll get in a little
| | 02:33 | bit closer in the Top View and I want
to position this where it is going to
| | 02:38 | eventually end up, and I know
what that value is already too.
| | 02:41 | I might as well just type it directly
into the transform type in values down here.
| | 02:47 | With the Move tool active, I'll set the
X value to -2 feet and 2 inches, press
| | 02:54 | the Tab key and then the Y and Z
values would just be zeros, and there I have
| | 03:01 | got a single piece that's
positioned in the correct location.
| | 03:06 | Okay, getting a little bit
closer in here once again,
| | 03:10 | you will see that the edges are kind of
rounded and smoothed, and in fact I just
| | 03:15 | want to turn that off, turn Smoothing
off, because in fact I want to have sharp
| | 03:20 | angled edges in my final rendering.
| | 03:23 | Okay, so there we go, we've got one
little piece there, a single ChamferBox,
| | 03:28 | and next, we'll make some copies of it and
build the rest of the pieces of our bookshelf.
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| Cloning objects| 00:00 | We've got just one ChamferBox
at the bottom of our bookshelf.
| | 00:03 | Let's make some copies of this.
| | 00:06 | I'll select it and I can make a clone.
| | 00:08 | 3ds Max makes it very easy for you to do this.
| | 00:11 | All you need to do is hold down Shift
as you move or rotate an object and you
| | 00:15 | will be making a copy.
| | 00:17 | Hold down Shift and move the
object and there I have got a copy.
| | 00:22 | When I release the mouse, I get a dialog
box asking me what type of copy do I want.
| | 00:28 | Standard copy is as the name implies;
it's a copy and there's no relationship
| | 00:32 | between the two objects.
| | 00:34 | What I want here actually is an
Instance, which is very useful because if I
| | 00:38 | change one of the instances,
all of the instances will change.
| | 00:42 | It's almost like having an
object in two places at once.
| | 00:46 | Click OK to create that, and just to
illustrate, I'll show you that if I change
| | 00:50 | the value of the Length of one of
these, they both change. Very cool!
| | 00:53 | All right, Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 00:55 | I just want to position this
symmetrically at 2 feet and 2 inches in the X axis,
| | 01:03 | and tell you what, let's rename
these as well, and I'll call this one
| | 01:07 | bookshelfBase001, and I'll
call this bookshelfBase002.
| | 01:18 | It's a really good idea to name
everything as you go along because if you
| | 01:21 | don't, then you'll end up with lots of objects
that are all called ChamferBox01 to ChamferBox200.
| | 01:28 | That makes it very hard for you to navigate
your scene and figure out what you're doing.
| | 01:33 | Okay, so that's a standard Instance.
| | 01:35 | Now I want to make the next piece.
| | 01:37 | In fact, I can make more than one copy at a time.
| | 01:40 | To do this, let's get in closer in the
Front View and maximize that Front View
| | 01:45 | with Alt+W, and I'll make another clone.
| | 01:48 | Hold down Shift with both
of them selected and release.
| | 01:54 | This time I don't want an Instance
because this part will be taller.
| | 01:58 | I'll need to choose Copy instead.
| | 02:03 | And these ones, I'll just
adjust them independently.
| | 02:07 | I know that the height of this is
going to be 9 inches, let's type in a 9.
| | 02:14 | And you see, since I had them
both selected, they both changed.
| | 02:17 | All right, very good!
| | 02:20 | Hit Alt+W to go back out
to the four-viewport layout.
| | 02:24 | That's the essentials of
creating clones in 3ds Max.
| | 02:28 | Copies are not connected and Instances
are always identical to other instances.
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| Using the Array tool| 00:00 | We'll be using the Array tool to
construct parts of the bookshelf.
| | 00:05 | Let's go ahead and make the shelf proper.
| | 00:07 | Go to the Create panel, choose ChamferBox,
drag that out in the Top viewport and
| | 00:12 | then drag upward to set the Height.
| | 00:15 | Click and drag left to
right to set a Fillet amount.
| | 00:19 | Click again to complete the box, and
then right-click to exit the tool.
| | 00:26 | Move that up in the Front viewport and
then go into the Modify panel and set
| | 00:30 | the dimensions.
| | 00:31 | I'll set the Width to be 1 foot
and 2 inches, hit the Tab key.
| | 00:37 | The Width is going to be 4
feet 7 inches, hit the Tab key.
| | 00:41 | The Height is going to be only .5
inches and the Fillet amount,
| | 00:46 | once again, it will be an eighth of
an inch or .125 inches.
| | 00:53 | All right, let's get in closer on that, Alt+W,
and I want to just center it.
| | 00:58 | I'll give it an X value of 0 and a Y
value of 0, and the Height we will just
| | 01:05 | eyeball the position and that's my shelf.
| | 01:11 | Now for the sides here, I am
going to clone these guys again.
| | 01:14 | Select those, I can use the Ctrl key
to select them both, and then hold down
| | 01:18 | Shift and drag, and these are
going to be copies once again.
| | 01:23 | We can rename them here too.
| | 01:25 | I'll call that bookshelfSide001 and
the Height of these is going to be a foot
| | 01:32 | and 3.5 inches, 1' 3.5.
| | 01:39 | Okay, I'll just get in a little bit closer
here to make sure that things are lined up.
| | 01:43 | Don't want to have any overlap,
if I can avoid it. All righty,
| | 01:49 | I forgot to turn off Smoothing on this
bookshelf piece, so I'll do that now. All right,
| | 01:56 | and then I can take these three, and
in fact, clone them. I'll rename this
| | 02:01 | too, call that shelf001.
| | 02:04 | I am going to select these three with
the Ctrl key, and I can clone them in a
| | 02:09 | clever way using the Array tool, under
Tools > Array, and what this allows me to
| | 02:17 | do is to make multiple copies of
selected objects and create one-dimensional,
| | 02:23 | two-dimensional or three-dimensional arrays.
| | 02:26 | I've got a number of copies that I want
to make here and I am really only going
| | 02:30 | to need four copies,
| | 02:32 | and I'll also want to position them.
| | 02:35 | I want to move them up in Z. Now it's very
useful to see a preview of what I'm doing.
| | 02:42 | I'll click the Preview button over here
and then adjust the Z value, and you can
| | 02:48 | see I'm getting four copies.
| | 02:50 | Wow, that's pretty cool!
| | 02:52 | And in fact, it looks like a value of
1 foot and 4 inches, which is right.
| | 02:57 | I'll get in really close on this
to make sure that that's clean.
| | 03:01 | That looks good to me. Very nice!
| | 03:06 | And by the way, the Array tool is now
non-modal, which means that I can make
| | 03:10 | adjustments in the main window while
I'm previewing the array. Excellent!
| | 03:15 | And these are Instances
by default. I'll click OK.
| | 03:20 | All righty, so I just need one more
of these, I'll hold down Shift and drag
| | 03:24 | that up, and I can make that an Instance too, and
I'm almost finished with the structure of this.
| | 03:31 | I just need a little bit
more up at the top here.
| | 03:34 | I'll take these guys, Ctrl+Select those,
hold down Shift and drag that up and
| | 03:41 | those will be copies. I'll need a
different height to those, and I'll call this
| | 03:44 | one bookshelfSide and the Height here
is just going to be 3.5 inches, 3.5, and
| | 03:54 | finally I have got these two little
bits down here, Ctrl+Select those.
| | 03:58 | If you accidentally select the wrong
thing, like I just did, you can use Alt
| | 04:02 | to unselect, here we go, hold down Shift,
bring that up and I'll call those bookshelfTop.
| | 04:11 | All right, so I have constructed my
bookshelf out of ChamferBoxes.
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| Measuring with the tape helper| 00:00 | 3ds Max provides a handy tool
that lets you measure your scene.
| | 00:04 | It's called the tape helper.
| | 00:06 | I'll hit Alt+W; go out to my Front view,
because I want to measure the height of my bookshelf.
| | 00:11 | To make it a little bit easier, to
make sure that my tape helper is only
| | 00:15 | measuring vertically, I'll use the Snaps.
| | 00:18 | Turn on 3D Snaps up here.
| | 00:20 | It's a good idea to right-click on the
3D Snap button too, and make sure that
| | 00:25 | Grid Points is the only thing active.
| | 00:29 | And I'll create my tape helper.
| | 00:30 | Go to the Create panel, and there is a
new category of objects you haven't seen
| | 00:34 | before, and that's over
here, here it is, Helpers.
| | 00:37 | Looks like a little tape measurer, and
I'll click on Tape and click and drag
| | 00:43 | to set the position of the tape head and the end
of the tape helper, and then release the mouse.
| | 00:50 | I'll right-click to complete that
creation and I'll also turn off Snaps, now
| | 00:54 | that I've got it lined up.
| | 00:56 | Okay, so how does a tape helper work?
| | 00:58 | Let's look at this, Alt+W to get in
closer on that, go to the Modify panel and
| | 01:03 | what this is showing me is the current Length.
| | 01:05 | And if I select the end of the tape or
its target, I can change the Length, but
| | 01:12 | you'll see that I don't get to see the
value as I do that, whereas, if I select
| | 01:18 | the head, and move it, I can see
the value, Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 01:23 | Well there is a handy way that I can
pin the stack, in other words, click this
| | 01:29 | little button here and now whatever I
currently have in the Modify panel will be sticky.
| | 01:34 | It will stay displayed if I
select a different object.
| | 01:37 | That means I can select
this target and move it around.
| | 01:40 | It's a much better way of measuring.
| | 01:43 | So you can see here that
it's 6 feet 7 inches tall.
| | 01:46 | I can also specify the
Length, which is pretty helpful.
| | 01:50 | I can click here and then type in a
value, 6 feet 7, and now the line here of
| | 01:58 | the tape helper is exactly 6
feet and 7 inches. Excellent!
| | 02:03 | So that's how I use the tape helper
to measure your scene and also how to
| | 02:07 | use the Pin Stack command to display
a specific Modify panel as you work on
| | 02:13 | other objects.
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| Grouping objects| 00:00 | The last thing we'll look at in this
chapter is simply placing objects into a group.
| | 00:04 | It's a handy way of collecting all of
these pieces into a single unit, and that
| | 00:09 | way I can easily move that around or
easily import it into another scene.
| | 00:14 | I'll simply select all the objects, go
up to the Group menu and choose Group.
| | 00:19 | I recommend that you use the word
group in the name of the Group, I'll call
| | 00:25 | this bookshelfGroup.
| | 00:28 | And now when I select any member of
the group, the entire group is selected.
| | 00:32 | You'll notice in the Modify panel that
the name is listed in bold, and that's an
| | 00:38 | indicator that I've selected the group
and not any individual object. Cool!
| | 00:43 | So I can move that around
or place it wherever I need.
| | 00:45 | It's also quite easy for me to
select individual group members.
| | 00:50 | Simply go to the Group menu and choose Open.
| | 00:54 | And now if you select an
individual object, you can work with that
| | 00:59 | object independently.
| | 01:01 | And you'll notice that there are pink
selection brackets around the group.
| | 01:04 | If you click on that bracket, then you
can transform the entire group. Very good!
| | 01:11 | When you are finished, you can
close it back up again, Group > Close.
| | 01:15 | And finally if you need to get rid of
the group, you can just choose Group >
| | 01:18 | Ungroup, and then you'll be
back to where you were originally.
| | 01:23 | I'll undo that, because I want to keep
that group, just hitting Ctrl+Z a few
| | 01:28 | times until I see
bookshelfGroup again, and close it.
| | 01:34 | That's how you work with groups in 3ds Max.
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|
|
7. Using the Modifier StackLaying out the scene| 00:01 | In this chapter, we'll be modeling
this fancy sofa, using two techniques.
| | 00:06 | First for the base, we will use a
rectangle shape primitive and a sweep
| | 00:14 | modifier to create the frame, and for
the cushions, we'll start with chamfer
| | 00:20 | boxes that have been rounded.
| | 00:22 | But we'll add a bunch of bells and
whistles to them to shape them up and give
| | 00:28 | them a little bit of a lived-in feeling.
| | 00:30 | And also we'll optimize it by
deleting some of the unnecessary stuff.
| | 00:41 | As you can see in this
cushion, it has no bottom.
| | 00:47 | And we'll be doing this using some cool
stuff in the Modify panel, specifically
| | 00:53 | selecting based upon volume.
| | 00:56 | Okay, so that's what we'll be learning.
| | 00:58 | Let's go-ahead and reset the scene, and I
want to set this up with my Grid and Snaps.
| | 01:06 | This is a European design
so it's in Metric Units.
| | 01:09 | I'll go to Customize >
Unit Setup and choose Metric.
| | 01:16 | And I'll also choose Centimeters as the
Units, so that if I type in a value of
| | 01:21 | 100 that will be
interpreted as a 100 centimeters.
| | 01:25 | Whenever you change the Unit Setup, you
also need to check in on your Grid Settings.
| | 01:29 | I'll right-click on any one of these
magnets up here and go to the Home Grid.
| | 01:35 | I want a Grid Line every 10 centimeters in this
case, and then a major grid line every
| | 01:40 | 10 times 10, or 100 cm.
| | 01:44 | And for the Perspective View, I want to have
a stage that's 2 meters from center to edge.
| | 01:52 | So to get that, I would take the Grid
Spacing value and then multiply that.
| | 01:57 | So if I want 200 cm, it's 10 times 20, so
the Perspective View Grid Extent would be 20.
| | 02:05 | All right, so there I've got my stage
set up, and next I'll make some rectangle
| | 02:09 | primitives for the frame.
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| Modeling rectangle primitives| 00:00 | To build the frame of my fancy
European sofa, I'll use rectangle primitives.
| | 00:05 | Just as a sanity check, I'll make a
reference box, so I'll know approximately
| | 00:10 | how large things are in my scene.
| | 00:13 | And I'll set that box to
be 1 cubic meter, or 100 cm on the side,
| | 00:19 | pressing the Tab key and entering in
a value of 100 for each of those and
| | 00:23 | right-click to complete the box.
| | 00:27 | Move that over to the side.
| | 00:28 | That's just a sanity check to make
sure that when I build things that they're
| | 00:33 | approximately the right size.
| | 00:35 | To make the rectangle, I'll go to the
Create panel and Shapes > Rectangle.
| | 00:41 | Draw that out in the Top viewport,
right-click to complete the rectangle and
| | 00:47 | I'll center it. I've got the Move
tool active already, typing in zeros.
| | 00:56 | For the Z-position, I actually want
it to be slightly above the ground.
| | 00:59 | I'll give that a height of 2 cm.
| | 01:04 | Okay, now I'll go into the Modify panel
and set the dimensions of the rectangle.
| | 01:08 | I've got Length which is the Depth
in this case, set that to 100 cm.
| | 01:16 | And the Width, I'll set to about 235 cm.
| | 01:23 | You'll also see that there's a
Corner Radius parameter here.
| | 01:26 | I am getting closer on the
corner, so you can see it.
| | 01:30 | We could have rounded corners if we
wanted, but in this case I want to have
| | 01:34 | sharp corners, so I'll set
that Corner Radius back down to 0.
| | 01:39 | As my first rectangle primitive, I'll
need a second one for the frame, getting
| | 01:43 | closer in the Front viewport.
| | 01:44 | I'll make a clone by holding
down the Shift key and drag that up.
| | 01:51 | You can see at the bottom of the
screen I've got the Y-Offset value.
| | 01:56 | That's how far away it is in screen space.
| | 02:01 | I'll set that up to about a value of 8.
| | 02:05 | In this case it doesn't really matter
whether I make it a copy or an instance,
| | 02:08 | because I won't be making any changes.
| | 02:11 | Okay, so I've got two rectangle primitives now.
| | 02:14 | Just to make them a little bit easier
to see in the view, I am going to select
| | 02:16 | them both, and set their Object Color to
black, because they are just wireframes.
| | 02:23 | And next I'll join them
up using Editable Spline.
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| Working with Editable Spline| 00:00 | Currently I've got two rectangle
primitives for the frame of the sofa.
| | 00:04 | I want to use the Sweep Modifier later,
so that I can give them some thickness.
| | 00:09 | To do that most effectively, I want
to make them Editable Splines, attach them
| | 00:14 | together and join them up with a
couple of other pieces of lines.
| | 00:19 | First thing I'll do is select either one
of them and convert it to Editable Spline.
| | 00:24 | Simply select it, right-click anywhere
in the viewport and choose Convert To
| | 00:29 | > Convert to Editable Spline.
| | 00:32 | Once I've done that, of course, I get
lots of cool tools in the Modify panel.
| | 00:38 | Most importantly is the Attach tool.
| | 00:40 | If I want these two objects to
be one object, I'll use Attach.
| | 00:46 | Click on that and then click on the
other object and it will be converted to
| | 00:50 | Editable Spline and attached
to the current Editable Spline.
| | 00:56 | When I am finished attaching I
can right-click to exit that.
| | 00:58 | I'll rename this now and
I'll call it sofaFrame.
| | 01:05 | Frame is going to have a few pieces of
metal that join it at the corners and
| | 01:10 | also at the center here.
| | 01:13 | I can use Snapping to build a
new line exactly where I need it.
| | 01:18 | I'll go up to the Snaps tools,
| | 01:23 | activate 3D Snap and also right-click.
| | 01:27 | This time I don't want to snap to
Grid Points, I want to turn that off.
| | 01:32 | Instead I want to snap to
Vertex or snap to Points, close that.
| | 01:39 | And I can create new parts of
this line directly in place here.
| | 01:44 | As you see, as I move my cursor around, I get a
little Snap icon that appears at those vertices.
| | 01:51 | If you're distracted by the selection
rectangle you can turn that off if you
| | 01:54 | want, it's the J key.
| | 01:56 | I am going to create a new
line here at this corner.
| | 02:01 | Over here inside the Editable Spline
object I'll click Create Line, click once
| | 02:07 | at that corner, and again here,
and then right-click to complete it.
| | 02:13 | And I'll just do that on all four
corners, get in closer here, click once,
| | 02:18 | twice, and then right-click, using the
middle mouse and navigate, and the wheel
| | 02:25 | to get in closer.
| | 02:29 | Be careful that when you do this
you're not holding the mouse button as you
| | 02:32 | create the new line, you just want to click.
| | 02:36 | Because if you hold the mouse down,
you'll get a curved line, we want
| | 02:39 | straight lines here.
| | 02:42 | All right, I've got those lines made.
| | 02:45 | That looks like a box, but it's actually not.
| | 02:47 | If we go out here, you can see I've got an
actual box here that's in a shaded mode.
| | 02:53 | This is a frame made out of lines,
right-click to stop making lines.
| | 02:59 | I'll also turn Snaps back off again.
| | 03:02 | I'll need a couple of pieces of
metal bar here in the front and back.
| | 03:08 | I can take these Aligns that
already exist here and clone them.
| | 03:12 | In fact, I can clone some objects in
the exact same way that I clone objects.
| | 03:18 | I'll just need to go into that
Editable Spline sub-object mode Segment.
| | 03:24 | A Segment is a piece of a
line between two points.
| | 03:29 | I could choose it also from the text here,
Segment Text button, or from the icon.
| | 03:36 | I'll Ctrl+Click to select these
four pieces of line that I just made.
| | 03:42 | I might need to get in closer to do that.
| | 03:47 | And I can make duplicates of all four of these
in a kind of clever way using the Scale tool.
| | 03:55 | Select the Scale tool and hold down the
Shift key and click on the X axis of the
| | 04:02 | Scale tool and I'm making
duplicates. Wow, that's easy.
| | 04:09 | And sometimes you won't be able to drag
all the way to where you want to go, you
| | 04:13 | can just release the Shift key and
then continue to scale it, and when you're
| | 04:20 | finished, you just exit out of sub-object mode.
| | 04:26 | And that's the structure of our frame,
and now to give it some thickness, in the
| | 04:29 | next movie we'll add a Sweep Modifier.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying a Sweep modifier| 00:01 | To finish our sofa frame we can add a
Sweep modifier to this Editable Spline.
| | 00:06 | Sweep is kind of like a loft,
except it's much simpler.
| | 00:10 | I'll select that and go to the Modify
panel, and from the Modifier List I'll just
| | 00:16 | simply choose Sweep.
| | 00:21 | I've got a black object now.
| | 00:23 | Let me just change the color,
so you can see that better.
| | 00:29 | I'll also change my Display mode to Shaded.
| | 00:32 | Now that doesn't look like what we wanted.
| | 00:35 | We wanted just a standard bar,
instead of this interesting angle.
| | 00:42 | We can change the behavior of the
Sweep modifier very easily, going into
| | 00:46 | the Section Type here.
| | 00:47 | Instead of an Angled Sweep, I'll choose Bar.
| | 00:52 | And then I'll need to
change the dimensions of the Bar.
| | 00:56 | Length and Width, they are up here.
| | 00:58 | I could set that to 1 cm and 1 cm.
| | 01:04 | Wow, that was easy.
| | 01:06 | What we had with the Editable Spline was
an infinitely thin line that won't render.
| | 01:12 | Just by adding the Sweep
modifier, now I've got a 3D mesh.
| | 01:15 | There are other built-in sections by
the way, you could do Cylinders and so on,
| | 01:22 | could set the Radius of that cylinder.
| | 01:24 | That's very useful for things like
chrome tubing, and you can even put your own
| | 01:30 | section in there too.
| | 01:31 | You can make an Editable Spline and
then select it using these tools here, for
| | 01:36 | example, if you needed to do crown molding.
| | 01:40 | I'll set this back to Bar.
| | 01:44 | That's my frame with a Sweep.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Soft-selecting with Volume Select| 00:01 | In this movie we're going to select part
of an object based upon a Volume Gizmo.
| | 00:07 | That gives us the ability to apply
effects selectively and nondestructively,
| | 00:13 | very useful technique.
| | 00:16 | I've constructed half of the
sofa here out of ChamferBoxes.
| | 00:19 | Get in a little bit closer there, and I've
press the F4 key, you can see the edged faces.
| | 00:25 | And you can see I have got a fair number
of segments here, because I am going to
| | 00:28 | want this to be soft and rounded.
| | 00:31 | And I have also got Fillet segments on the
ChamferBox so that the sides are round as well.
| | 00:38 | I want to focus just on the one object
at a time, and to do that all I have to
| | 00:44 | do is select the object, go down to the
bottom of the screen and click this red
| | 00:48 | light bulb and that will isolate the
object, essentially hiding everything else.
| | 00:53 | What I am going to do here is add
Volume Select modifiers and then Push
| | 00:59 | modifiers that will cause
the cushion to bubble outward.
| | 01:02 | I will go to the Modify panel >
Modifier List and you'll see Selection
| | 01:07 | Modifiers here up at the top.
| | 01:09 | The one that I want here is a Volume
Select, because that gives me a convenient
| | 01:13 | way of selecting a region
or an area on the model.
| | 01:17 | And that's not an absolute selection,
in other words, I can change parameters
| | 01:21 | like the Level Of Detail, and that
won't affect the Volume Selection.
| | 01:26 | I want to select it by Vertex, I
will go down here and click in Stack
| | 01:30 | Selection Level > Vertex.
| | 01:32 | As soon as I do that now, all
the vertices highlight in red.
| | 01:36 | That indicates that they are actually selected.
| | 01:39 | If I move the Gizmo around, I can
select different areas on the model.
| | 01:42 | I will go up to the Volume Select modifier and
open up its sub-object modes and choose Gizmo.
| | 01:48 | Then I will move that Gizmo around and
anywhere that the Gizmo intersects with
| | 01:53 | the model, I will select those points.
| | 01:56 | I can scale the Gizmo in
various axes to control the selection.
| | 02:00 | Now that's a hard selection,
those vertices are actually selected.
| | 02:06 | What I really want here is a soft selection.
| | 02:09 | I want the influence of the
selection to diminish over distance.
| | 02:13 | All I have to do then is turn on Soft
Selection and adjust parameters such as the Falloff.
| | 02:22 | And as I do that you can see color coding.
| | 02:25 | Red means the vertex is selected and as
these colors fade into cooler colors, we
| | 02:31 | are getting less and less selection.
| | 02:34 | So out here on the edges here, very
little selection, and out here beyond that
| | 02:41 | dark blue, these light blue
vertices are not selected at all.
| | 02:45 | Now that I've got my Volume Select, I
can go ahead and add a Push modifier to
| | 02:50 | bubble the cushion outward.
| | 02:52 | Modifier List > Push, and
I have got the Push value.
| | 03:00 | The Push is only being applied within
the Volume Selection, and additionally, that
| | 03:04 | selection is a Soft Selection,
so it's sort of fading out.
| | 03:07 | I can go back down to the Volume
Select modifier to its Gizmo and change the
| | 03:13 | shape of the gizmo to get
different effects to the Push.
| | 03:21 | Go back up to the Push and change its value.
| | 03:25 | And this is completely nondestructive,
in fact, if could go back down to the
| | 03:29 | ChamferBox if I wanted to, and change
the number of segments for example, to get
| | 03:34 | greater or less Level Of Detail.
| | 03:38 | That's the real
advantage of using Volume Select.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Removing polygons with Delete Mesh| 00:00 | Now let's optimize this model by
deleting any parts that the audience is not
| | 00:05 | going to see, for example
the bottom of the cushion.
| | 00:08 | I am going to open that scene file up
to illustrate to you that when you open
| | 00:11 | it you will get this dialog that pops
up and says, one or more objects are
| | 00:14 | currently isolated, that just means that
the file was saved with an object isolated.
| | 00:22 | Click OK.
| | 00:23 | All right, so I want to
delete the bottom of the cushion.
| | 00:27 | All I need to do is add
another Volume Select modifier.
| | 00:30 | Go to Modify panel and
add another Volume Select.
| | 00:36 | I will set this to Vertex Mode and I
don't need Soft Selection this time, I will
| | 00:41 | leave that off, because we are
just deleting parts of the model.
| | 00:44 | I'll open up this top Volume
Select and enter Gizmo sub-object mode.
| | 00:51 | And then I can move the Gizmo around. I just
want to move it down in Z and I can also scale it.
| | 00:59 | So I only want to select the
very bottom of the cushion.
| | 01:07 | All right, and I'll leave it in that
state, in sub-object mode and then add a
| | 01:12 | modifier called DeleteMesh.
| | 01:18 | Very simple, very straightforward, and
again, this is nondestructive, because I
| | 01:23 | can go back at any time and do things
like change the ChamferBox, Level Of
| | 01:28 | Detail and that won't have any
negative implications for my Volume Selection.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Clearing a sub-object selection with Mesh Select| 00:01 | In the next movie, I'm going to use a Noise
modifier to randomize the shape of the cushion.
| | 00:07 | But I want that to affect the entire
object, not just part of the object.
| | 00:12 | And if I apply a modifier now in this
state, actually nothing will happen,
| | 00:17 | because we still have a sub
object selection in effect.
| | 00:21 | Let me just illustrate that to you,
let's say for example, I add another Push or
| | 00:25 | something like a Bend, let's do a Bend.
| | 00:26 | And I set that Angle and I do all sorts of
stuff and apparently nothing is happening here.
| | 00:32 | The reason is that I'm applying this modifier
to a Volume Selection that has been deleted.
| | 00:39 | The selection is being made, then it's
being deleted and then I am trying to
| | 00:43 | apply a Bend to it after the deletion,
and obviously that's not going to work.
| | 00:47 | I have got a little indicator here
that I'm still in sub-object mode, that's
| | 00:51 | what these three little dots are.
| | 00:52 | That's telling me that this modifier is
only being applied to certain vertices.
| | 00:58 | Okay, let me trash that.
| | 01:00 | What I really need to do here is I need
to apply a Selection modifier to clear
| | 01:05 | out this sub-object selection.
| | 01:07 | I will go to the Modifier List and
choose Mesh Select, and in fact, all that's
| | 01:13 | doing is just wiping out the sub
object selection so that any subsequent
| | 01:18 | modifiers that I apply will be
applied to the entire object.
| | 01:22 | And I can tell that that's the case,
because there are no little dots over here,
| | 01:26 | there's no sub-object icon applied.
| | 01:29 | And just to illustrate that to you, if
I add a Bend and change the Angle you'll
| | 01:32 | see that it is in fact
affecting the entire object.
| | 01:36 | Okay, so I will trash that, and now we
are ready to apply Noise modifier to
| | 01:40 | randomize the shape in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding randomness with the Noise modifier| 00:00 | To make the cushion look a
little bit more lived-in
| | 00:03 | we can randomize the
shape using a Noise modifier.
| | 00:07 | I've cleared out my sub-object
selection so that Noise modifier will be applied
| | 00:10 | to the entire object.
| | 00:12 | In the Modifier List I will
scroll down looking for Noise.
| | 00:17 | In the Noise modifier, I will need to
change several parameters, for example, the
| | 00:21 | Strength, currently it's set to 0.
| | 00:24 | This is the maximum amount of
deviation that a vertex will make.
| | 00:27 | If I set these to 5 cm in each axis,
that's probably a pretty good value, in
| | 00:33 | fact, that's probably kind of a high value.
| | 00:35 | But as I do that, you see that
apparently not much has happened.
| | 00:39 | The reason is, I also need to
adjust the Scale of the Noise; that's
| | 00:43 | essentially the wavelength.
| | 00:45 | A Scale of 100 is a very long wavelength,
so we are not seeing much of an affect
| | 00:49 | here, because it's being
spread out over a very large area.
| | 00:52 | All I need to do is click and drag and
reduce the scale and you can see--oh
| | 00:56 | there we go, we are getting some nice Noise.
| | 00:59 | If I take that Scale down too low,
we will get some very strange results.
| | 01:03 | It will actually turn into
some sort of abstract art piece.
| | 01:08 | That's a much too low wavelength.
| | 01:11 | I just want to find the sweet spot there, and
it was somewhere in the order of 10 cm or so.
| | 01:17 | And as you can see now, we probably don't
need that much of Strength, so I can
| | 01:21 | reduce the Strength down to
maybe like 2 cm in each dimension.
| | 01:25 | If I want to adjust the pattern of the Noise,
all I need to do is transform the Noise Gizmo.
| | 01:32 | I will open up the Noise sub
objects and you'll see Gizmo.
| | 01:37 | Grab the Move tool and move that Gizmo
around to change the placement of the
| | 01:41 | Noise, to get different looks.
| | 01:46 | That's a pretty basic introduction to
using a Noise modifier, you could do
| | 01:50 | quite a lot with Noise, in fact, you
could create mountains and all sorts of
| | 01:54 | cool stuff with it.
| | 01:55 | This is just a real basic introduction.
| | 01:57 | You can have a lot of fun with Noise.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Instancing modifiers on multiple objects| 00:00 | To finish up this sofa, we are going to
add some more Noise modifiers, and I've
| | 00:04 | done it on this one cushion as you can see.
| | 00:08 | But we are going to learn about how to copy
paste modifiers and also how to instance them.
| | 00:13 | First thing I want to do is create a Noise
that spreads across more than one object.
| | 00:18 | For example, I can select these two
armrests, Ctrl+Select both of those.
| | 00:24 | Add a Mesh Select modifier, so that will clear
out any sub-object selection that may be there.
| | 00:30 | And when I do that, you will notice
that Mesh Select is in italics up here.
| | 00:35 | And if I select one of the arms,
you will see at the top of that stack
| | 00:40 | Mesh Select in italics.
| | 00:42 | That means the modifier is
applied to more than one object.
| | 00:47 | Select them both with the Ctrl key
and I'll also add a Noise nodifier.
| | 00:54 | And set the values here, I have got a
scale of 10 cm and the Strength of, let's
| | 00:59 | say, only 1 cm in each dimension.
| | 01:02 | We just added a little bit of randomness.
| | 01:05 | I will turn this up just for moment so
you can see that it is in fact affecting
| | 01:10 | both of those armrests.
| | 01:12 | Set that back down to 1 cm, we want
that to be a pretty subtle effect.
| | 01:17 | And again, if I select either one of them, I
will see the Instance modifiers in italics.
| | 01:23 | I can also copy and paste
modifiers from one object to another.
| | 01:27 | I've got a Noise and the Mesh Select on
this one, and I can just copy those on
| | 01:32 | to the next cushion.
| | 01:35 | Select those and right-click and choose Copy.
| | 01:39 | Go over to the other object and right-
click at the top of the stack and choose
| | 01:44 | either Paste or Paste Instanced,
I will just do Paste this time.
| | 01:49 | If I choose Paste instead of Paste
Instanced, then I have independent control
| | 01:54 | over the objects, as you can see here,
as I adjust the Strength on this cushion,
| | 01:57 | it's not affecting the
other one, Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 02:01 | But I also have the option of instancing
the modifiers through the Copy Paste menu.
| | 02:06 | I will select those and trash them,
right-click and Paste Instanced this time.
| | 02:13 | And now they are both
affected by the same modifier.
| | 02:18 | And if I change the Strength here,
you will see it's affecting them both.
| | 02:23 | Additionally, if I wanted to, I
could go down and select the Gizmo.
| | 02:26 | You will notice that that
Gizmo is affecting both of them.
| | 02:32 | You have a lot of options for copying
and pasting modifiers, you can select more
| | 02:37 | than one object and apply a modifier.
| | 02:40 | You can copy/paste without instancing,
or you can copy/paste with an instance.
| | 02:46 | That's a basic introduction to this
nondestructive workflow for building
| | 02:52 | a polygon model.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
8. Polygon ModelingMaking an editable poly and understanding Graphite| 00:01 | In this chapter we'll look at some of
the advanced polygon modeling tools in
| | 00:05 | the Graphite Ribbon.
| | 00:07 | We'll model just one or two pieces from
this robot arm assembly and then we'll
| | 00:11 | animate it later in the course.
| | 00:13 | I'll start fresh with a new
scene by resetting 3ds Max.
| | 00:18 | The first thing I want to mention to
you is that the object must be an Editable
| | 00:22 | Poly in order for you to
access the Graphite Ribbon.
| | 00:26 | If I make any primitives, such as a
teapot, and open up the Graphite Modeling
| | 00:30 | tools from the main toolbar, most of
the Ribbon is actually blank. The tools
| | 00:35 | aren't showing up because
this is not an Editable Poly.
| | 00:38 | All I need to do is convert it.
| | 00:40 | Select the object, right-click and
choose Convert To > Convert to Editable Poly.
| | 00:46 | And as soon as I've got an Editable
Poly object selected, I have got the
| | 00:49 | Graphite Ribbon tools visible.
| | 00:52 | In the next movie we'll look at
customizing the interface so that we can
| | 00:55 | optimize the display of the
Ribbon and the Graphite tools.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Graphite ribbon interface| 00:01 | Let's build part of the robot arm.
| | 00:03 | I am going to make the turntable
part of that robot arm, and so that will
| | 00:06 | start from a cylinder.
| | 00:08 | Go to the Create panel >
Standard Primitives > Cylinder.
| | 00:13 | Drag that out, release the mouse, set
the Height, click again to finish the
| | 00:19 | cylinder, and then right-click to exit the tool.
| | 00:22 | Then I'll go to the Modify panel and
work with a Level Of Detail on this.
| | 00:26 | In order to see what I'm doing, I'll need to
press the F4 key so I can see edged faces.
| | 00:31 | I don't need quite so many Height
Segments here, let me set that to just 2.
| | 00:36 | And in the Cap Segments, let me set
that to 2 as well, so I'll get a little
| | 00:39 | more detail up there.
| | 00:41 | The number of Sides I'll set to 36.
| | 00:44 | Just set the Radius down
a little bit to 1.5 feet.
| | 00:48 | Now I've got the Primitive setup and I
can go ahead and right-click on it and
| | 00:53 | Convert to Editable Poly.
| | 00:56 | As soon as I do that, now you can
see I've got all the tools available in
| | 01:00 | the Graphite Ribbon.
| | 01:01 | The Modify panel will need to be
activated in order to see all of these tools.
| | 01:06 | If you go back to the Create panel, for
example, most of those icons will be grayed out.
| | 01:11 | We can enter Modify mode from the
Graphite Ribbon and that's a button up here,
| | 01:17 | Toggle Command Panel.
| | 01:19 | What that's going to do when I click
it is activate the Modify panel and then
| | 01:23 | hide the entire Command panel,
including Create and all of the others.
| | 01:28 | And this is actually helpful, because
Editable Poly is redundant to the Graphite Ribbon.
| | 01:35 | In other words, the Graphite Ribbon
includes all of the tools in the Editable
| | 01:39 | Poly Modify panel, and more.
| | 01:41 | There's no real reason for us to have
that Modify panel visible if all we're
| | 01:45 | working on is Graphite tools.
| | 01:48 | I can also customize the
Graphite interface a little bit.
| | 01:51 | For example, you'll notice that as
you move your mouse around onto these
| | 01:55 | different buttons, you'll get these
extended tooltips that will sometimes even
| | 02:00 | show your illustrations on how to use the tool.
| | 02:03 | This is helpful when you're
first learning all of the tools.
| | 02:05 | But once you've learned them, then
these can definitely be a distraction.
| | 02:09 | All you need to do to turn them off
is right-click on an empty spot on the
| | 02:12 | Ribbon and choose Ribbon Configuration,
and disable the tooltips, and now we won't
| | 02:20 | be distracted by all of that.
| | 02:22 | I'd also like to move the Graphite
Ribbon around on the screen because
| | 02:25 | especially on a widescreen monitor, it's
not really optimal to have it placed at
| | 02:30 | the top of the screen like this.
| | 02:32 | All I need to do to move the Graphite
Ribbon is to click on this selection bar
| | 02:36 | on the left-hand side, hold
that down and drag it out.
| | 02:40 | You'll notice that the cursor has
changed to a little dialog box icon.
| | 02:45 | If I release the mouse in the middle
of the screen then I'll get a floating
| | 02:49 | Graphite tools panel.
| | 02:51 | That's helpful if you've got two monitors.
| | 02:53 | You can just put that over on the
other monitor and leave it there.
| | 02:56 | In this case I want to dock
it to one side of the screen.
| | 02:59 | I'll just select it and drag it over to
the right here until my cursor changes
| | 03:03 | to another icon, and then release the mouse.
| | 03:06 | And now it's docked over there.
| | 03:09 | Also you may need to turn
some of these panels off.
| | 03:13 | If you've got limited screen real
estate, then all of these panels may not
| | 03:17 | actually fit on the screen at once.
| | 03:19 | Just right-click on an empty spot and
choose Show Panels, and you can activate or
| | 03:25 | deactivate the panels as needed.
| | 03:27 | For example this Subdivision panel,
I won't be using that, so I can turn
| | 03:30 | that back off again.
| | 03:34 | And finally, if you need to get your
Command panel back, one way to do that is
| | 03:38 | just from the Customize menu.
| | 03:41 | Customize > Show UI, and we can turn
the Command panel and others screen
| | 03:46 | interface elements on and off at will.
| | 03:49 | That's a brief introduction to
optimizing the Graphite Ribbon for
| | 03:53 | Polygon Modeling.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Selecting sub-objects| 00:01 | Let's look at selecting
sub-objects using Graphite.
| | 00:04 | We have the same types of sub-objects
that you do in the ordinary Editable
| | 00:07 | Poly, specifically Vertex, Edge and Face.
All we have to do is click to activate
| | 00:17 | one of these sub-object modes.
| | 00:19 | And the Graphite Ribbon will show
you tools that are specific to that
| | 00:24 | particular sub-object type.
| | 00:27 | I can just click on a point to select it,
pretty simple, pretty straightforward.
| | 00:32 | I want to point out to you, that if
you drag a selection rectangle, then
| | 00:38 | you'll by default, be selecting
sub-objects on the opposite side or the back
| | 00:43 | face of the object.
| | 00:45 | If we orbit around to the backside, you'll
see that those points have been selected.
| | 00:48 | You have the option to
turn Ignore Back Facing on.
| | 00:52 | It's just up here Ignore Back Facing.
| | 00:55 | Turn that on, and then when you make a
selection, any sub-objects that are facing
| | 01:01 | away from you will not be selected.
| | 01:04 | That's pretty helpful.
| | 01:05 | Another helpful thing is selecting by Edge Loop.
| | 01:08 | Go into Edge sub-object mode, and if
I select one edge, just click on it.
| | 01:14 | But it's quite common that you want to
select an entire loop of edges, all of
| | 01:19 | these connected end-to-end.
| | 01:21 | All you have to do is double-click and
you've selected the entire Edge Loop.
| | 01:25 | That doesn't always work in all cases,
for example, the edges at the rim of this
| | 01:30 | cylinder, if I double-click on that it
may or may not actually select all of
| | 01:34 | those, it did this time.
| | 01:37 | Once we got an Edge Loop selected, we
can do things do it like scale it or
| | 01:40 | move it or whatever.
| | 01:41 | Go to the Scale tool and I can
scale that Edge Loop up or down.
| | 01:46 | I can also select by Face, go up here
select by Polygon, and I can click on Faces.
| | 01:53 | I've still got my Scale tool active,
| | 01:54 | I'll go back to the Select tool.
| | 01:56 | And I can hold down the Ctrl
key to add to my selection.
| | 02:00 | Let's say I want to select all of the
Faces here in the center of my cylinder.
| | 02:04 | There is a convenient trick to this.
| | 02:06 | I can convert a sub-object
selection to a different sub-object type.
| | 02:12 | In this case, if I go into Vertex mode
and select just that center vertex, then I
| | 02:18 | can select all of the Faces, or all the
Polygons that are touching that vertex.
| | 02:22 | I'll just hold down the Ctrl key and
click on Polygon Mode and then all those
| | 02:28 | Faces are now selected, and I can manipulate it.
| | 02:32 | That's a basic introduction to
sub-object selection in Graphite.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Choosing selection region methods| 00:01 | Let's look at a couple of other cool
ways of selecting things in 3ds Max.
| | 00:05 | On the main toolbar you've got
Selection Regions and you also something
| | 00:09 | called Window/Crossing.
| | 00:11 | And this will control how you can
select objects and sub-objects, not just in
| | 00:15 | Graphite, but across the
board, throughout the program.
| | 00:18 | I'll go into Polygon Face Selection
mode and if I hold my mouse down on this
| | 00:23 | Selection Region icon, I can choose
a different shape for the Selection
| | 00:27 | Region, such as a circle.
| | 00:30 | I just click in the center and drag
outward to define that circle shape and when
| | 00:34 | I release the mouse, then everything
that that circle touched will be selected.
| | 00:38 | I currently do have Ignore Back
Facing enabled, that means I won't select
| | 00:43 | anything on the other side of the model.
| | 00:46 | There are other Selection Region types,
for example, there is a Rubber Band,
| | 00:50 | and I can just drag my cursor across
and I can select everything that that
| | 00:55 | Rubber Band touches.
| | 00:57 | My favorite is actually the Paint
Selection mode, and I can just drag my cursor
| | 01:02 | across and select just by dragging.
| | 01:05 | If I use the Alt key, I can subtract from that
selection, and Ctrl will add to the selection.
| | 01:12 | That's pretty cool.
| | 01:14 | I'll go back to the standard;
| | 01:15 | let's use the Circle Selection mode.
| | 01:18 | Here's another button that's also
quite useful, it's called Window/Crossing.
| | 01:23 | The default behavior is that when you
drag a selection, anything that that
| | 01:28 | selection window touches will be selected.
| | 01:32 | If I want to choose the other mode, I
can just click here and now in order to
| | 01:36 | make a selection it has to be
completely enclosed within that window.
| | 01:40 | If I release the mouse now, nothing is selected.
| | 01:44 | If I drag my cursor out a little bit
more, then any polygon that is completely
| | 01:48 | within that selection region
will be selected. There we go.
| | 01:54 | Those are just different
methods for selection in 3ds Max.
| | 01:58 | Now that I've done that, I'm going to
actually disable Ignore Back Facing for
| | 02:02 | the next few movies.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the caddy to extrude| 00:01 | Editable Poly and Graphite have many advanced
tools for altering the topology of the model.
| | 00:06 | That means to change its structure,
to add or remove edges and polygons.
| | 00:11 | What I'd to do now is show you the Extrude tool.
| | 00:13 | This is one of the most common
and one of the most basic tools.
| | 00:17 | I can select polygons and then
branch that out to a set of new polygons,
| | 00:22 | essentially I can make a tower coming up here.
| | 00:24 | I want to be Polygon Selection
mode and select those top polygons.
| | 00:28 | Just want to make sure I
don't have anything else selected.
| | 00:32 | The Extrude tool is found in the Polygons panel.
| | 00:36 | Hover my mouse over that, I get a
little pop-up there and you'll see Extrude.
| | 00:41 | If you click on that then you'll need
to click on the selected polygons to
| | 00:45 | extrude them upward interactively,
release the mouse to complete the operation.
| | 00:50 | Okay, we can get a little
bit more control over this.
| | 00:54 | We can set numeric values
for the height of the Extrude.
| | 00:57 | I'll go back to the Polygons panel.
| | 01:00 | You'll notice that some of these
tools have pulldown menus next to them.
| | 01:04 | If you click on that pulldown arrow
then you can click on Extrude Settings.
| | 01:08 | What that will do is open up
something called the caddy.
| | 01:13 | This is an interface element
that can be moved around the screen.
| | 01:17 | And it's going to show you a preview
of an extrusion that has not yet been made.
| | 01:22 | If I go to this Height parameter, I can
hold down the mouse and drag to set the
| | 01:27 | height of the extrusion.
| | 01:30 | There are also keyboard modifiers for that.
| | 01:32 | If you hold down Ctrl+Drag, you'll get
a faster adjustment, or a gross adjustment.
| | 01:37 | If you hold down Alt and click
drag you'll get a fine adjustment.
| | 01:42 | This operation has not yet been made.
| | 01:45 | If I want to complete it, I'll click the
check box and that will close the dialog.
| | 01:49 | I'll go back in there again and
go to Extrude > Extrude Settings.
| | 01:55 | To show you that, we're seeing a
preview here now, and if I lose my selection,
| | 02:02 | then I won't see any extrusion being made.
| | 02:05 | If I click anywhere out here, there
are no polygons selected, and therefore,
| | 02:11 | there's no extrusion.
| | 02:12 | I'll need to have something
selected in order to see that extrude.
| | 02:15 | I can go around, Ctrl+Select those, get
my selection back, or I could use Paint
| | 02:21 | Selection, hold down Ctrl.
| | 02:24 | But you'll notice that I've selected
things on the back of the model. You need
| | 02:27 | to be careful when you're doing this.
| | 02:29 | I can use Alt and unselect all of
that, until I am back where I was.
| | 02:37 | Again, this is just a preview.
| | 02:39 | If I click the check box, the
operation will be completed.
| | 02:43 | I can also press the plus sign, that
will complete the current operation and
| | 02:48 | then show me another preview.
| | 02:51 | If I don't want to apply the operation, I
can just press the X and that will cancel out.
| | 02:58 | There are a lot of tools that use
the caddy, the caddy will be slightly
| | 03:01 | different for each tool because there
will be different parameters, but the
| | 03:04 | interface is the same in each case.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Controlling detail with Remove and Cut| 00:00 | One of the advantages of Polygon
Modeling is the ability to interactively
| | 00:05 | add and remove detail.
| | 00:07 | In this case what I'd like to do is
flatten out one side of this cylinder here,
| | 00:12 | and I can do that by removing edges.
| | 00:14 | I'll go to the Edge sub-object mode,
and click on some of these edges with
| | 00:19 | the Ctrl key held down.
| | 00:24 | Once I've made my selection, I'll want
to tumble around, or orbit around, to the
| | 00:27 | other side of the model, to make sure I haven't
accidentally selected any of the back edges.
| | 00:33 | There we go, I've got those edges selected.
| | 00:36 | Now if I press the Delete key on the
keyboard, I'll actually punch a hole in the model.
| | 00:41 | If you delete an edge, you'll
delete the associated polygons that are
| | 00:44 | touching that edge.
| | 00:46 | That's not what I want here.
| | 00:47 | I'll use Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 00:50 | Instead I want to remove the
edges and leave the polygons there.
| | 00:54 | I can do that from the Edges
panel here and you'll see Remove.
| | 00:59 | If I click that, then those edges are
all deleted and the polygons are left.
| | 01:04 | However, if you orbit around and
look carefully, you'll notice that the
| | 01:07 | curvature there hasn't changed.
| | 01:09 | And the reason is, that although the edges
have been removed, the vertices are still there.
| | 01:15 | If I go into Vertex sub-object mode,
you'll see that those vertices are still there.
| | 01:20 | Now I could select them and
delete them in a second pass.
| | 01:24 | But that's too much work, really I can
do this in one step, because 3ds Max will
| | 01:29 | allow me to remove edges and their
connected vertices in one command.
| | 01:33 | I'll undo that, go back to Edge
Selection mode, back to Edges, and if I hold
| | 01:41 | down Ctrl when I click on Remove,
that will remove those edges and their
| | 01:47 | associated vertices.
| | 01:49 | The keyboard shortcut
for that is Ctrl+Backspace.
| | 01:52 | That's a very useful one
that you'll use quite a lot.
| | 01:56 | Okay, so that's been cleaned up.
| | 01:58 | But the tops and bottoms
here still have curvature.
| | 02:02 | What I'll want to do here
is remove these vertices.
| | 02:06 | I'll go to Vertex sub-object mode and
select these vertices with the Ctrl
| | 02:10 | key held down, and press the Backspace key,
and now those vertices have been removed.
| | 02:18 | However the surface isn't flat,
as you can see, if you orbit around.
| | 02:24 | What I really want here is a flat
quadrilateral polygon here and a flat
| | 02:29 | triangular polygon up here.
| | 02:31 | All I need to do here is use
the Cut tool to create a new edge.
| | 02:36 | The Cut tool is found in the Edit panel,
and in fact, you can be in any sub-object,
| | 02:42 | or even Object mode, to access the Cut
tool, and it looks like a little scissor.
| | 02:48 | I'll activate that.
| | 02:49 | And then as I move my cursor around
you'll see that the cursor icon will change,
| | 02:55 | because the Cut tool
actually has snaps built into it.
| | 02:58 | So I move my cursor over to one of these
vertices until my cursor changes to a small crosshair.
| | 03:04 | I'll click on that once.
| | 03:07 | And then as I move my mouse around,
you'll see I'm getting a preview.
| | 03:10 | Then I'll go over to this other vertex
and make sure that it's snapped, click
| | 03:15 | again to complete that operation, and to exit
the Cut tool, I'll right-click in the viewport.
| | 03:21 | All right, so there it is, I have
created a nice flat surface there.
| | 03:27 | And I can repeat that
process down here if I need to.
| | 03:30 | I'll right-click to exit the Cut tool
completely, select these vertices with the
| | 03:34 | Ctrl key held down, press Backspace to
remove them, and then go back to the Cut
| | 03:40 | tool and chop a new edge through there, and
right-click a couple of times. And there you go!
| | 03:48 | I've used Remove and Cut to
change the structure of the model.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Inserting edge loops with SwiftLoop| 00:01 | Another common Graphite tool for
topology modification is SwiftLoop.
| | 00:06 | This is a very, very useful tool
that allows you to add a New Edge Loop
| | 00:10 | anywhere on your model.
| | 00:12 | And it works in any mode,
it's found in the Edit panel.
| | 00:16 | Here it is, SwiftLoop.
| | 00:18 | I will click on that to activate it.
| | 00:20 | Then I just hover my mouse over
anywhere on the model and that green line is a
| | 00:24 | preview of an Edge Loop
that has not yet been created.
| | 00:27 | If I want to create an Edge Loop at
that location, I will just click, and boom!
| | 00:32 | I have got one there. That was so easy.
| | 00:34 | I will add another one here and now
I've got three Edge Loops in that area.
| | 00:40 | And if I want to create a little bit of
a rounded, filleted corner there, I can go
| | 00:46 | into Edge sub-object mode and double-
click to select that edge, and I will just
| | 00:52 | use the Scale tool, give that a little bit of
a rounded, filleted corner. That was so easy.
| | 00:59 | SwiftLoop is one of most
useful tools you are going to find.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Constraining sub-object transforms| 00:00 | 3ds Max gives us the
ability to constrain transforms.
| | 00:05 | This is very useful, because we can for
example, move edges and keep them stuck
| | 00:10 | to the surface of their polygons.
| | 00:13 | I can constrain from the Edit panel here.
| | 00:16 | This icon is highlighted and
that indicates that constraints are
| | 00:20 | currently disabled.
| | 00:22 | If I go into a sub-object mode, such
as Edge, the Edit panel might get
| | 00:28 | collapsed down, and it might be
harder for you to see what Constraints are
| | 00:31 | currently in effect.
| | 00:33 | It is really actually a good idea to
see what Constraints are currently on at
| | 00:37 | all times. You might need to hide some
of these other panels, just so that the
| | 00:42 | Edit panel will be shown and displayed.
| | 00:45 | I can right-click and go to Show panels,
and turn some of these others off. There's
| | 00:49 | a lot here that I will
not actually be using.
| | 00:56 | And now the Edit panel is fully visible.
| | 00:59 | Okay, I am in Edge sub-object mode, and I will
double-click to select that whole Edge Loop.
| | 01:05 | And with Constraints disabled, then I
have the ability to move those edges around
| | 01:10 | in a free-form manner.
| | 01:13 | Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 01:15 | And I've got different Constrain modes here.
| | 01:18 | Constrain to Edge is quite useful.
| | 01:20 | Now when I move, you'll see that those
edges are staying stuck to the surface,
| | 01:27 | that's quite useful.
| | 01:28 | Then we've got Constrain to Polygon or
Face, that's less useful, because it only
| | 01:33 | allows you to constrain to
one of these two faces here.
| | 01:39 | I don't tend to use that very much.
| | 01:41 | Finally, we have got Constrain to
Normal, and a Normal is an imaginary line that
| | 01:46 | sticks out from the Edge.
| | 01:48 | And with Constrain to Normal,
essentially, it's similar to Scale, but it
| | 01:53 | preserves the shape better than Scale would.
| | 01:56 | Remember when you're finished, to
disable Constraints. That's a simple
| | 02:00 | introduction to using sub-object
Constraints with Editable Poly.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Attaching polygon meshes to a single object| 00:01 | Now what I am going to show you is how
to attach two polygon meshes together.
| | 00:06 | I want to create a ball joint
up here with a perfect sphere.
| | 00:09 | I couldn't really do that very effectively
by just simply extruding the existing model.
| | 00:14 | Instead, I'll create a separate sphere,
attach the two together and then bridge the gap.
| | 00:20 | Before I do, I just want to
center the model in the world.
| | 00:23 | Grab the Move tool, select the model,
and just type in some 0s down here in X, Y
| | 00:28 | and Z, and now it's
perfectly centered on the origin.
| | 00:30 | I will need to make some
adjustments to this sphere;
| | 00:34 | that means I will need to
have the Modify panel to do that.
| | 00:36 | I will go back over to the Graphite
Ribbon and click the button to show the
| | 00:43 | Command panel once again.
| | 00:46 | Go to Create menu, but before I
create my sphere, I want to turn on Snaps,
| | 00:51 | because I just want a snap
to this vertex right here.
| | 00:54 | I will also want to right-click and
make sure that I'm snapping only to Vertex.
| | 01:00 | All right, and as I move my cursor
around you will see it's snapping to all the
| | 01:04 | intersection points.
| | 01:06 | Click Sphere, snap to that center vertex and
drag it out, release the mouse and the
| | 01:11 | sphere has been created.
| | 01:12 | I will right-click to complete the sphere.
| | 01:15 | And then I will turn Snaps back off again.
| | 01:18 | Then I will go to the Modify panel,
because I want to change the number of
| | 01:21 | segments here. Let's get in a little
bit closer, move this sphere up a bit.
| | 01:26 | The important thing here is that I
want to have the same number of edges on
| | 01:30 | both of these objects.
| | 01:32 | When we use the Bridge tool later, it
can kind of compensate for that, but
| | 01:36 | it won't be pretty.
| | 01:37 | It's best if they have the
same number of vertices and edges.
| | 01:40 | When I created my cylinder,
I set it to 36 Segments;
| | 01:45 | therefore, I will set my
sphere to be 36 as well.
| | 01:48 | Now you can see that those edges line up.
| | 01:51 | And that's nice and clean.
| | 01:53 | Good! I will set the Radius and then
I can just attach the sphere to the
| | 01:59 | existing polygon model.
| | 02:00 | I will select that Editable Poly and
I am looking for the Attach button.
| | 02:05 | I can access the Attach
button from the Modify panel.
| | 02:11 | Here it is, Attach, click on that,
and then click on the sphere, and
| | 02:17 | right-click to exit.
| | 02:19 | Now they're one object, and if I
select and move you will see they
| | 02:24 | move together. Cool!
| | 02:27 | You can also find the Attach button in
the Graphite Ribbon. I've currently got
| | 02:32 | it hidden, but if I go over here to Show
Panels > Geometry (All), you'll see the
| | 02:37 | Attach button is here as well
and it works exactly the same.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Bridging parts of a mesh| 00:01 | We have got a single polygon
object that was originally two objects.
| | 00:05 | In this case, now there are
actually two sub-object elements.
| | 00:10 | Just to illustrate to you what an
element is, I can select it from a Graphite
| | 00:14 | Ribbon or from the Standard Modify panel.
| | 00:16 | An element is part of a mesh
that used to be a separate object.
| | 00:22 | That means, in fact, I can still manipulate
the sphere separately, using Element mode.
| | 00:28 | Well what I really want to do here is
create a surface that bridges these two pieces.
| | 00:34 | The best way to do that is to
just delete all these polygons.
| | 00:37 | I am going to Vertex mode and select
the center vertex here and delete it, and
| | 00:42 | that will punch a big hole there.
| | 00:43 | I will go into Face Mode, or Polygon
Mode, and I want to select the bottom parts
| | 00:48 | of the sphere. Just to keep that neat
and clean I want to do that in one of the
| | 00:51 | Ortho views, so I will hit Alt+W, go the
Front view, press the Z key to zoom in and
| | 00:57 | I just want to select the bottom
third of the sphere and press Delete.
| | 01:02 | Go back to my Perspective View
and Alt+W to make that big again.
| | 01:06 | Now I have got two adjacent borders.
A border is a series of edges around
| | 01:12 | an open hole.
| | 01:15 | I can go into Border sub-object mode,
click on that and you will see we selected
| | 01:19 | that entire quarter.
| | 01:21 | To do the bridge, I want to select
both of the borders, I'll hold down Ctrl.
| | 01:26 | Now I've got both of
those open borders selected.
| | 01:29 | And I can activate the Bridge tool
either from the traditional Modify panel or
| | 01:34 | from the Graphite Ribbon Borders panel.
| | 01:38 | And I can go to Bridge, but I really
want to get the caddy open so I can
| | 01:42 | control the Bridge parameters.
| | 01:44 | Another way to open the caddy is to hold
down the Shift key and click on the button.
| | 01:50 | And now I've got the Bridge tool open.
| | 01:52 | And this is really cool, because I
can do all sorts of fun things here.
| | 01:56 | I can increase the number of segments,
and even better I can play around with
| | 02:00 | this Taper Effect, here we go.
| | 02:03 | And to get a little bit finer control
over that I can hold down Alt as I do it.
| | 02:08 | That's really nice.
| | 02:09 | You can also play around with some of this
other stuff like Bias, see what that does.
| | 02:14 | Sometimes you might need to use the
Twist Control here, if your vertices and
| | 02:19 | edges and are quite lining up.
| | 02:20 | This one is just fine as it is,
so leave that, Twist at 0.
| | 02:25 | All right, so that's my bridge.
| | 02:27 | If I'm happy with that I will just
click the check box to finish that command,
| | 02:32 | and I can exit out of sub-object modes.
| | 02:35 | And essentially I've got my
bridge and I have got my model.
| | 02:37 | Last thing I will need to do is
just clean up the Edge Smoothing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Smoothing and hardening edges| 00:01 | I have finished building the model.
| | 00:02 | Last thing I need to check
in on is the Edge Smoothing.
| | 00:06 | A polygon edge can be drawn as smooth
or as hard. In order to see this, I have
| | 00:11 | to turn off Edged Faces.
| | 00:13 | I will press the J key, so we can see
the selection brackets, and then the F4
| | 00:17 | key to turn off the Edged Faces.
| | 00:19 | If I get in closer here, you can see
that some of the edges are drawn as hard or
| | 00:24 | faceted edges, and some are
drawn as soft or smooth edges.
| | 00:28 | 3ds Max is a little bit different than
most programs, edge smoothing is defined
| | 00:34 | by polygons and not by edges.
| | 00:36 | So I'll need to select
polygons in order to affect the edges.
| | 00:40 | I have also got the
Standard Command panel open here;
| | 00:43 | I don't really need that now,
so I will click to turn that off.
| | 00:47 | In the Graphite panel, near the
bottom, you'll see Properties.
| | 00:51 | And we have got three buttons
here Hard, Smooth, and Sm 30.
| | 00:55 | This will operate on the entire model.
| | 00:58 | If I click the Hard button, then
every edge is made hard, and we got a
| | 01:02 | faceted appearance here.
| | 01:05 | If I click Smooth, then all of the
edges are made smooth, or soft, and that works
| | 01:10 | fine up here in this area
where there's a lot of curvature.
| | 01:14 | But here where we've got a sharp angle
here that doesn't look right, we want
| | 01:17 | this to be a hard edge.
| | 01:19 | The third button is Sm 30,
and that's a very useful one.
| | 01:24 | If I click that now, we get more or
less what we want here in this case.
| | 01:27 | Sm 30 tests the angle between adjacent
polygon faces, and if the angle is greater
| | 01:34 | than 30 degrees, we will get a hard
edge between those two faces.
| | 01:38 | Here in this area, that's a nearly 90 degree angle,
that's greater than 30 degrees, we get a hard edge.
| | 01:45 | Up here it's a much shallower angle.
| | 01:48 | It's less than 30 degrees, so
we will get a soft edge.
| | 01:51 | And in this case, this actually looks
okay, but usually you'll need to go in on
| | 01:56 | a finer level and control individual edges.
| | 02:00 | To do that, you will need to go into
Polygons sub-object mode, not Edge sub-object mode.
| | 02:05 | You can select the polygons and then
control their smoothing individually.
| | 02:10 | If I select all of these here now, I have
got those Polygon selected, and I can go
| | 02:14 | to the Properties panel, and you'll
see Hard, Smooth and Sm 30 once again.
| | 02:19 | This is a little bit deceptive though,
because these buttons will actually
| | 02:23 | operate on the entire model, it will not
operate on the selected polygons by default.
| | 02:29 | I will need to go over here to this
pulldown list and change the state of this
| | 02:33 | button to Hard Selected.
| | 02:36 | And now when I click on that,
those edges have all been made Hard.
| | 02:41 | However, we are still not where we
want to be, because we cannot smooth based
| | 02:45 | upon edge selections, we actually had to make
multiple polygon selections to get what we want.
| | 02:52 | These edges have all been made Hard,
but I don't want these ones to be hard.
| | 02:56 | What I will need to do is I will need
to select all these polygons once again.
| | 03:01 | Then go back to Properties and we want
to choose Smooth Selected and click it.
| | 03:07 | And now those have all been smoothed.
| | 03:10 | Finally, I want to
smooth all of these down here.
| | 03:13 | Select those, back to my
Properties panel and click Smooth Selected.
| | 03:19 | And that's the process for
smoothing edges in 3ds Max.
| | 03:23 | And again, if you're used a Maya or other
programs where you can select by edges,
| | 03:26 | this is much more difficult, you've got to
go through multiple steps to make it happen.
| | 03:31 | And the reason is that all the Edge
Smoothing was based upon something called
| | 03:34 | Smoothing Groups, this has been around
since the early, early days in the early
| | 03:39 | 90s, with 3D Studio DOS.
| | 03:42 | We can get at the Smoothing
Groups from the Properties panel in a
| | 03:46 | Polygon sub-object mode.
| | 03:47 | I can click on this button and open this up.
| | 03:50 | And this little panel actually is how
we can control the Smoothing Groups.
| | 03:55 | Basically, if two polygons are in
the same Smoothing Group, then the edge
| | 03:59 | between those polygons will be smoothed.
| | 04:02 | I can go in here, for example, and I
can select all the smoothing groups in
| | 04:06 | Group 1, click on Select
By FG and click on 1 and OK,
| | 04:12 | and then all the polygons in
Group 1 are currently selected.
| | 04:16 | This little dialog is also helpful
because it has an Auto Smooth control that
| | 04:21 | gives me a numeric field that I can
enter in a value other than 30 degrees.
| | 04:27 | I can select all of these and set the
Auto Smooth value to something like 15 degrees,
| | 04:34 | and then click Auto Smooth.
| | 04:36 | And now any polygons that have an
angle of greater than 15 degrees will have a
| | 04:43 | hard edge.
| | 04:45 | Anything less than 15 degrees, such
as here, will have a soft edge.
| | 04:48 | This is a very useful tool here.
| | 04:51 | So again, I can select all of those, set
the Auto Smooth value to something like
| | 04:55 | 45, and then click Auto Smooth.
| | 04:59 | And I'm back where I wanted to be.
| | 05:01 | That's how I control Edge Smoothing in
3ds Max, and that's a basic introduction
| | 05:06 | to Graphite modeling.
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9. Subdivision Surface ModelingUnderstanding subdivision surfaces| 00:00 | Subdivision surfaces are a polygon
modeling technique that allows you to
| | 00:05 | easily achieve flowing, curved
surfaces, and the barstool here is made from
| | 00:13 | subdivision surfaces.
| | 00:15 | Let's take a look at this and we'll
deconstruct it a little bit before we
| | 00:18 | go into the lesson.
| | 00:19 | I will press the F4 key so we can see
edged faces, and I will press the J key to
| | 00:24 | turn off selection brackets.
| | 00:26 | And here on the right-hand side we
will see the Modify panel, and we've got
| | 00:30 | several things going on here.
| | 00:31 | Let me go down to the bottom level which
is an Editable Poly and Show end result
| | 00:36 | is currently turned off, so we
can just see that Polygon cage only.
| | 00:42 | It's a very simple model, it doesn't
have a lot of detail to it, but the
| | 00:47 | TurboSmooth modifier that you see here
is subdividing it, and smoothing it, and
| | 00:53 | giving it a greater level of detail.
| | 00:56 | I have got a Symmetry modifier in here,
which is just mirroring the Edible Poly.
| | 01:00 | I will turn off End result here, so
you can see just the symmetry in effect.
| | 01:06 | After it's been mirrored with a
Symmetry modifier, then it's
| | 01:10 | smoothed with TurboSmooth, and that's
creating all of the polygon detail here. And I
| | 01:15 | can turn that up or down using
this Iterations parameter here.
| | 01:21 | Finally, at the top of this stack
you'll see I've got a Smooth modifier and
| | 01:26 | that's just smoothing the
edges and making it prettier.
| | 01:29 | Subdivision surfaces are the ideal
choice for character and creature modeling.
| | 01:34 | You don't have to have a huge number of
points on your control cage, or on your
| | 01:37 | original polygon mesh. You can have a
limited number of points, a limited number
| | 01:42 | of polygons, and then they can
be smoothed and made beautiful.
| | 01:47 | Also subdivision surfaces allow you to
leverage all the tools within polygon modeling.
| | 01:53 | All the Graphite tools are available,
as opposed to other modeling techniques,
| | 01:58 | such as NURBS, which we will look at later.
| | 02:01 | NURBS do not have as much of a free-
form methodology, so they used to be used
| | 02:07 | for character and creature
work, but not so much anymore.
| | 02:11 | Before we launch into this, I just want
to mention that there are couple other
| | 02:14 | parts to this barstool that were not
modeled with subdivision surfaces or SubDs.
| | 02:19 | SubDs are not necessarily
the best choice in all cases.
| | 02:22 | For example, the base of the barstool
here, it would have been a waste for me to
| | 02:27 | use subdivision surfaces on this.
| | 02:29 | All I really needed was a Line Profile
there and Lathe modifier, which produces
| | 02:36 | the surface of revolution.
| | 02:38 | You can see if I adjust this
Degrees parameter how it works.
| | 02:42 | It's sweeping that curve around
an axis to create that surface.
| | 02:47 | Likewise, with this footrest
here, it's an Ellipse primitive.
| | 02:52 | It has a Sweep modifier applied
to it with a Cylinder section.
| | 02:57 | We won't be covering those specific
techniques in this chapter because it's all
| | 03:00 | about subdivision surfaces, but I
thought it was important to point out to you
| | 03:04 | that you should choose
the best tool for the job.
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| Creating a box and converting it to an editable poly| 00:00 | The first step in creating a
subdivision surface model is to make a box.
| | 00:05 | In fact, you are always
starting from a box or a cube.
| | 00:08 | The reason for this is, that on a
cube or box, all of the polygons are
| | 00:12 | quadrilateral, and you never have more
than four edges meeting at a single point.
| | 00:18 | Other primitives, such as
cylinders and spheres are problematic for
| | 00:21 | subdivision surfaces.
| | 00:23 | To illustrate this I will make a
cylinder and then drop a modifier on it called
| | 00:30 | TurboSmooth, and that will convert it to
a subdivision surface model, and you can
| | 00:35 | see that doesn't look so nice.
| | 00:37 | And there's really not a
lot we can do about this.
| | 00:39 | I mean I can increase the number of
Iterations, which will make it rounder, but
| | 00:42 | we are always going to have this ugly
structure to it, and you can see it's even
| | 00:46 | got these weird bubbling
artifacts and things going on.
| | 00:50 | Not a good outcome, and it's because all
of these lines or edges are meeting at a
| | 00:55 | single point up here, which is called a pole.
| | 00:59 | So again, you will always start from a Box.
I will delete that.
| | 01:05 | I will build the box out a little
bit larger than the object needs to be.
| | 01:10 | Right-click to end the box creation
and I will just center it, selecting Move
| | 01:15 | and typing 0s in the Transform
type in area at the bottom of the screen.
| | 01:21 | I'll just position that up.
| | 01:24 | I will need to set a base Level
Of Detail before I go any further.
| | 01:29 | In the Modify panel, I will set the Length,
Width and Height, all to a value of 4.
| | 01:35 | That's a pretty good starting value.
| | 01:38 | If you take it up past 4, so in this
case, it's going to be a problem, because
| | 01:43 | you'll have too much detail.
| | 01:46 | The whole idea of subdivision surface
is you've got a very limited amount of
| | 01:49 | detail in the original polygon mesh, or
what we are calling the Control Cage.
| | 01:55 | The Control Cage should be very simple,
that way you'll have a limited number of
| | 01:59 | points. You won't get bogged down in
trying to move around million points.
| | 02:03 | Another thing that's important at
this stage is that I want to have an even
| | 02:06 | number of divisions in the X axis here.
| | 02:12 | That means that my number of Width
Segments needs to be an even number.
| | 02:17 | The reason is this is going to be a
symmetrical model, and to do that, I am
| | 02:21 | going to use the Symmetry modifier.
| | 02:23 | That will save me a lot of time, because I
will only need to model half of the object.
| | 02:28 | For that to work correctly, I need to
have an edge that runs right down the
| | 02:31 | middle of the object.
| | 02:33 | Therefore, I will need to have an even
number of segments in this X axis here.
| | 02:39 | 4, 4, and 4 works fine for me. Great!
| | 02:42 | So I have got a box and I will just go
ahead and convert that to Editable Poly.
| | 02:47 | Right-click, Convert To >
Convert to Editable Poly.
| | 02:52 | Now I am ready to continue onward to
create my subdivision surface model.
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| Using the Symmetry modifier| 00:00 | Our next step is to add a Symmetry
modifier, that way I can just model one half
| | 00:05 | of the model and the other half
will be mirrored automatically.
| | 00:08 | It works best if I delete half of the model.
| | 00:11 | I will go into Polygon sub-object mode,
and I will delete the one half of the
| | 00:16 | model that's in the negative X axis.
| | 00:19 | Press the Delete key, now
I have got half of a box.
| | 00:25 | I will exit out of sub-object mode
and then add the Symmetry modifier.
| | 00:29 | There is also one called
Mirror, that's not what you want.
| | 00:33 | You want Symmetry, and the reason for
using Symmetry rather than Mirror is that
| | 00:38 | Symmetry will actually join the two halves
together and weld all the vertices, or join the seams.
| | 00:46 | If you deleted the half on the negative X axis,
then you will get exactly what you see here.
| | 00:53 | Symmetry assumes that you've
deleted one half on the negative X side.
| | 00:59 | If I deleted the positive X side,
then I would see something like this.
| | 01:04 | My model would kind of disappear.
| | 01:06 | If that were the case then I could just
enable the switch to Flip the symmetry.
| | 01:11 | You will also see that there is an option
here to Weld the Seam and that should be on.
| | 01:17 | Therefore, we will get a
continuous surface here.
| | 01:20 | It's going to join the two parts
together and weld all of those points.
| | 01:26 | All right, so now if I go back down to
my Editable Poly and turn on Show end
| | 01:31 | result, I can selects sub-objects such
as Vertex and move those around, and you
| | 01:37 | can see that now we're
getting symmetry for free.
| | 01:40 | It's going to save us a whole lot of time.
| | 01:43 | Exiting out of sub-object mode, and
there we go, I have got a symmetrical model.
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| Working with TurboSmooth| 00:00 | Now that we have a symmetrical model,
let's add the Smooth modifier that will
| | 00:04 | then subdivide each one of these
polygons into smaller polygons, and average the
| | 00:10 | angles to round out the surface.
| | 00:13 | 3ds Max has several
different methods for doing this.
| | 00:15 | You might see other tutorials that
talk about MeshSmooth, or HSDS, and those
| | 00:22 | will work as well.
| | 00:23 | But what you really want is TurboSmooth,
because that's very fast and very efficient.
| | 00:27 | It will update really quick in the viewports.
| | 00:30 | I will choose TurboSmooth, and that
TurboSmooth is now added at the top of
| | 00:34 | the modifier stack.
| | 00:36 | The most significant aspect of the
TurboSmooth modifier is the number of Iterations.
| | 00:41 | That's the number of times that the
subdivision algorithm is being applied.
| | 00:47 | To see what this does a little bit more
clearly, I want to display the Polygon
| | 00:51 | Count in the viewport.
| | 00:53 | To do that, I am going to click the 7
key on the keyboard, and now what you'll
| | 00:58 | see in the upper left-
hand corner are statistics.
| | 01:01 | These statistics display the Polygon
Count for the entire scene by default, and
| | 01:07 | it doesn't matter what I have selected,
it's showing me that I have about 4000
| | 01:11 | polygons in the scene in total.
| | 01:13 | What I really want to do, is I want to know
how many polygons I've got on this one object.
| | 01:18 | To do that I will need to go into the
Viewport Configuration and change up
| | 01:22 | the Statistics options.
| | 01:23 | I will click on the little plus sign up here,
and go to Configure Viewports, and Statistics.
| | 01:32 | The option I want to
choose here is Total+Selection.
| | 01:36 | When that's on, then I will be able to
see the total number of polygons, plus
| | 01:41 | the number of polygons on
the currently selected object.
| | 01:46 | Select that object, and you will see
currently with Iterations set to 1, I've
| | 01:51 | got about 700, 800 polygons.
| | 01:55 | If I increase the Iterations
to 2, this value suddenly jumps.
| | 02:00 | Now I've got over 3000 polygons.
| | 02:04 | Each time you increase the Iteration
value by 1, you are essentially multiplying
| | 02:09 | the number of polygons by four,
assuming that all the polygons are
| | 02:13 | quadrilaterals to begin with.
| | 02:16 | If I set Iterations up to 3,
now I've got over 12,000 polygons.
| | 02:21 | 3 is about the maximum that
you would ever want to go up to.
| | 02:25 | If you push these Iterations pass 3,
it might look nice and smooth but in
| | 02:30 | fact, its overkill.
| | 02:32 | You'll see here I got
almost 50,000 polygons here.
| | 02:36 | We won't need 50,000 polygons, unless we are
getting up super, super close to the object.
| | 02:41 | I mean, literally we'd have to be
sitting on top of the object in order to
| | 02:44 | be able see all those.
| | 02:45 | 4 Iterations is usually too much.
| | 02:48 | In fact, 2 Iterations is
usually the optimal sweet spot.
| | 02:53 | If you need to take it up past 3,
| | 02:55 | that means that you've probably got
not enough detail on your original Edible
| | 02:59 | Poly or your original Control Cage.
| | 03:01 | An Iteration value of 2 is usually optimal.
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| Extruding polygons| 00:00 | Now we come to the real heart of
subdivision surface modeling in Max.
| | 00:04 | If I go down to the Editable Poly
level of the stack, I can now go into a
| | 00:09 | sub-object mode such as Vertex, and make
adjustments like moving a point around,
| | 00:15 | and you'll see that that's affecting
the underlying subdivision surface.
| | 00:20 | Wow, that's really cool!
| | 00:23 | I can make it a little bit easier to see
by turning the Edged Faces off with F4,
| | 00:28 | and also all of the tools within
Editable Poly or Graphite are available at my
| | 00:34 | fingertips, and any command that I
perform will flow upward through the stack.
| | 00:40 | I just want to do an extrusion here.
| | 00:42 | I'll spend that Command panel a little
bit, select by Polygon, and I'll click a
| | 00:47 | couple of polygons up here at the top.
| | 00:51 | Select those two polygons
here, and I can extrude.
| | 00:57 | Here we go, Extrude, let's
click on that and click and drag.
| | 01:01 | In this case, I'm dragging downward, to
extrude down and release the mouse, and
| | 01:08 | that looks pretty good actually.
| | 01:10 | But technically there's
something that I'd need to look at here.
| | 01:12 | If you look closely you'll
see that there is a line here.
| | 01:17 | There's actually extra polygons here
in the center that I can't really see.
| | 01:21 | I just want to clean those up.
| | 01:23 | I'll right-click to exit out of Extrude,
and I'll turn Show end result off for a
| | 01:27 | moment so we can see the issue.
| | 01:29 | You see these polygons here?
| | 01:31 | Those got created during the Extrude
and although the Symmetry modifier is
| | 01:35 | kind of cleaning up that mess for me,
it's probably better to not have the
| | 01:39 | mess in the first place.
| | 01:40 | I'll just Ctrl+Select those two polygons,
and then press the Delete key on the
| | 01:45 | keyboard, and now I've got a
nice, clean open border here.
| | 01:51 | That's kind of important, because later
on I might need to select that border,
| | 01:54 | and if those two polygons had been
there, I wouldn't be able to. Cool!
| | 02:01 | I can use any of the tools within
Editable Poly or Graphite, and those will flow
| | 02:06 | upward to my TurboSmooth.
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| Rounding out square corners| 00:00 | Now we're ready to take a first pass
at sculpting the subdivision surface model.
| | 00:04 | As you can see it looks quite boxy here.
| | 00:07 | I'm displaying it without the
Edged Faces, and I've got the selection
| | 00:10 | brackets around it.
| | 00:12 | You can see that it is really quite
square, and in fact, that's the sort of
| | 00:17 | Achilles' heel of this whole technique,
because you're starting from a box, you
| | 00:21 | need to do some extra work to make it
not to be a box, especially if you're
| | 00:26 | doing character creature work.
| | 00:27 | If you have a really boxy shape,
it's not convincing at all.
| | 00:30 | You'll need to look in all the Ortho views
to make sure you're not getting a boxy shape.
| | 00:35 | In this case I want to go to the Top view.
| | 00:38 | I'll hit Alt+W, go over the Top view,
right-click in there so I don't lose my
| | 00:43 | selection, Alt+W again to
maximize the top viewport.
| | 00:47 | Then I'll go down to the Editable Poly
and turn Show end result on, and go into
| | 00:54 | Vertex mode, and what I want to do is
move these points around to basically make
| | 00:59 | a cylinder out of this cube.
| | 01:03 | This is not just one point here.
| | 01:05 | There are 5 points in that location.
| | 01:06 | They're all stacked vertically.
| | 01:08 | To select all of them, I'll drag a
selection rectangle there, grab my Move tool,
| | 01:14 | and then move that around.
| | 01:16 | I'll just do that for all of these, and I can
also use the Scale tool too, while I'm at it.
| | 01:22 | I can hold down Ctrl and select these.
| | 01:25 | Just to save a little bit of time, I'll
use the Scale tool and scale only in the
| | 01:29 | Y axis in the viewport here.
| | 01:34 | I'll do the same thing for these,
Ctrl+Select them, scale that down.
| | 01:39 | What I'm trying to
achieve here is a round shape.
| | 01:44 | Ctrl+Select, get the Move tool too.
| | 01:56 | I'm just trying to push these around
until I get a more or less round shaped,
| | 01:59 | and luckily I've got a
circular object as a reference point.
| | 02:05 | I've got the barstool base that I can
use as a point of reference, to try to
| | 02:11 | achieve a round shape.
| | 02:14 | It'll never be exactly
round. This is important.
| | 02:17 | You need to know this
about subdivision surfaces.
| | 02:21 | It's actually completely impossible to
get a perfect sphere or a perfect circle.
| | 02:27 | It's one of the sort of
the skeletons in the closet.
| | 02:29 | But that's okay because you can
usually get it close enough that the average
| | 02:33 | viewer will not notice the difference.
| | 02:36 | I'll select all of these points here
and maybe move that in a little bit.
| | 02:42 | I can just take a few minutes here
to shape this up, using Scale & Move.
| | 02:50 | I'd like to try to make them
as equidistant as possible.
| | 02:54 | Atleast at this stage, I want to have a
sort of uniform shape, and that means
| | 02:58 | that most of the polygons
would be about the same size.
| | 03:01 | All right, let's see what that
looks like in the Perspective view.
| | 03:04 | Go back to Alt+W, and as
you can see what I've done,
| | 03:07 | I've essentially converted
that box into a pseudo-cylinder.
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| Choosing a transform center| 00:00 | Now we're ready to taper the shape of
the subdivision surface model to get that
| | 00:04 | barstool that has that elegant shape to it.
| | 00:07 | What I want to do actually first is to
delete the bottom polygons, and that'll
| | 00:11 | give me a much cleaner edge at the bottom here.
| | 00:15 | The grid is kind of in my way, so I'll turn
it off by pressing the G key on the keyboard.
| | 00:20 | Then I'll go down into the Editable
Poly and turn on Show end result so I can
| | 00:24 | see this as it happens.
| | 00:26 | I'll enter into Polygon sub-object mode, hold
down Ctrl and select all the bottom polygons.
| | 00:36 | Once those are selected, I can press
the Delete key on the keyboard, and now
| | 00:41 | you'll see I've got a nice, clean
edge at the bottom there. Cool!
| | 00:45 | Now what I want to do here is to
scale these edges so that they will
| | 00:48 | move towards the center.
| | 00:49 | I'll go to Edge sub-object mode, and I
can select that whole edge loop just by
| | 00:54 | double-clicking on any one of these.
| | 00:57 | If I use the Standard Scale tool,
you'll notice that the Scale Gizmo is not
| | 01:02 | really at the center here where I need
it to be, and if I try to use the Scale
| | 01:06 | tool at this point, it
will split my model apart.
| | 01:09 | Ctrl+Z to undo that, and that will
happen no matter which axes I scale in.
| | 01:15 | If I click in the center here,
I'm scaling in all three axes.
| | 01:18 | I could try to scale only an X
and Y, by clicking on this bracket.
| | 01:23 | But that doesn't actually solve
the problem either, undo that.
| | 01:27 | What I need to do is to move the
Transform Gizmo to the center of the world.
| | 01:33 | To do that I'll go up to the main toolbar.
I've got the Scale tool active, and I
| | 01:38 | need to use the World Coordinate System,
that's what this pulldown list is here.
| | 01:43 | It says Reference Coordinate
System and the default is View.
| | 01:47 | I'll click on that and choose World,
and what that does is it chooses the World
| | 01:53 | axis as a reference for the Scale Transform.
| | 01:57 | Now I don't see any
change on my screen just yet.
| | 02:00 | There's one more thing I need to do
here, and that is this third button over
| | 02:04 | here, is a mysterious one and
it's called Use Transforms Center.
| | 02:09 | If I click on that, and hold it down I
get a flyout, and I have three options here.
| | 02:15 | Use Pivot Point Center, Use Selection
Center, and Use Reference Coordinate Center.
| | 02:22 | The one that I want is the third one.
| | 02:24 | What that'll do is it will use the
current Reference Coordinate System as the
| | 02:28 | position for the Transform Gizmo, and
when I release the mouse on that, now my
| | 02:34 | Scale tool is positioned
exactly at the World origin.
| | 02:38 | Turn the Grid on just for
a second with the G key.
| | 02:40 | So you can see that the Scale Gizmo is
now positioned at World Coordinates of 000.
| | 02:47 | Okay, so far so good.
| | 02:49 | Now I can try scaling this.
| | 02:51 | If I click in the center of the Scale
Gizmo, all of those points on that Edge
| | 02:57 | Loop will move down towards the
Scale Gizmo or towards the Origin.
| | 03:01 | It's scaling in all three, X, Y and Z axes.
| | 03:05 | But what I really want it is to scale
only in X and Y, and I can do that by
| | 03:10 | clicking on this little bracket here,
and now those edges are not moving
| | 03:15 | closer in the Z axis.
| | 03:19 | Okay, so that's cool!
| | 03:20 | That basically does what I want it to do.
| | 03:22 | However, it's not really convenient to have
the Transform Gizmo here down at the origin.
| | 03:27 | It would be a lot easier if I could
just click on those edges, and scale them
| | 03:32 | around World X and Y; just directly,
without worrying about the Transform Gizmo.
| | 03:38 | I can make that happen by
using the Axis Constraints.
| | 03:43 | I'll right-click on any empty spot on
the main toolbar, and open up the Axis
| | 03:48 | Constraints toolbar, and you remember
this from an earlier chapter, we can
| | 03:54 | bypass the Transform Gizmo entirely
and choose the axes that we want to, in
| | 03:59 | this case, Scale Around.
| | 04:00 | So you'll see XY is currently active.
| | 04:03 | Now you might think that that means
that I'm scaling in X and Y, but it's
| | 04:07 | actually not quite that simple.
| | 04:10 | I'll show you by double-clicking on
another edge loop up here, and if I try to
| | 04:14 | scale this now it's actually
going to scale in all three axes.
| | 04:18 | Despite the fact that only X
and Y are apparently active here.
| | 04:23 | There's one other little
mysterious thing I need to do here.
| | 04:26 | I need to change the
behavior of the Scale tool itself.
| | 04:30 | The Scale tool is a flyout.
| | 04:32 | If I hold that button down,
I have three options:
| | 04:35 | Select a Uniform Scale,
Select a Non-uniform Scale.
| | 04:40 | and Select and Squash.
| | 04:42 | The one that I want is
Select a Non-uniform Scale.
| | 04:46 | If that's active, then the Axis
Constraints will be in full effect.
| | 04:51 | Finally, I can just click on that
edge loop and drag, and there you go.
| | 04:57 | We've got exactly the behavior we needed.
| | 05:00 | We just had to set these
options correctly up here.
| | 05:04 | In review, we want to be in Non-uniform Scale,
| | 05:08 | our reference is World, and the transform
center is on the third icon here, which
| | 05:14 | is Use Transform Coordinate Center.
| | 05:17 | All right, so I can double-click on any
one of these edge loops, and then scale it.
| | 05:25 | You'll notice as I do that, that
sometimes the edges actually go inside
| | 05:28 | the model.
| | 05:30 | That's not a problem. That's normal.
| | 05:35 | If I've trouble with that, then I can
just go to Wireframe mode, F3, and then
| | 05:41 | double-click on one of these edges here,
and that'll give me an edge loop, and I
| | 05:45 | can continue to scale this
and shape it up a little bit.
| | 05:51 | All right, so that's how we use
Transform Coordinates Centers in 3ds Max.
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| Editing edge loops| 00:00 | Let's look at adding and removing
detail with edge loops, and shaping up our
| | 00:05 | model by positioning those edge loops.
| | 00:08 | I will go back down into
Editable Poly and Edge Selection Mode.
| | 00:14 | I might need to turn Show end result
on and off as I work, and I might need to
| | 00:18 | hit F4 to make those edges visible or invisible.
| | 00:23 | What I'd like to see here is a sharper
transition at this location, which means
| | 00:29 | that I need another edge loop here,
in order to define that curvature.
| | 00:35 | As we saw earlier, we could use the
Swift Loop tool to insert an edge loop.
| | 00:39 | We can also do it from the traditional
Editable Poly tools here, using Connect.
| | 00:47 | To use the Connect tool, I want to select
edges that I want to then split in half.
| | 00:54 | So I selected all those edges,
and I've got the Connect tool here.
| | 00:58 | All I need to do really is just click on it,
and now I've got a new edge loop there.
| | 01:04 | It's currently selected.
| | 01:06 | I'll turn Show end result back on again,
so I can see the results, and I can
| | 01:11 | move it and scale it.
| | 01:14 | I'm only moving it up or down in Z. If I
am going to scale it, I will go back to
| | 01:19 | my Select a Non-uniform Scale tool,
just as we had in the last movie.
| | 01:24 | I haven't changed those settings.
| | 01:27 | I can scale that edge loop as well,
just by activating the Select a Non-uniform
| | 01:31 | Scale tool, and I still got the World
Coordinate System as my reference, and I
| | 01:36 | still have Use Transform
Coordinate Center active.
| | 01:40 | But I can't see the edge loop,
because it's inside the model.
| | 01:43 | That means, I will need to turn Show
end result back off again, and now, I can
| | 01:49 | scale, and then turn Show end result on again.
| | 02:01 | If edge loops are close together, then
we'll get a sharper curvature at that location.
| | 02:05 | I can demonstrate that up
here at the top once again.
| | 02:10 | Select all these edges, click the
Connect button to create a new edge loop, and
| | 02:18 | then use the Move tool to position them.
| | 02:21 | The closer those edges are together, the
sharper the curvature will be at that location.
| | 02:26 | If the edges are far apart, we'll get a
soft curve, if they're close together,
| | 02:31 | we'll get a sharper curve.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Shaping the model| 00:00 | Now I'm ready to shape
the top of the model here.
| | 00:03 | What I want to do is select it and go
down into the Editable Poly, and select
| | 00:08 | just the top polygons.
| | 00:12 | I'll need to select the
second row of polygons too.
| | 00:15 | That's easily done by just clicking
the Grow button here and that just
| | 00:17 | extends the selection out.
| | 00:21 | Grab the Move tool, push those down, grab
the Rotate tool, and tilt it.
| | 00:32 | All right, that looks pretty good.
| | 00:33 | Let's see what it looks like with Show
end result turned back on again, and with
| | 00:37 | edged faces off, F4.
| | 00:42 | All right, that's pretty good.
| | 00:45 | Now I want to move some of these points
around here to shape it up a little bit better.
| | 00:48 | I'll go to Vertex sub-object mode, click
on one of these guys, and use the Move tool.
| | 00:55 | And you'll notice that if I move this
point back, that it's not remaining flat,
| | 01:01 | this polygon up here is now
getting skewed. I'll undo that.
| | 01:06 | I want to make sure that this
vertex only moves along that edge.
| | 01:12 | That's easily done either from the
Graphite toolbar or from the traditional
| | 01:16 | Editable Poly panel by using Constraints.
| | 01:20 | Here are Constraints now.
| | 01:21 | I just want to constrain to edge.
| | 01:25 | Now when I drag this, it will move
along that edge which means that the top
| | 01:30 | here will remain flat. All right!
| | 01:35 | Bring that around.
| | 01:35 | I can also constrain to face
if I need to. I'll try that.
| | 01:44 | That seems to work just fine.
| | 01:47 | Bring a lot of these in.
| | 01:48 | Getting a little bit of a
display glitch there, but seems okay.
| | 01:58 | If I have trouble with Face Constraints,
I can switch back to Edge Constraints.
| | 02:02 | I will continue working on this
for a while until I get what I want.
| | 02:06 | I'm not going to do that now, I'll
let you do that on your own time.
| | 02:09 | But I will mention that it's very
common that you'll accidentally move these
| | 02:14 | points away from the center.
| | 02:16 | This is a really common
issue that you might experience.
| | 02:19 | If those points are not exactly at an X
value of 0, then you're going to have issues.
| | 02:25 | Turn my Constraints off.
| | 02:27 | It doesn't matter if it goes over in
the negative axis or in the positive,
| | 02:32 | you're still going to
have problems with the model.
| | 02:35 | What can we do about this?
| | 02:37 | Let me demonstrate to you this trick
that we can do to restore the integrity of
| | 02:42 | this open border here.
| | 02:45 | That way, all of the vertices
here will be at an X value of 0.
| | 02:49 | I'll turn Show end fesult off, and I'll
turn Edged Faces back on again with F4.
| | 02:56 | What I need to do here is I need to move each
one of these points back to an X value of 0.
| | 03:02 | Now I can do that for individual
points, one at a time, by just using the Move
| | 03:07 | tool, selecting the point, and
setting the X position down here to 0.
| | 03:14 | And that's fine!
| | 03:16 | But what you'll find is as you work,
not just one point, but many of these
| | 03:19 | points are going to kind of
drift away from the center.
| | 03:22 | You need some way of restoring
them all back to an X value of 0.
| | 03:29 | The problem is that in 3ds Max, you
cannot move multiple points at the same time
| | 03:34 | using the Transform type in down here.
| | 03:37 | But there is a trick to this.
| | 03:39 | First up, I want to be in
Select and Non-uniform scale mode.
| | 03:45 | I want to have the World Coordinate
System, my current reference, and I want to
| | 03:50 | have Use Transform
Coordinates as my coordinate center.
| | 03:54 | Then I can select the entire
border in Border sub-object mode,
| | 04:00 | click on any one of these edges
and I've got that entire open border
| | 04:03 | activated and selected.
| | 04:05 | And the trick here is I want to
convert that selection to a vertex selection.
| | 04:11 | Hold down the Ctrl key and
click on Vertex sub-object mode.
| | 04:16 | Now I've selected all of
the points at the scene.
| | 04:20 | Now I need to open up the
Transform Type-In dialog.
| | 04:24 | I'll right-click on the Scale tool,
and now I've got Scale Transform Type-In,
| | 04:32 | and I'll just set this X value up here to 0,
| | 04:36 | type in a 0, press Enter, and now all
of those points have been scaled in X
| | 04:42 | to have a value of 0.
| | 04:45 | I know that, that's a little bit of a
cumbersome method in order to restore all
| | 04:49 | of those back to a value of 0.
| | 04:50 | It would be much easier if we could
just select them all and type in a 0 with
| | 04:54 | the Move tool, but we can't.
| | 04:57 | This is the workaround.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Baking subdivisions| 00:00 | I have worked on this model a little
bit more and sculpted it a bit more.
| | 00:04 | I'm almost ready to complete it.
| | 00:06 | There are a couple of other little things I
want to show you first. First is creasing.
| | 00:14 | Maybe I want a little bit
sharper edge around here.
| | 00:18 | Now I could do that by adding more
edge loops, but that would increase the
| | 00:23 | level of detail of the model, and
it would make it unnecessarily heavy.
| | 00:27 | Instead I am going to go back down to
the Editable Poly > Edge mode, and you'll
| | 00:32 | see in the Edit Edges
section, there's a Crease value.
| | 00:35 | I will just double-click on an edge
loop, and increase the Crease value, and
| | 00:42 | that's sharpening up that edge
without increasing the level of detail.
| | 00:47 | If I show the Edged Faces with F4, we
can see that it's not increasing the
| | 00:52 | number of polygons, and edges.
| | 00:54 | It's just pushing those closer
to the original control cage.
| | 00:57 | I want to do that actually for
both of these edge loops here.
| | 01:00 | So I will hold down Ctrl and double-click
here, and increase that up a little bit.
| | 01:07 | Maybe a value of let's say 0.3. Okay.
| | 01:11 | Now in that process, it is also
sharpened up the edge smoothing.
| | 01:16 | In other words, these are
now rendering as hard edges.
| | 01:19 | If I turn F4 back off again, you can
see that we're getting this hard edge.
| | 01:26 | We want the structure to have this sharp
corner here, but we don't actually want
| | 01:31 | it to be rendered as a hard edge.
| | 01:35 | I will drop out of sub-object mode, go
up to the top level of the stack, and I
| | 01:40 | will add an edge-smoothing
modifier which is called Smooth.
| | 01:45 | Not to be confused with TurboSmooth
or MeshSmooth, it's just straight
| | 01:49 | up ordinary Smooth.
| | 01:53 | When I add it, it's
actually disabled by default.
| | 01:57 | I will turn Auto Smooth on, and I will
set the Threshold up here to let's say 45
| | 02:02 | degrees, and that's helped with this edge here.
| | 02:11 | I can have a greater value if I want.
| | 02:12 | Maybe I want a Threshold of
even higher like 90 degrees.
| | 02:16 | Now that's really softened this up quite a lot.
| | 02:22 | Okay, if I finish this model,
then I want to save it in this state.
| | 02:27 | Then I want to convert it to an
Edible Mesh to make all of that permanent.
| | 02:33 | So when I double check on my
TurboSmooth iterations, and hit F4 to look at
| | 02:37 | Edged Faces, I want to make sure that I
have the right number of Iterations here
| | 02:41 | before I convert to Edible Mesh
because that's a destructive act.
| | 02:46 | The default Iterations of two seems fine.
| | 02:50 | With the object selected, I will right-
click in the Viewport, and choose Convert
| | 02:54 | To, and I can do Editable Mesh or Editable Poly.
| | 02:58 | If I was truly finished, then I
would use Edible Mesh because that's a
| | 03:02 | more efficient format.
| | 03:04 | However, I do have a little bit
of detail work to finish up here.
| | 03:07 | I will go to Convert To > Editable Poly instead.
| | 03:13 | What I want to do here finally is
to remove some of these edges here.
| | 03:19 | These loops here are not really necessary.
| | 03:21 | Really, I want this to be a straight
line here, and I can reduce the overall
| | 03:25 | level of detail a little bit.
| | 03:27 | Let me turn on my Statistics again
with the 7 key, and let me go back into my
| | 03:35 | Viewport Configuration and turn on Total+Selection,
so we can see that the total
| | 03:41 | number of polygons for this
model is now about 1,700 polygons.
| | 03:46 | I will go to Edge Selection mode,
get in a little bit closer here and
| | 03:51 | double-click on one of these.
| | 03:53 | That selects the entire edge loop,
and I want to delete that, and all the
| | 03:58 | vertices, and the shortcut
for that is Ctrl+Backspace.
| | 04:05 | Now that I have done that, I've had
a net loss of about hundred polygons.
| | 04:11 | I will do that a couple of more times
here, double-click on those, hold down
| | 04:15 | Ctrl, and double-click on that, and
then hold down Ctrl and press the Backspace
| | 04:22 | key, and now I have further reduced
the level of detail for this model.
| | 04:27 | So now I've only got about 1,500 polygons on it.
| | 04:31 | There's no need for me to have all of those
there if this is just going to be a straight line.
| | 04:36 | Now we've completed this
subdivision surface model.
| | 04:39 | If I'm doing no more work on it, then I
can convert it to an Editable Mesh which
| | 04:42 | will be a little bit more efficient version;
| | 04:45 | Convert To > Editable Mesh.
| | 04:47 | That's helpful sometimes
| | 04:49 | if I've got lots and lots of these in a
scene, let's say I've got a bar that's
| | 04:52 | got 20 or 30 of these, an Editable
Mesh will be a little bit more efficient.
| | 04:57 | That's just a real basic introduction.
| | 04:59 | You can extend this to model lots of
stuff including characters and creatures.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
10. NURBS ModelingUnderstanding NURBS| 00:00 | In this chapter, we'll
take a look at NURBS modeling.
| | 00:04 | This is a curve-based form of modeling.
| | 00:06 | The example we'll be using here is
this artistic looking cocktail table.
| | 00:11 | One of the great advantages of NURBS
is that the level of detail can be set
| | 00:16 | separately for the viewports and the renderer.
| | 00:19 | As you can see, this is looking a little
bit blocky, a little bit chunky and angular.
| | 00:24 | However, if I do a quick rendering by
clicking on the teapot on the far right of
| | 00:29 | the main toolbar, you will see that it
looks nice and smooth in the rendering.
| | 00:33 | NURBS lends itself very well to these
forms of industrial objects, hard surface
| | 00:39 | models that don't deform, and in fact,
many of the gadgets and objects that we
| | 00:45 | use in our daily lives
were designed using NURBS.
| | 00:48 | It's not really suited to
character and creature modeling so much.
| | 00:52 | If you want to create a person or
an animal, you would do that using
| | 00:57 | subdivision services.
| | 00:58 | Let's dive into NURBS modeling.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating NURBS curves| 00:00 | NURBS objects usually start from curves.
| | 00:03 | To make that cocktail table, in fact,
we're going to use standard Bezier spline
| | 00:07 | curves and convert them to NURBS.
| | 00:09 | However, I do want to show you how
to create NURBS curves from scratch.
| | 00:13 | I'll maximize the top view with my Alt+W
hotkey, go over to the Create panel and
| | 00:20 | choose Shapes, and one of the items
within that pulldown list is NURBS Curves.
| | 00:26 | You'll see that there are two
types of NURBS Curves available;
| | 00:29 | Point Curve and CV Curve.
| | 00:31 | This is a distinction that
usually doesn't exist in most NURBS
| | 00:35 | modeling applications.
| | 00:37 | In other words, if you were using Maya
or Alias Studio or one of those other
| | 00:40 | programs, there would only be one type
of NURBS curve, but in 3ds Max, there are
| | 00:45 | in fact two different types.
| | 00:47 | First of all, the Point Curve;
| | 00:49 | if you click in the View, you'll create
points that exists on the curve and when
| | 00:54 | you're finished making
them, you can right-click.
| | 00:57 | Right-click again to exit the tool.
| | 00:59 | If you want to change the shape, then
go to the Modify panel, and as soon as I
| | 01:04 | activate the Modify panel and I have a
NURBS object selected, you'll see I get
| | 01:08 | this NURBS toolbox showing up.
| | 01:11 | I'm not actually going to be using that,
because I preferred the text buttons over here.
| | 01:15 | I'm going to close that NURBS toolbox.
| | 01:18 | The NURBS Curve has a couple
different types of sub-objects.
| | 01:24 | First of all, there's the Curves sub-
object which is just the entire curve.
| | 01:28 | More importantly is the Point sub-object
and these are the points that we created.
| | 01:33 | I'll grab the Move tool and move these around.
| | 01:36 | You'll notice as I move this, that it's
having an influence not just on these
| | 01:41 | sections here, but in fact, it's having
an influence way all the way over here,
| | 01:48 | and in fact, that's sort of the
Achilles' heel of the Point curve, and for that
| | 01:53 | reason, I don't use it very much.
| | 01:55 | I find it difficult to control.
| | 01:58 | I am going to just delete
that with the Delete key.
| | 02:01 | I'll go back to the Create panel and
I'll show you how to create a CV Curve.
| | 02:06 | This one is a little bit more intuitive.
| | 02:09 | I'll click a few times to create some
points, and right-click to complete the
| | 02:14 | object, right-click again to exit the
tool, and go back to the Modify panel.
| | 02:20 | In the sub-object types, you'll see Curve CV;
| | 02:24 | CV stands for Control Vertex and this is the
more intuitive of the two types of NURBS Curves.
| | 02:31 | One thing that's a little bit
different than what you might be used to from
| | 02:34 | Bezier splines is that we have this
armature or hall that surrounds the curve,
| | 02:41 | and that's basically a set of lines that
join these CVs or Control Vertices. That
| | 02:48 | might take a little bit of getting
used to, but it is much easier to control,
| | 02:52 | because as you can see, it doesn't have
an undo influence over the entire shape.
| | 02:57 | That's a basic introduction to NURBS
Curves and how to create them from scratch.
| | 03:02 | However, in the exercise, we'll be
creating Bezier splines and converting them
| | 03:06 | to NURBS and that's what
we'll do in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating arcs and lines| 00:00 | To take advantage of the full toolset of
3ds Max, I'm going to combine a Bezier
| | 00:05 | Spline workflow with a NURBS workflow.
| | 00:08 | I'll start by creating Bezier splines,
and then convert them to NURBS Curves.
| | 00:13 | Before I begin, just to make things a
little bit easier on myself, I am going to
| | 00:17 | make sure that when I create objects,
they will be assigned random colors.
| | 00:21 | I'll go over here to the Create panel,
and click in the Name and Color rollout.
| | 00:25 | Just make sure that Assign
Random Colors is turned on.
| | 00:28 | That way when I make multiple spline
curves, they will be in different colors,
| | 00:31 | and I can see the difference between them.
| | 00:34 | Next, I want to set up the Units of
Measurement, this will be in Metric.
| | 00:38 | Go up to Customize > Units Setup,
set the Display Unit Scale to Metric,
| | 00:44 | Centimeters is fine, click OK.
| | 00:46 | I will also need to set the Grid.
| | 00:48 | Go up to any one of the magnet
icons, and right-click on that.
| | 00:51 | I want to make sure that I'm snapping
to Grid Points, not Vertices, so I will
| | 00:56 | make sure that Grid Points
is the only thing active.
| | 00:58 | I will go into the Home Grid
section, and set up my Grid Spacing.
| | 01:03 | Let's make a minor grid line every 10
centimeters, and then a major grid line
| | 01:08 | every 10 times 10, or every 1 meter.
| | 01:12 | The Perspective View Grid Extent,
let's make that a value of 20.
| | 01:16 | What that will do is it will make the
stage here 10 centimeters times 20, or 200
| | 01:22 | centimeters from center to edge.
| | 01:24 | Press the Tab key and
that value will be accepted.
| | 01:28 | I will zoom in a little bit in the Top view.
| | 01:31 | And in fact, I want to make a reference
box just to make sure that when I build
| | 01:35 | something, it's the size that I think it is.
| | 01:38 | I've made that box, and then I will set its
size to be 100 centimeters in each dimension.
| | 01:44 | That's 1 cubic meter.
| | 01:47 | Again, that's just a sanity check to
make sure that when I build something,
| | 01:49 | it's at the right scale.
| | 01:50 | I will end up deleting that later,
move that over to the side.
| | 01:54 | I'll maximize the Top view with Alt+W.
I'll go ahead and create some curves for
| | 02:01 | the top of the coffee table.
| | 02:03 | Go to the Create Panel > Shapes >
Splines, and I will make a freeform line,
| | 02:09 | and it will be about a little bit more than a
meter in length, it's 120 centimeters there.
| | 02:16 | And I just clicked.
| | 02:17 | I didn't click and drag, because I need
those to be corner points or straight lines.
| | 02:20 | I've made the two points and
then I'll right-click to exit.
| | 02:24 | Next, I will make a
couple of arcs on either side.
| | 02:27 | Click on Arc, click at the end of that line,
hold the mouse button down, move it down a bit.
| | 02:34 | Let's give it about 50 centimeters there,
release the mouse, and then drag out
| | 02:39 | to set the Radius of the arc.
| | 02:41 | That looks good there.
| | 02:42 | You can see in the lower right-hand
corner there, my Radius is currently 30
| | 02:46 | centimeters, and I'll click
again to complete that arc.
| | 02:49 | I will make another one over here too.
| | 02:51 | Let me zoom in a little
bit with the mouse wheel.
| | 02:55 | Let's get in really close on
that, make another arc over here.
| | 02:59 | Click and hold the mouse to make the
first point, drag down, release the mouse,
| | 03:04 | and then drag out to set the radius.
| | 03:07 | Click again to finish the arc and then
right-click to complete the Arc tool.
| | 03:13 | Now I'll create one more
line to join these two parts.
| | 03:17 | Go back to the Line tool, click once,
and click twice, and finally, right-click
| | 03:23 | to exit that line, and
right-click to exit the tool.
| | 03:28 | So I've got four lines in here.
| | 03:31 | I'll need to combine them all together,
and clean them up before I convert
| | 03:34 | them to NURBS.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Converting Bézier splines to a NURBS object| 00:00 | I've got four Bezier spline objects here.
| | 00:03 | What I need is actually a single NURBS curve.
| | 00:07 | I'll need to combine all these to a
single object and then convert to NURBS.
| | 00:12 | I've still got Snaps turned on.
| | 00:14 | Let me turn those off.
| | 00:15 | I can do that with the
shortcut key, which is S for Snap.
| | 00:19 | I'll go to the Modify panel
and select one of these lines.
| | 00:24 | The lines are Editable Spline objects,
which have an Attach button included in them.
| | 00:29 | Here we go, under the
Geometry rollout you'll see Attach.
| | 00:33 | I'll click that, and then I'll just click
on each one of these other objects in turn.
| | 00:39 | When I finish, I'll right-
click to complete the attach.
| | 00:43 | Now this is one single object.
| | 00:45 | I'll open up the Line sub-object types.
| | 00:48 | You'll notice however if I go to
the Spline sub-object, that they're
| | 00:52 | still disconnected splines, sort of like
elements on a mesh object or a polygon object.
| | 00:58 | What I need is one
single continuous spline here.
| | 01:02 | That's very important in fact,
because if I have several Spline sub-objects
| | 01:07 | within this line, when it's converted
to NURBS, it will still maintain that
| | 01:12 | break, and then when we create
surfaces from this line, it won't just be one
| | 01:17 | surface, in fact, it will be four surfaces
that are sort of just parked next to each other.
| | 01:22 | We need it to be continuous.
| | 01:24 | To do that we'll need to weld the
vertices and then make sure we've converted
| | 01:28 | them to the type Bezier Vertex.
| | 01:32 | Go over here to Vertex sub-object and draw a
selection rectangle around those two vertices.
| | 01:39 | In fact, there are two points there, not
just one, there are two coincident points.
| | 01:43 | And I want to find the Weld button.
| | 01:46 | I'll have to scroll down a little bit
in that Geometry rollout to find the Weld
| | 01:50 | button, and I'll just click that.
| | 01:53 | And I know that something happened,
because now I see two tangent handles
| | 01:57 | instead of just one.
| | 01:59 | Go around to the next one and Weld.
| | 02:02 | In fact, I can do more than one at a time.
| | 02:05 | I've got now four vertices selected,
and as long as we have a non-0 Weld
| | 02:11 | Threshold here, we will be able to
combine these two vertices and these two
| | 02:16 | vertices, click on Weld.
| | 02:19 | Now we want to check in on these and
make sure that in fact they are Bezier
| | 02:24 | Vertices, and not Bezier Corner,
not Smooth, but Bezier Vertices.
| | 02:30 | If I select one of those vertices and
then right-click in the viewport, I'll get
| | 02:34 | the quad menu and you'll
see it says Bezier Corner.
| | 02:37 | That's not going to work.
| | 02:39 | If it were a Bezier Corner, then when
we convert to NURBS, once again, we would
| | 02:43 | get four separate surfaces.
| | 02:46 | We need to make sure that
these are all Bezier Vertices.
| | 02:50 | And I can convert more
than one of these at a time.
| | 02:52 | I can just go and select that, hold
down the Ctrl key and select these as well,
| | 02:58 | right-click and choose Bezier.
| | 03:02 | Just do a little bit of cleanup here to
straighten up this line, and now I'm good.
| | 03:06 | I just want to make sure that
these are all Bezier points;
| | 03:10 | that there are no Bezier Corners or
anything else, that they're all Bezier.
| | 03:16 | And we've got check boxes there.
| | 03:18 | So everything is fine.
| | 03:19 | So all that remains is for us to
convert this Bezier spline to NURBS.
| | 03:23 | I'll exit out of sub-object mode,
and with the curve selected, simply
| | 03:28 | right-click and choose Convert To
> Convert to NURBS. There you go!
| | 03:33 | We've converted it to a NURBS object,
and next we'll actually start editing that
| | 03:37 | object and making several different
curves that we can join into a surface.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Cloning sub-objects| 00:00 | Currently I've got a single
curve in this NURBS object.
| | 00:04 | If we select it and go to the Modify
panel, and open up the sub-object types,
| | 00:09 | you'll see Curve CV and Curve.
| | 00:11 | Don't be thrown off by the fact
that it says NURBS Surface up here;
| | 00:15 | I don't actually have a surface yet.
| | 00:17 | There is only one type of NURBS object
in 3ds Max, and it could contain curves
| | 00:23 | and/or surfaces, and it could be named
NURBS Surface or it could be named NURBS Curve.
| | 00:29 | It doesn't matter what that name is.
| | 00:31 | Again, there's only one type
of NURBS object in 3ds Max.
| | 00:35 | I will hit Alt+W, to go out
to my Four View port Layout.
| | 00:40 | I don't need my reference box
anymore, so I will just delete that.
| | 00:43 | I'll need to create a couple of more
curves in order to build a surface, get in
| | 00:48 | a little bit closer on that.
| | 00:51 | There are a couple of ways that I could do this.
| | 00:53 | I could scale the curve,
or I could make an offset.
| | 00:57 | Scaling is quite simple.
| | 00:58 | All I need to do is select the Curve,
click on it, and then use the Scale tool,
| | 01:05 | and hold down Shift.
| | 01:07 | And when I do that, I am making a
clone of that sub-object, and when I release
| | 01:11 | the mouse, I get a pop-up dialog that
asks, do I want an Independent Copy or
| | 01:17 | a Transform Object?
| | 01:19 | An Independent Copy as the name implies,
has no connection back to the original curve.
| | 01:24 | If it were a Transform Object, then it
would be sort of locked in place, as is,
| | 01:30 | and if I made changes to the original curve,
it would also change this duplicate curve.
| | 01:35 | What I really want here is
Independent Copy, I will click OK.
| | 01:39 | And that gives me the ability now to move
that around and position it. There we go!
| | 01:45 | I've cloned a sub-object
curve within this NURBS object.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating an offset curve| 00:00 | Let's look at another way of
creating curves within this NURBS object.
| | 00:06 | Select the object and I'll go to the
Curve sub-object type, in fact, I just
| | 00:10 | want to scale this down a little bit more,
position it at the center a little bit better.
| | 00:16 | And now I want to create
something called an offset curve.
| | 00:19 | Let's see the difference between
an offset curve and simple scaling.
| | 00:23 | I'll zoom in on that with Alt+W, and
again, I can use the Scale tool to create
| | 00:28 | a duplicate curve with the Shift key,
and when I release the mouse and create
| | 00:33 | an independent copy, I can move that
around to show you that with this scale
| | 00:38 | technique, it's not possible for me to
maintain a consistent distance between the two curves.
| | 00:44 | To do that, I need
something called an offset curve.
| | 00:47 | In fact, I'll just delete the one that I
just made, just created that as illustration.
| | 00:52 | One of the quirks of the software is
that in order to create a new curve, I
| | 00:56 | cannot actually be in Curve sub-object mode.
| | 00:59 | I'll actually need to exit out of sub-object
mode, and I need to be in Object mode now.
| | 01:04 | I've got a lot of rollouts
here in the Modify panel.
| | 01:08 | Let me open some of these up here,
especially this one that says Create Curves.
| | 01:12 | That's the one I really need.
| | 01:14 | I could use the NURBS toolbox, by the way.
| | 01:17 | I don't prefer to use that because these
icons are not really that obvious to me.
| | 01:22 | I prefer the text buttons.
| | 01:24 | Here we go, Offset.
| | 01:26 | I'll activate that button and then
click and drag to create the offset curve.
| | 01:32 | And as you see, it's maintaining a
consistent distance from the original curve.
| | 01:38 | And when I have what I want, more or less,
I'll release the mouse and now I've got
| | 01:42 | an offset curve, and I can
right-click to exit that tool.
| | 01:46 | You'll notice now that the
offset curve is in bright green.
| | 01:49 | That's an indicator that it's a dependent curve.
| | 01:53 | It's dependent on some
other curve in the object.
| | 01:55 | I'll go back to my four viewport layout with
Alt+W, and I don't need these selection
| | 02:01 | brackets in the shaded view.
| | 02:02 | So I'll press the J key to hide those.
| | 02:05 | Now if I go into Curve sub-object mode
and select this, I actually cannot move
| | 02:10 | it independently of the original source curve.
| | 02:13 | There is a connection between those two.
| | 02:16 | What I need to do, in order to
position them separately, is to make this
| | 02:20 | offset curve independent.
| | 02:22 | I'll click on it and I'll have to go
into the Curve Common rollout and find the
| | 02:29 | button that says Make Independent.
| | 02:32 | Once I click that, now I've broken the
relationship between the two and now I'm
| | 02:37 | able to move them separately.
| | 02:38 | That's an offset curve.
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| Creating a U loft surface| 00:00 | In our NURBS object, we've currently
got three curves sub-objects and we're
| | 00:05 | ready to generate a surface.
| | 00:07 | I'll select that object, and go into the
Modify panel, and I'll go to the Create
| | 00:12 | Surfaces rollout and I'll choose U Loft.
| | 00:16 | Now U Loft in NURBS is a little
bit different from a standard loft
| | 00:21 | compound object in 3ds Max.
| | 00:23 | A U Loft does not require a path;
| | 00:26 | it'll just join these shapes together.
| | 00:28 | I'll click on that and then click on
each one of these curves in turn, either
| | 00:33 | going from top to bottom or bottom to top.
| | 00:37 | When I finished, I'll right-click
to complete the U Loft and then I'll
| | 00:41 | right-click again to exit the tool.
| | 00:44 | Tumble around, orbit
around in there a little bit.
| | 00:47 | In fact, I'll turn my Display mode back
to Shaded just to simplify things a bit,
| | 00:52 | and that looks okay.
| | 00:53 | Let's do a quick render of that with
the teapot on the far right of the main
| | 00:57 | toolbar and you'll see it
doesn't look quite right.
| | 01:01 | I'm going to make this a little bit
brighter just so we can see it a bit better;
| | 01:06 | brighter gray color, and render again,
and you can see that it doesn't look
| | 01:10 | anything like what we see in the viewport.
| | 01:12 | And the issue here is that depending
upon what order you select the curves, the
| | 01:18 | surface might be turned inside out, or
to put it in technical terms, the normals
| | 01:23 | might be reversed, or flipped, and
that's exactly what has happened here.
| | 01:28 | I need to make sure that those
normals are facing in the right way.
| | 01:31 | To do that, I'll go into Surface sub-
object mode and then select that surface.
| | 01:37 | I can also press F4 so we can see the
edged faces, and then I know that that
| | 01:42 | surface is actually currently
selected, and down here in the Surface Common
| | 01:47 | rollout, you'll see some options for normals.
| | 01:49 | If I turn Display Normals on, then we'll
see little blue lines stick out, and you
| | 01:57 | see this line here; that is showing
the orientation of the surface and it's
| | 02:01 | pointed towards the interior.
| | 02:03 | I want that line to point outward, so
that this surface will be renderable on
| | 02:07 | the outside rather than the inside.
| | 02:10 | All I need to do to fix this is to
choose Flip Normals and then that line is
| | 02:16 | pointed out instead of in, and if I do a
rendering of this, it looks perfectly fine.
| | 02:22 | If I had selected the curves in the
opposite order, if I'd gone from bottom to
| | 02:26 | top, then the surface would have been
oriented in this manner instead of inside out.
| | 02:32 | You'll never know in advance whether those
normals are going to be pointed in or out.
| | 02:37 | You will need to go in here after
you've made each surface and verify that it's
| | 02:41 | turned in the right direction and if
necessary to click the Flip Normals button.
| | 02:46 | I'd also like to mention that you
don't want to use the Normal modifier.
| | 02:51 | There is a separate modifier that you
could add to the stack which would reverse
| | 02:56 | all of the normals on the object.
| | 02:58 | That's no good because, in fact, we
will need to adjust the orientation of the
| | 03:03 | normals on each individual
surface within the NURBS object.
| | 03:08 | If I use the modifier, it would flip
all of the surfaces and if I do it this
| | 03:13 | way, I can choose which ones need to be flipped.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Editing a dependent surface using curves| 00:00 | Now I've built up the structure of the model
and I'm ready to go in and adjust the form.
| | 00:07 | I can do that by changing the shape or
the transforms of the original curves.
| | 00:13 | I will go into Curves sub-object mode,
and you can see that if I click on
| | 00:18 | any one of these curves, it will be
highlighted in red indicating that it's selected.
| | 00:23 | And once it's selected, I can move it
and I can adjust the shape of the object.
| | 00:28 | However, as you see, when I move that
around my surface temporarily disappears
| | 00:33 | until I release the mouse.
| | 00:35 | This is actually an
intentional design choice in 3ds Max.
| | 00:40 | The NURBS toolset was created some time
ago when computers were a lot slower, and
| | 00:45 | that was necessary in
order to maintain performance.
| | 00:50 | Well now computers are a lot faster, so
we can go ahead and turn that option off.
| | 00:54 | That's going to be found at the
top level in the Modify panel.
| | 00:58 | I will need to exit out of sub-object
mode, and what I am looking for in the
| | 01:02 | General rollout is this
switch that says Transform Degrade.
| | 01:07 | What that means is, when I
transform part of the object, it's going to
| | 01:10 | degrade the display.
| | 01:12 | I will turn that off.
| | 01:15 | Then go back down into Curve sub-object,
and you can see what I'm doing as I work.
| | 01:19 | That's much more effective.
| | 01:21 | I can use all the standard tools like Scale,
select another curve, and scale that too.
| | 01:26 | Maybe I will select this
bottom curve and scale that up.
| | 01:30 | I also want to have a little
bit of a lip at the bottom here.
| | 01:34 | The means I am going to create an
extrude surface that just go straight down.
| | 01:39 | To do that I will move this bottom
curve up just a little bit, go to the Ortho
| | 01:43 | views with Alt+W, and I will dolly-in in
the front viewport, grab the Move tool,
| | 01:49 | then just move this up a little
bit, maybe a couple of centimeters.
| | 01:54 | I can see at the bottom of my
screen how far I am moving it.
| | 01:57 | I will just put that at about 2 centimeters up.
| | 02:02 | I can spend a lot more time
editing this if I needed to.
| | 02:05 | I could go into Curve CV mode and I
could edit these individual curve points.
| | 02:10 | For example, this one, move that around,
and try to shape that up a little bit.
| | 02:16 | We don't have a lot of
time to do that in the lesson.
| | 02:18 | I just wanted to illustrate to you
that you have the ability to change the
| | 02:22 | surface by moving the curves or
by moving the curve control points.
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| Creating an extrude surface| 00:00 | I want to create a little bit of
thickness here at the bottom of the base of
| | 00:04 | the cocktail table.
| | 00:05 | Well I can do that very
simply using an Extrude surface.
| | 00:09 | Once again to create a surface, I
needed to be in Object mode and not in
| | 00:13 | any sub-object mode.
| | 00:15 | And you'll see in the Create Surfaces
rollout, I've got Extrude, and this is
| | 00:19 | very similar to extrusion with polygons.
| | 00:23 | All I need to do is click on one of
these curves and then drag up or down to
| | 00:28 | create the Extrude surface.
| | 00:30 | And when I'm finished, I'll release the
mouse and then right-click to exit the tool.
| | 00:35 | These surfaces have parameters.
| | 00:37 | All I need to do, if I want to change
the height of the Extrude, is go to the
| | 00:41 | Surface sub-object mode, select the
Surface, and you can see here in the
| | 00:46 | Wireframe view that it's highlighted
in red, and the Extrude surface has got
| | 00:51 | some parameters here, specifically the amount.
| | 00:53 | I'll set that to -2 centimeters. Press Enter.
| | 00:59 | I've created the two surfaces in this object.
| | 01:01 | What remains for me to do is to set
the surface approximation or the Level Of
| | 01:06 | Detail of the NURBS surfaces.
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| Setting Surface Approximation| 00:00 | When we finished modeling a NURBS object,
the last step is to define the Surface
| | 00:05 | Approximation parameters.
| | 00:07 | It's also known as
tessellation which means tiling.
| | 00:10 | A NURBS surface is actually a
mathematically perfect idealized vector surface,
| | 00:17 | and theoretically, we could zoom in infinitely
on that surface to any level of detail we want.
| | 00:22 | 3ds Max does not have a NURBS renderer.
| | 00:26 | It's only a polygon-based renderer.
| | 00:29 | In order for the NURBS surface to be
displayed on the screen or rendered to
| | 00:32 | disk, it needs to be sliced and diced
up into polygons and that's what the
| | 00:37 | Surface Approximation rollout is all about.
| | 00:39 | Let's go open that up in the Modified
panel, Surface Approximation, and you
| | 00:44 | will see here that there are
two radial buttons at the top:
| | 00:47 | one for the Viewports and one for the Renderer.
| | 00:51 | And you'll notice that, by default, they
have different settings down here and
| | 00:55 | that's why we see one level of detail
in the viewport and another level of
| | 00:59 | detail in the Renderer.
| | 01:00 | So this is much smoother
here than it is in the viewport.
| | 01:04 | That's a really good feature of NURBS,
the fact that we can set different levels
| | 01:08 | of detail for the Viewport and the
Renderer means we can have fast performance
| | 01:12 | in the viewport, but really
smooth curves in the Renderer.
| | 01:15 | All right, I'll maximize that with Alt+W.
| | 01:19 | Essentially, you'll only be able see
changes if you make adjustments in the
| | 01:24 | Viewports section here.
| | 01:26 | If I click on these presets, for
example, you'll see that it's adapting the
| | 01:30 | level of detail in the viewports.
| | 01:33 | If I do the same thing with the
Renderer option chosen, I won't see anything
| | 01:38 | happen in the viewports, and this is a
bit unfortunate, I'm essentially flying
| | 01:42 | blind here and I don't know what I will get.
| | 01:45 | What I recommend that you do to work
around this issue, you use the Viewports
| | 01:48 | settings and choose an option, and then
once you have everything you want down
| | 01:54 | here then you plug those same
values into the Renderer section.
| | 01:58 | In this case, I can just use this High
Preset and that's an easy way to do this.
| | 02:03 | You will see also there is
this switch here that says Lock.
| | 02:07 | That is not a way to lock the
Renderer and the Viewport settings.
| | 02:11 | What this Lock button does in fact, is
allow you to control all of the surfaces
| | 02:17 | in the current object at once.
| | 02:20 | If you wanted to, you could turn this
Lock off and then adjust each surface
| | 02:24 | separately by selecting it.
| | 02:26 | I am going to leave it on, and I just
wanted to show you how these parameters work.
| | 02:31 | Spatial and Curvature is the
default tessellation method.
| | 02:35 | Lower numbers here will result in more detail.
| | 02:39 | Once I release the mouse here, you'll
see that lower numbers are going to give
| | 02:42 | me a better curvature.
| | 02:43 | I can choose different ways of doing that.
| | 02:46 | There's a Spatial method, which is
really only testing the length of
| | 02:50 | an individual edge.
| | 02:51 | Larger numbers will give you longer edges.
| | 02:55 | The Curvature method is detecting the
angle of the curve on the surface, and we
| | 03:00 | can play around with the Angle value and
again lower values are going to give us
| | 03:04 | better approximation of curvature.
| | 03:06 | There is also a Distance factor here.
| | 03:10 | Once again, lower values are
going to increase the level of detail.
| | 03:14 | Then there is finally the default
method which is using all three of these and
| | 03:19 | set them to let's say 5, 5, and 5.
| | 03:22 | Now as you do this, you may notice
that some areas have higher detail than
| | 03:25 | others, and that's because in this
area here, I've got control vertices that
| | 03:31 | are closer together.
| | 03:33 | In areas where there are fewer control
vertices on the original source curves,
| | 03:37 | I'll get larger polygons in my tessellation.
| | 03:41 | If I needed to I could go in and refine
those curves and add more points there.
| | 03:45 | There is another way to tessellate.
| | 03:47 | Up here at the top you'll see
Regular and Parametric. Let's try Regular.
| | 03:52 | I will turn that on, and you will see
with the default U and V steps of two are
| | 03:57 | getting a very poor approximation.
| | 03:59 | If we use the regular method then
these U steps and V steps are going to need
| | 04:03 | to be increased quite a lot, and that's going
to produce a fairly uniformed tessellation.
| | 04:09 | The Parametric method can be
dangerous if you're not careful.
| | 04:12 | If I just clicked on Parametric right
now, there's a very good chance that I
| | 04:17 | would crash my machine.
| | 04:19 | The Parametric method is based upon the
number of CVs on the curve, and these U
| | 04:24 | and V steps need to be set
down to an extremely low value.
| | 04:28 | In fact, a value of 1 is really the best
value to start with and you need to set
| | 04:33 | those U and V steps of values down
before you'd click this Parametric button,
| | 04:38 | otherwise, you will most
certainly overload your computer.
| | 04:41 | I am going to set these U and V
steps of values back down to 1 and then
| | 04:47 | choose the Parametric method, and you can see
even with values of 1, it's still a fairly dense mesh.
| | 04:54 | I actually prefer the regular
method. That's my favorite option here.
| | 04:57 | So I will choose that, and then set these
up to create a more consistent level of
| | 05:02 | detail across the surface.
| | 05:05 | Now again, this is only for the
Viewport and the Renderer is a completely
| | 05:10 | separate consideration.
| | 05:11 | If I want this to be what I get in
the Renderer, I will need to do over and
| | 05:16 | choose the Render radio button and
then pick my Tessellation Method and plug
| | 05:21 | in the same numbers, and when I render that,
that will correspond exactly to what I had here.
| | 05:27 | You can see that I get a little bit of
splitting here and some issues with the tessellation.
| | 05:32 | That's pretty common.
| | 05:34 | You'll see that quite a lot, and you
will need to do a lot of test renders
| | 05:37 | to make sure that things look clean and you
don't get these splits in between surfaces.
| | 05:42 | Actually a lot of times the high
preset will be fine, and in this case that's
| | 05:47 | actually the optimal setting.
| | 05:49 | That's a very quick
introduction to NURBS modeling in 3ds Max.
| | 05:54 | You can spend a lot of time in this and
in fact, it's a very deep tool set and
| | 05:57 | it's got quite a lot of options.
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|
|
11. Modeling for Motion GraphicsSetting up the scene| 00:00 | This chapter is all about
modeling for motion graphics.
| | 00:04 | As you can see I've got
this lovely text logo here;
| | 00:06 | 3D text that's got a nice beveled edge on it.
| | 00:11 | In this chapter, we'll look at
creating text from scratch in 3ds Max.
| | 00:15 | We'll also look at how to import
art work from Adobe Illustrator.
| | 00:20 | To begin, I'll reset the program
and I'll set my units of measurement.
| | 00:26 | Now you might think that because it's
only motion graphics that we really don't
| | 00:29 | care about the size of objects, in
other words, we're not making architecture
| | 00:34 | here and all we care about is screen space.
| | 00:38 | However, in fact, because of the way
the tools work in 3ds Max, it is important
| | 00:43 | that we build things to the right
scale and that way we'll have more accuracy
| | 00:47 | and it'll just be easier to work with.
| | 00:49 | The first thing I'll do is go into the
Units Setup, Customize > Units Setup, and I'm
| | 00:54 | going to be working in US
Standard with my default units as inches.
| | 00:59 | Next, I'll go into the Grid and
Snaps dialog by right-clicking on any of
| | 01:05 | these magnet icons.
| | 01:07 | Go to the Home Grid and I'm going to
set this up for imperial units.
| | 01:11 | I'll set the Grid Spacing to align
every 12 inches, a major grid line every
| | 01:17 | 12 times 10, or 10 feet, and then the Perspective
View Grid Extent, let's set that to 50.
| | 01:28 | I've got my unit setup.
| | 01:31 | Now there's one other thing that I want
to do, before we begin, and that is we've got
| | 01:36 | a custom font for this.
| | 01:38 | You don't have to use the
custom font, but it is included.
| | 01:41 | If you're a premium subscriber, you
have access to the exercise files.
| | 01:45 | I've got those here on my desktop;
| | 01:47 | Exercise Files > Fonts, open that
up and you'll see Timepiece.ttf.
| | 01:53 | I'll just select it and
right-click and choose Install.
| | 01:58 | We've now set up our scene and we're
ready to begin creating text in 3ds Max.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating text| 00:00 | Creating text in 3ds Max is quite simple.
| | 00:03 | All I need to do is go to the Create
panel and go to the Shapes panel, and in the
| | 00:09 | Splines category you'll see text, and
I'll click on that and just click in the
| | 00:15 | front viewport to create the
text with default parameters.
| | 00:18 | When I've created it, I'll
right-click to exit the Text tool.
| | 00:23 | Now I'll go directly to the Modify
panel and change up those parameters.
| | 00:27 | First of all, I've got the
font, which is Arial by default.
| | 00:30 | I click on that, and I just want to scroll down.
I'm looking for Timepiece. There it is.
| | 00:38 | The Size, I'll set to about 5 feet,
press Enter, then I'll type in the text.
| | 00:46 | I'll hit Enter to start a new line.
| | 00:49 | I'll center the text.
| | 00:51 | I'll also play around
with the Kerning and Leading.
| | 00:54 | Kerning is the space between letters.
| | 00:56 | The Leading is a space between lines;
| | 00:58 | if I give it a negative leading,
I can move those closer together.
| | 01:02 | Notice, by the way, this is a cool
feature of 3ds Max, that when I click and drag
| | 01:06 | on those spinners, they're infinite.
| | 01:08 | You'll notice that my cursor is wrapping
around from the bottom to the top of the screen.
| | 01:13 | That's very useful.
| | 01:15 | Okay, so I've got some text now.
| | 01:17 | If I want to edit these individual
letters, I don't have that ability here.
| | 01:20 | I'll need to convert to Editable Spline
in order to do that, and just right-click
| | 01:26 | anywhere in the viewport and choose
Convert To > Convert to Editable Spline.
| | 01:32 | Once I've done that then I
can select individual letters.
| | 01:35 | I'll maximize that front view with
Alt+W, and you'll see I've got Spline
| | 01:40 | sub-object mode, and then I can click on
one of these and move it around to customize.
| | 01:46 | Some letters, of course, are
built out of more than one spline.
| | 01:49 | If I needed to move this P, for example,
I need to select both of those splines
| | 01:53 | and move them together.
| | 01:58 | That's text creation in 3ds Max
and as you see, it's quite simple.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Applying a Bevel modifier| 00:00 | We've got a spline object here for the text.
| | 00:03 | If we want this to render, it
will need to be made into a surface.
| | 00:07 | One way to do that is to simply extrude it.
| | 00:10 | I can select it and go to the Modify
panel and choose the Extrude modifier from
| | 00:14 | the pulldown list, and give it
some amount of the extrusion.
| | 00:19 | I will extrude that back by about 2 feet.
| | 00:22 | Well you'll see that this
is not terribly interesting.
| | 00:25 | We've got a precise 90 degree angle
here and there is no bevel on the edge
| | 00:30 | to catch the light, and for motion
graphics it's really important that we have that.
| | 00:35 | So the Extrude modifier
is not really good enough.
| | 00:38 | I'll go ahead and trash that by
clicking on the trashcan icon, and I'll add the
| | 00:43 | Bevel modifier instead. Here it is, Bevel.
| | 00:47 | Now when I do this, you'll
see that it's perfectly flat.
| | 00:50 | I will need to reduce this Level 1
Height to a negative value to extrude it
| | 00:55 | backwards into the scene.
| | 00:56 | I will give that a value of
let's say -24 inches or 2 feet.
| | 01:02 | I've applied the Bevel modifier, but
now it looks just the same as if we had
| | 01:06 | used the Extrude modifier.
| | 01:08 | In the next movie, we'll adjust the
Bevel parameters to make it more beautiful.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Choosing bevel parameters| 00:00 | With the Bevel modifier applied, I want
to go into the Bevel Values rollout here
| | 00:05 | and adjust some of these numerical values.
| | 00:08 | Most importantly, I've got the Outline values.
| | 00:11 | What this outline does is it makes the
original spline larger or smaller, and
| | 00:18 | you'll see this if I adjust the Start Outline.
| | 00:20 | Let's say I give that a negative value,
and you'll see it's causing the outline
| | 00:25 | to become larger or smaller.
| | 00:26 | Now be careful with this, of course, as
you can see that if I make this too large
| | 00:31 | or too small, then we'll
have issues with the text.
| | 00:34 | It will need to be a very
small value in this case.
| | 00:37 | Let's give it a value of -1 inch.
| | 00:41 | That's going to be cumulative
with the outline values below it.
| | 00:45 | I have got Level 1 Outline,
and I can increase that.
| | 00:48 | You can see that we're able to
get an interesting 3D effect there.
| | 00:54 | Well what I want here in
fact is a 45 degree angle here.
| | 00:59 | To achieve that, I will set the Height
to be equal to the Start Outline, set the
| | 01:05 | Height to -1 inch, and then the
Outline value here I'll make that +1 inch.
| | 01:13 | And with those values now, what I've
got is a start outline that's 1 inch
| | 01:17 | smaller than the original curve, and
this Level 1 Extrusion is 1 inch larger
| | 01:25 | than the one above it.
| | 01:26 | These Outline values are cumulative.
| | 01:29 | The Start outline of -1, plus a
Level 1 Outline of +1 takes me back to an
| | 01:36 | Outline value of 0 here.
| | 01:38 | Now I want to extrude this back further.
| | 01:41 | I want to extrude this
backward to give it some thickness.
| | 01:44 | To do that I'll need to enable Level 2
and then reduce this Height to a negative
| | 01:51 | value of, let's say, -24 inches.
| | 01:54 | If I want that to be a consistent thickness
throughout, then this Outline will need to be 0.
| | 02:00 | I don't want this to have any non-zero value.
| | 02:03 | Set that back to 0. That looks pretty good.
| | 02:06 | If I want to see a bevel on the back,
I will also need to enable Level 3.
| | 02:14 | And here, once again, I'll give it a
Height of -1 inch and an Outline of -1
| | 02:21 | inch, and now I've got a bevel on the back.
| | 02:25 | That's a quick introduction to
creating an angled bevel for a text object.
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| Controlling the level of detail| 00:00 | This object looks pretty good as it is.
| | 00:03 | However, if I wanted to deform it, I
would need to pay special attention to
| | 00:08 | its level of detail.
| | 00:09 | I'll select it and press the F4
key, so I can see the edged faces.
| | 00:14 | I don't need to see those selection brackets
right now, so I'll press the J key to hide those.
| | 00:19 | As you can see here on the front faces
here, there are no edges, and that means
| | 00:24 | that if I try to bend this or twist it
or do anything to it, it would not deform
| | 00:29 | very well, and I would have
some pretty serious issues.
| | 00:32 | I'd like to now enable an option so
that I can see the full information about
| | 00:38 | the level of detail.
| | 00:40 | For each object, there are Object
Properties and one of the Object Properties is
| | 00:45 | whether we want to see all
of the triangle edges or not.
| | 00:48 | There are two ways to get to
that Object Properties dialog:
| | 00:52 | one would be to go to Edit > Object
Properties, or you could select the object,
| | 00:58 | and right-click and in the quad
menu, just choose Object Properties.
| | 01:04 | Now, I've got the dialog open.
| | 01:06 | And the important parameter here is Edges Only.
| | 01:11 | When that's enabled, the triangle edges
of this polygon object will be hidden.
| | 01:17 | If I disable that option, and click OK,
now I'm able to see all of the triangles.
| | 01:23 | As you can see, some of
these are looking a bit strange.
| | 01:27 | This wouldn't work very well if I try
to deform it with a bend or whatever.
| | 01:33 | But I can control the behavior of the
tessellation of the bevel through this
| | 01:38 | Cap Type option here in the Bevel modifier.
| | 01:42 | If I choose Grid, then we're going to
get a much more uniform structure to the
| | 01:47 | triangulation or tessellation.
| | 01:50 | That's going to help a lot if
we want to deform the object.
| | 01:53 | We've got enough polygon
structure there that it can bend properly.
| | 01:58 | However, that's only the caps.
| | 02:00 | What about the rest here?
| | 02:02 | I've also got the number of
segments here, and I can increase that.
| | 02:08 | You'll see that, that's increasing the
number of polygons within each one of
| | 02:13 | these levels in the Bevel Values section.
| | 02:17 | Okay, so that's pretty good.
| | 02:19 | However, you'll notice that in the
straight areas here, I'm not really
| | 02:23 | getting any detail there.
| | 02:24 | I've got six polygons for
this entire surface here.
| | 02:28 | What I really want to do is increase
the number of polygon edges in these
| | 02:33 | straight line areas.
| | 02:35 | And that is actually controlled
through the Spline Interpolation parameters,
| | 02:40 | not the Bevel itself.
| | 02:41 | I'll need to go back down the stack to
the Editable Spline object, and I'll turn
| | 02:46 | on Show End Results that
we can see what we're doing.
| | 02:50 | This Interpolation section is quite important.
| | 02:52 | Let me open that up.
| | 02:54 | This lets me control the level
of detail of a Spline object.
| | 02:59 | You'll see that the default
values are 6 with Optimize enabled.
| | 03:04 | What Optimize does is, if there is a
straight line segment, then 3ds Max is
| | 03:10 | going to discard any detail
on the spline in that area.
| | 03:14 | If I disable Optimize, then what I will
get between two points on the original
| | 03:19 | Spline curve is the number of steps
that I determined here, and if I increase
| | 03:25 | that, we'll get greater detail.
| | 03:28 | You might think that that's a little
bit heavy in terms of a model, but if I
| | 03:31 | needed to bend this or deform it,
this is the level of detail I would need.
| | 03:35 | Finally, there's also an Adaptive option.
| | 03:38 | I don't recommend that in this case,
because what that's going to do is attempt
| | 03:43 | to add steps to the spline wherever
they are needed to maintain a smooth
| | 03:48 | curvature, and when Adaptive is
on, Optimize is always enabled.
| | 03:54 | I don't recommend the
Adaptive option in this case.
| | 03:58 | I'll just turn both Optimize and
Adaptive off, and then set the number of
| | 04:02 | Steps to, let's say 8.
| | 04:06 | That's a pretty good level of detail for
this object, and next, I will just play
| | 04:11 | around with deforming it in the next movie.
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| Deforming beveled objects| 00:00 | Now that we've set an appropriate level
of detail on this beveled text object,
| | 00:04 | we can apply any parametric
deformer to change its shape.
| | 00:08 | For example, I'll select it
and go to the Modify panel.
| | 00:11 | In the Modify list, I'll try a Ripple Deformer.
| | 00:15 | This would be pretty interesting, and
I'll increase this Amplitude, and you can
| | 00:20 | see we're getting this
sort of watery ripple effect.
| | 00:22 | So that I can see that a little bit better,
I'll turn off the Edged Faces with F4.
| | 00:28 | And although it's not perfect, it's
got a few little glitches here and there,
| | 00:32 | it's looking pretty good.
| | 00:35 | If I had not set the level of detail,
then it would look pretty terrible.
| | 00:38 | To illustrate that, I'll go back down
to the Bevel modifier, and I'll switch
| | 00:43 | the Cap Type to Morph, which is the default, and
immediately things start to get kind of ugly.
| | 00:50 | That's really not a desirable outcome,
and if I change this Ripple Amplitude,
| | 00:54 | I can make it worse.
| | 00:58 | It's really important that you have good
level of detail to your text before you
| | 01:03 | try to deform it in any way.
| | 01:05 | Go back to the Bevel, set that back to
Grid, and it's looking more or less the
| | 01:09 | way that I need it to.
| | 01:11 | That's just an illustration of the
importance of setting a proper level of
| | 01:15 | detail for deforming
objects such as a beveled text.
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| Exporting paths from Adobe Illustrator| 00:00 | Motion graphics artists commonly will
need to take an Adobe Illustrator document
| | 00:05 | and make it 3D and then animate it.
| | 00:08 | I want to show you just quickly how
that Illustrator document must be formatted
| | 00:12 | in order to load it into 3ds Max.
| | 00:15 | I'll make a new document, and I'll just
use a letter-size template, that's fine,
| | 00:22 | and create some text.
| | 00:24 | Drag this out, make that text
larger, make it, let's say 72 points.
| | 00:35 | To make this a little bit more
interesting, I'll put an ellipse around that text.
| | 00:39 | Go over here to the Rectangle tool,
and I'll choose Ellipse, drag that out.
| | 00:46 | And I don't need a fill
there, I just want a stroke.
| | 00:48 | I'll go over here and click on this
button to give me a Default Fill and
| | 00:54 | Stroke, and I don't need a fill, so I can click
the None button, and I just got a stroke there.
| | 01:00 | 3ds Max can only recognize the
paths in an Illustrator document.
| | 01:05 | It will not understand fills and
it will not understand text objects.
| | 01:09 | That means you'll need to
convert the text to paths.
| | 01:14 | Select that text object, I'm going to
the Type menu and choose Create Outlines.
| | 01:20 | And now, that's been converted from a
text object into pure Bezier curves.
| | 01:25 | Now I'm ready to save this.
| | 01:27 | I'll go to File > Save As.
| | 01:30 | For convenience sake, I'm going to
place the document into the current 3ds
| | 01:35 | Max import folder, because that's
where 3ds Max is going to look when I
| | 01:40 | import the AI file.
| | 01:42 | I'll go into my current project import, and
I will give it a name, I'll call it myLogo.
| | 01:50 | I need to save it as a .AI file.
| | 01:53 | When I click Save, Illustrator will
ask me, what version of AI file I want.
| | 01:59 | And this is very important, because
3ds Max cannot understand anything later
| | 02:03 | than a version 8 file.
| | 02:05 | I'll need to go up to the
Version, and choose Illustrator 8.
| | 02:11 | When I click OK, I'll get an additional
warning that says, You'll lose some features.
| | 02:15 | That's fine! We don't care.
| | 02:18 | Now the file has been saved out
properly, so that 3ds Max can open it.
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| Importing Illustrator paths| 00:01 | To bring an Illustrator document into
3ds Max, I want to use the Import function.
| | 00:06 | I'll go up to the Application
menu and choose Import > Import.
| | 00:14 | And you'll see it took me directly
to my current project, which is called
| | 00:17 | Exercise Files, and the import
folder, and there is the AI document.
| | 00:23 | I'll select that and click Open.
| | 00:25 | I get a dialog asking if I want to
merge into the current scene or replace the
| | 00:30 | current scene. Doesn't matter which I
choose now, because it's an empty scene.
| | 00:34 | And I'll click OK and I get an
additional dialog that asks whether I want to
| | 00:39 | bring this in as a single
object or multiple objects.
| | 00:44 | Again, it really doesn't matter which
in this case, so I'll just choose single
| | 00:46 | object, click OK and now I've got the
logo in 3ds Max, and it's placed on the X/Y
| | 00:55 | planes, so it's sitting flat on the ground.
| | 00:57 | You'll notice that it's very small,
and in fact, the Illustrator document had
| | 01:03 | a size of 8.5 x 11 inches, and that's the size
of the imported 3ds Max Bezier curves now.
| | 01:12 | If I wanted to put a Bevel
modifier on this, I would need to make the
| | 01:15 | object quite a lot larger.
| | 01:18 | I'll need to scale this up to make it
much, much larger than it was, and now I'm
| | 01:26 | ready to add a bevel.
| | 01:27 | Just to simplify things I'm just going
to add an Extrude modifier, so that we
| | 01:32 | can see the effect really quickly.
| | 01:35 | Extrude, and then give it an amount.
| | 01:39 | And you can see that conveniently, 3ds Max
has recognized that I had nested curves.
| | 01:46 | I had the text inside an ellipse and
that then has resulted in this interesting
| | 01:52 | reversed out text. That's pretty cool.
| | 01:56 | Of course, I would probably want to
adjust the level of detail on this too,
| | 02:00 | because it's looking a little bit blocky,
and once again, that would be done by
| | 02:03 | going into the Editable
Spline Interpolation settings.
| | 02:06 | I'll turn on the Show End Result, turn
off Optimize, and increase the number of
| | 02:11 | steps until it looks smooth.
| | 02:14 | It's not always perfect. You might get
some issues, so sometimes you might need
| | 02:20 | to play around with these in order to
get rid of those problems. You could also
| | 02:24 | go in and edit the Spline directly.
| | 02:27 | For example, select by
Spline and do things like--
| | 02:32 | I can make adjustments to
change the look of the logo.
| | 02:38 | And that concludes our chapter on
3D modeling for motion graphics.
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|
|
12. Materials BasicsOpening the Material Editor| 00:00 | Let's take a look at the basics
of the Material Editor in 3ds Max.
| | 00:05 | A material is a shader definition that has
to do with the surface properties of a model.
| | 00:11 | What's its color? Does it have a texture?
Is it shiny? Does it have a pattern or
| | 00:16 | an image applied to it?
| | 00:17 | Those are all properties of a material.
| | 00:19 | Here is what we'll have
by the end of this chapter.
| | 00:22 | It's a simple material that's got some
refractions here to this transparent logo.
| | 00:29 | Here is the scene. I simply got a
bevel text object and a backdrop.
| | 00:34 | I'll begin by opening up the Material Editor.
| | 00:37 | I can do that in a couple different
ways, either by clicking on this button on
| | 00:41 | the main toolbar or by
pressing the M key on the keyboard.
| | 00:47 | The default type of material editor
is called the Slate Material Editor.
| | 00:51 | To begin with materials, I can switch to
the Compact Material Editor by going up
| | 00:56 | to this menu in the Material Editor
and choosing Modes > Compact Material
| | 01:00 | Editor, and now I've got the Compact
interface, and this will just be simpler and
| | 01:05 | easier to work with.
| | 01:07 | The main area up here is
devoted to so-called sample slots.
| | 01:11 | A sample slot is a staging area
where you can create, preview, and edit
| | 01:16 | materials, whether or not they're
assigned to objects in the scene.
| | 01:20 | A sample slot is not
necessarily applied to an object.
| | 01:24 | There's no direct relationship between the two.
| | 01:26 | I can have a material that's present in the
scene and not in a sample slot, or vice versa.
| | 01:32 | I'll select one of these sample slots
here and I just like to show to you a few
| | 01:36 | of these icons on the right-hand
side of the Compact Material Editor.
| | 01:40 | For example, I can choose to
display a background or I can turn the
| | 01:44 | backlighting on or off.
| | 01:46 | I can also choose a
different object for this sample.
| | 01:50 | The default is a sphere, but I
can also use a cylinder or cube.
| | 01:55 | Additionally, I can middle-mouse click
in the sample slot and rotate the object.
| | 02:01 | I'll give this a name.
| | 02:02 | I'll call it logoMaterial.
| | 02:06 | I do like to put the word
material in the name of the material.
| | 02:10 | That way I'll be able to tell whether I'm
working with a top level material or a subordinate map.
| | 02:18 | A map is a texture or pattern that's
applied onto some property or parameter of
| | 02:22 | a material such as its color.
| | 02:25 | Just so that I know that I'm working
with the material, I'll put the word
| | 02:27 | material in the name.
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| Navigating the Compact Material Editor| 00:00 | In the Material Editor main panel,
you'll see there are lots of rollouts such as
| | 00:04 | Shader Basic Parameters or Maps.
| | 00:07 | I can open and close these at will in
order to see different aspects of the material.
| | 00:12 | Before I start editing the material,
I'd like to assign it to an object.
| | 00:16 | There are a couple ways to do that.
| | 00:17 | One would be to simply drag the sample
slot onto an object and release the mouse.
| | 00:23 | Now I've assigned that
logoMaterial onto that object.
| | 00:27 | I could also use a button to do that.
| | 00:29 | Let's make another material here and
I'll call this one backdropMaterial and
| | 00:37 | I can select the backdrop object
in the viewport, and then with the
| | 00:41 | backdropMaterial selected, I can click a
button that says Assign Material to Selection.
| | 00:48 | Now that material has been
assigned to the backdrop.
| | 00:51 | You'll notice that a material that is
present in the scene will have little
| | 00:57 | brackets around the sample slot.
| | 00:59 | An open bracket indicates that the
material exists in the scene, but the
| | 01:04 | object is not selected.
| | 01:07 | A filled in bracket indicates that
the material is present in the scene and
| | 01:11 | the object is selected.
| | 01:13 | Let's play around with some basic
material parameters such as color.
| | 01:16 | I'll go back to that logoMaterial
sample slot, and to change the color, I can go
| | 01:21 | into this Diffuse color swatch here.
| | 01:24 | I'll just click on that.
| | 01:26 | The diffuse color is the
main color of a material.
| | 01:30 | It's the color of an object
where it's directly illuminated.
| | 01:33 | As you can see, as I adjust the
controls in this color selector, the colors are
| | 01:40 | updating in the viewport in real-time.
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| Working with the Sample Slots and Scene Materials| 00:00 | I like to show you how you can check to
see what materials are actually in the scene.
| | 00:06 | It's possible that you might have
filled up all of the Sample Slots.
| | 00:10 | There are only 24 Sample Slots
available in the Material Editor, and after a
| | 00:15 | while these will all fill up, and
then you'll need to recycle these and
| | 00:19 | reuse them, and you don't want to
erase the work that you've done that's
| | 00:23 | already in the scene.
| | 00:25 | I'll select an empty Sample Slot and
go over here and click on the button
| | 00:28 | that says Get Material.
| | 00:31 | When I click that I get a new window
launching called the Material/Map Browser
| | 00:36 | and this allows me to do quite a lot.
| | 00:38 | In fact, I can create a new
material by clicking on one of these.
| | 00:43 | I can also scroll down and near the
bottom of that dialog, I'll see two sections.
| | 00:50 | One that says Scene Materials
and another that says Sample Slots.
| | 00:55 | And in fact, there's another scrollbar here,
I've actually got nested rollouts here.
| | 01:01 | In other words, I've got a big window
that I can scroll and then within this
| | 01:05 | rollout, I've got another scrollbar.
| | 01:08 | Okay, so this is telling me that
currently in my scene I have two materials: a
| | 01:12 | backdrop and a logo.
| | 01:15 | If I wanted to load that Scene Material in,
I could just double-click on one of these.
| | 01:20 | And now in fact, I've loaded that
material into a new Sample Slot.
| | 01:25 | And you notice now that this one is the
one that's currently hot, or the one that
| | 01:30 | is currently in the scene, and this one
over here, although it's called the same
| | 01:34 | name, is not in the scene.
| | 01:38 | I can go over here and change that color
to something else, and you can see that
| | 01:42 | it didn't change the look of
the object in the viewport.
| | 01:45 | This is a helpful trick that you can use.
| | 01:48 | If you have two materials of the same
name, then you can globally replace all of
| | 01:54 | the materials of that name in your scene.
| | 01:56 | For example, I can go over here and
click on this version of logoMaterial and
| | 02:02 | then click on the button that says, Put
Material to Scene, and now that's the one that's hot.
| | 02:09 | If I want to switch it back I can over here,
and again, click Put Material to Scene.
| | 02:14 | If you've filled up all the sample
slots, don't worry, because you can always
| | 02:19 | reuse the Sample Slots.
| | 02:21 | For example, I can click here at Get
Material and go back up to the top to
| | 02:27 | create a new material in that Sample
Slot, and these are material types here,
| | 02:32 | I'm just going to choose Standard,
that's the one that you'll use most of the
| | 02:35 | time. I'll double-click on that and now
I've wiped out that Sample Slot and I've
| | 02:41 | got a brand new material in there,
but you'll see that I did not change the
| | 02:47 | status of the Scene Material.
| | 02:50 | If I run out of Sample Slots, I can
just recycle them and that will not affect
| | 02:54 | the Scene Materials.
| | 02:55 | I like to show you one more thing here
which is very convenient for selecting
| | 03:00 | materials from the scene, and
that's simply the Eyedropper.
| | 03:05 | Pick material from object, select the
eyedropper and then click on an object,
| | 03:10 | and now that material has been
loaded into the current Sample Slot.
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| Choosing material and shader types| 00:00 | 3ds Max offers many different types of
materials. So far we've only seen the
| | 00:05 | Standard Material, but there are others.
| | 00:08 | I can load a new material into a
Sample Slot and choose a different Material
| | 00:13 | Type, or I can convert an existing
sample to a different Material Type.
| | 00:18 | For example, if I select this
backdropMaterial, you'll see there's a button here
| | 00:22 | that says Standard, that's a read
out of the current Material Type.
| | 00:26 | If I click on that I'll get the
Material/Map Browser and these are all the
| | 00:31 | different types of materials.
| | 00:32 | The two that I use most often
are Standard and Architectural.
| | 00:37 | I'll double-click on Architectural,
and what that does is convert the
| | 00:42 | existing material to a new Material
Type, and you'll see now it's reading
| | 00:46 | Architectural here.
| | 00:47 | Architectural materials are simpler to
use. It's a stripped-down interface that
| | 00:52 | should save you some time.
| | 00:54 | The way that you'd use an Architectural
material, is you'd go up to the Templates
| | 00:58 | here and choose one of these templates.
| | 01:00 | You'll need to do that first.
| | 01:02 | For example, I can choose a Stone
template, and that will just change all these
| | 01:07 | attributes here, all these parameters,
so that we'll get a stone look, or I can
| | 01:12 | switch it up to, let's say, Masonry, or Glass.
| | 01:18 | We won't see the glass here unless we turn
on the background, that's a glass material.
| | 01:26 | I will go back down to the Templates
and choose, let's say, Ceramic, and you can
| | 01:30 | see that that's got a little bit of a
reflection on there with some glazed look.
| | 01:36 | Then I can change up these values here
like Shininess, and so on, to affect the look.
| | 01:42 | I can switch it back to a standard
material by clicking here again and
| | 01:47 | double-click on Standard, and you'll
notice that when I do that it wipes out a
| | 01:52 | lot of the information, so I don't
have any shininess here any longer.
| | 01:55 | The next thing let's look at, the Shader
Type. The Material Type in this case is
| | 02:00 | Standard, and within the Standard
Material, I've got a lot of different Shaders;
| | 02:05 | these are shading algorithms.
| | 02:08 | And each one of these has
a slightly different look.
| | 02:10 | They are usually named after their inventors.
| | 02:13 | For example, I've got Oren-Nayar-
Blinn, and that's useful for a rough
| | 02:19 | surface like terracotta.
| | 02:20 | I can change the diffused color, so
you can see that that has a kind of
| | 02:26 | unfinished ceramic look to it.
| | 02:28 | Each one of these shader algorithms
has a slightly different look and has
| | 02:33 | different attributes or parameters to it.
| | 02:36 | Most of the time you'll be using the
Blinn Shader Type, because that's the
| | 02:39 | most general purpose.
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| Adjusting specular parameters| 00:00 | One of the most fundamental properties
of a material is its specular highlights.
| | 00:06 | Specular highlights are the
hotspots on a material, the shiny parts.
| | 00:11 | I'll go ahead and select the
logoMaterial here and it'll be easier to see the
| | 00:15 | specular highlights if I go back
to the sphere as my sample object.
| | 00:22 | Down near the bottom of the Blinn Basic
Parameters rollout, you'll see Specular
| | 00:26 | Highlights, and I can increase the
Specular Level, and now you'll see I've got a
| | 00:30 | nice big, broad highlight there.
| | 00:33 | If I increase the Glossiness, it'll
make that highlight smaller and it's
| | 00:37 | actually counterintuitive for a lot of
people. As you polish a surface and make
| | 00:42 | it more smooth, the highlight
will actually become smaller.
| | 00:47 | A high-glossiness will
result in very small highlight.
| | 00:51 | If I wanted a metal look to this I
might have a very high specular level.
| | 00:56 | I might turn this up really high.
| | 00:58 | You can actually go up to 999
and then high-glossiness as well.
| | 01:05 | In the case of this motion graphic logo,
I might want to cheat this a little bit
| | 01:09 | and not have so high of a specular level.
| | 01:13 | Maybe I'll bring that back down to
somewhere around a hundred, and then give it a
| | 01:18 | little bit less glossiness.
| | 01:20 | That'll give me some very strong
highlights which will look good when we finally
| | 01:25 | have lighting in the scene.
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| Previewing renders with ActiveShade| 00:00 | Although the 3ds Max viewports are quite
accurate, they're not quite what you'll
| | 00:05 | see when you do a full rendering.
| | 00:08 | Let's do a test here. I'll
highlight the Perspective view, go up to the
| | 00:12 | main toolbar, and on the extreme
right-hand corner I'll click the teapot
| | 00:15 | that says Render Production.
| | 00:18 | And this is a full render. This is what
I'll actually get when I output my animation.
| | 00:23 | And you'll see, it's close, but it's
not quite the same as the viewport.
| | 00:28 | We can get a better approximation of
what the final renderer will look like in
| | 00:33 | the viewport by using something
called ActiveShade, and this an interactive
| | 00:39 | production renderer.
| | 00:40 | In other words, I can make changes
to the material and the viewport will
| | 00:44 | render in real-time and show us a very
good approximation of what it will look
| | 00:49 | like in a final rendering.
| | 00:51 | To activate ActiveShade, click on the name
of the viewport, in this case Perspective.
| | 00:57 | Then go to Extended Viewports > ActiveShade.
| | 01:02 | It will take a second to think about
it, but now I've got a fairly accurate
| | 01:07 | representation of what this will look
like when it renders, and I can go back to
| | 01:10 | my material, or lighting, and I can make
changes and it will update right away.
| | 01:16 | Just takes a moment to think
about it, like a second or so.
| | 01:20 | This is very useful because I don't
have to keep clicking the render button
| | 01:24 | every time, and I can get a pretty good
preview of what my final rendering will look like.
| | 01:30 | The ActiveShade window will not update if I,
for example, move objects in the scene.
| | 01:35 | For example, if I go over here and
get in closer on this, and move the logo
| | 01:40 | over, ActiveShade doesn't update.
| | 01:43 | If I needed it to update, I
would have to reinitialize.
| | 01:47 | I'll go over here and right-click in the
viewport and choose Initialize, and now
| | 01:53 | you'll see it has responded to the
fact that I've moved the logo over.
| | 01:57 | Okay, I'll just move it back, right-
click and choose Initialize once again.
| | 02:03 | If I'm finished with the ActiveShade
window, then I can simply right-click here
| | 02:07 | and choose Close, and now I'm back
to the standard viewport rendering.
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| Adjusting opacity and refraction| 00:00 | Another one of the most basic
parameters in a material is its opacity.
| | 00:05 | I've got my logoMaterial active
here and you will see Opacity here.
| | 00:11 | I can bring that down to let's say 50%,
and now you can see I can actually
| | 00:15 | see through my object.
| | 00:17 | Let's do an ActiveShade rendering of
that so we can get a little bit better
| | 00:20 | understanding of what this
is really going to look like.
| | 00:26 | As you can see, it's not a
very convincing transparency.
| | 00:29 | We're not seeing the bending of
light as it moves through the object.
| | 00:34 | A transparent object actually bends light.
| | 00:37 | That's called refraction.
| | 00:39 | To get that effect, I can't do
it by just adjusting the opacity.
| | 00:43 | Set that down to 10.
| | 00:44 | You see, it's just basically making it
see-through and it kind of a 2D fashion.
| | 00:49 | I'll set the opacity back up to 100%,
and if I want refractions I'll need to go
| | 00:55 | into the Maps rollout down
here. I'll open that up.
| | 01:00 | In the Maps rollout, you'll see a list
of all of the Material parameters that
| | 01:04 | could potentially be mapped.
| | 01:06 | In other words, that could be varied
or modulated by some other factor like,
| | 01:11 | for example, an image.
| | 01:13 | In this case, I'm concerned with
the Refraction channel, here it is.
| | 01:18 | All of these things that say None here
are actually buttons, and if I click on
| | 01:23 | the button that says None, I'll get
the Material/Map Browser up again.
| | 01:27 | What I'm looking for here
is a map called Raytrace.
| | 01:31 | It is under Maps > Raytrace,
and I'll double-click on that.
| | 01:38 | It takes a moment to think about it,
but now you can see that I'm getting a
| | 01:42 | simulated refraction in my viewport.
| | 01:45 | There are some parameters here in the
Material Editor, but I don't really need
| | 01:49 | to adjust any of those.
| | 01:50 | In fact, it's doing
everything sort of automatically.
| | 01:53 | It's automatically applying a refraction here.
| | 01:56 | However, if I try to get back to my
main Material parameters, you'll see that I
| | 02:00 | can't see them here.
| | 02:02 | The reason is now we've drilled down
inside of the map. These are the map parameters.
| | 02:09 | I need to get back up to the top level
of the material, and one way for me to do
| | 02:14 | that is to click this button
here that says Go to Parent.
| | 02:18 | That will take me up one level, and now
I'm back up at the Material parameters.
| | 02:24 | If I want the color to show through
here I can reduce the Refraction amount.
| | 02:29 | Let's say I knock that down to 50%.
| | 02:33 | And now you see I'm
getting a tinted glass effect.
| | 02:36 | If the refraction is not at 100% then
the diffuse color will blend, and you can
| | 02:43 | see I've got a diffuse color of orange here.
| | 02:46 | The opacity is usually left at 100%
when you're using a Refraction map.
| | 02:51 | That was a very basic introduction to
using the Material Editor in 3ds Max and
| | 02:56 | in the next chapter we'll look at using maps.
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|
|
13. Mapping TexturesApplying procedural maps| 00:00 | This chapter will be an introduction
to using maps within a material.
| | 00:05 | So far we've only applied flat
colors to the Diffuse Channel.
| | 00:10 | Let's now use a map to vary a color.
| | 00:13 | I'll go over to the backdropMaterial
and I want to add something into
| | 00:17 | this Diffuse Color slot.
| | 00:19 | I could do that in a couple of ways.
| | 00:21 | I could open up the Maps rollout and
you'll see Diffuse Color here, and I can
| | 00:25 | click on this big None button.
| | 00:27 | However, I can also do that from up
here, because there's an identical button
| | 00:33 | here, that's just a shortcut.
| | 00:34 | It's a little bit easier for me to get to.
| | 00:37 | If I click on that I get the
Material/Map Browser window open.
| | 00:41 | These are all the possible maps that I
could apply to this Diffuse Color Channel.
| | 00:46 | All of these, with the exception of
Bitmap, are so-called procedural maps.
| | 00:50 | A Bitmap is a file on disk, like a TIFF
file or JPEG file, the rest of these are
| | 00:57 | all generated internally by 3ds Max.
| | 01:00 | So for example, I could choose the
Cellular procedural map, and I will
| | 01:04 | double-click on that.
| | 01:06 | Now you see I've got a pattern here.
| | 01:07 | Now I don't see it on the actual
object yet, even though this material is
| | 01:14 | assigned to the object.
| | 01:15 | In order to see the map on the surface
of the object in the viewport, I have to
| | 01:20 | click this button here that says, Show
Shaded Material in Viewport, and if I do
| | 01:26 | this here, I'm doing it at
the level of the Cellular map.
| | 01:29 | I will click it, and now you will
I've got a pattern in the viewport.
| | 01:34 | Tell you what, let's look at this
in ActiveShade so we can see it a little
| | 01:37 | bit more precisely.
| | 01:38 | I'll choose Perspective >
Extended Viewports > ActiveShade.
| | 01:43 | It takes a little bit longer to think
about it, but now you'll see I've got a
| | 01:47 | pretty good representation here.
| | 01:49 | You'll notice that the
scale of the dots is different.
| | 01:53 | What you see in the viewport
renderer, by default, is not necessarily an
| | 01:57 | accurate representation.
| | 01:59 | The actual renderer, or the
ActiveShade renderer, will show you what you're
| | 02:02 | really going to get.
| | 02:04 | Each procedural map has different parameters.
| | 02:07 | For this Cellular map I can,
for example, change the Size.
| | 02:11 | Maybe I will make that size of 10, and
the ActiveShade takes a moment to think
| | 02:16 | about it and now it updates.
| | 02:17 | You can have a lot of fun with
procedural maps, and they're very useful, because
| | 02:22 | they're resolution independent.
| | 02:23 | They are not dependent upon a pixel-
based image and that means that you can zoom
| | 02:29 | in very close to a procedural map and it
won't break up into a mosaic of pixels.
| | 02:34 | So let's try another procedural map.
| | 02:35 | You will see up here the Diffuse
Color has got a Cellular map in it.
| | 02:39 | If I click on this button that says
Cellular, I'll get the Material/Map Browser
| | 02:43 | up again, and I can
choose a different type of map.
| | 02:46 | For example, Noise.
| | 02:49 | That's actually the one
that I use most commonly.
| | 02:52 | I'll double-click that, and I get a
dialog asking me, do I want to discard the
| | 02:56 | old map, or do I want to put this new
one as a sub-map inside the current map?
| | 03:02 | Well usually you don't want to make a sub-map.
| | 03:05 | You don't want have nested maps
unless you specifically choose that.
| | 03:09 | In this case I'll choose Discard and
click OK, and now the Noise map is showing
| | 03:15 | up on the backdrop,
instead of this Cellular map.
| | 03:19 | Again, I can play around
with parameters such as Size.
| | 03:21 | Maybe I will set this down to a
value of maybe 15, and there are lots of
| | 03:25 | other fun things I can do, like I can
change these Thresholds to increase the contrast.
| | 03:30 | Maybe I will set the High Threshold to 0.5
and the Low Threshold to .45, and now
| | 03:39 | I've got a much more contrasty look.
| | 03:41 | I can play around with
Fractal Noise and so on. Cool!
| | 03:46 | I could add more complexity to this if
I wanted to, because you can see that
| | 03:49 | within the procedural map, I've got
color swatches, and in fact, each one of
| | 03:53 | these color swatches has a Map channel too.
| | 03:57 | In fact, I could actually add another
map inside this existing map and that's
| | 04:01 | what's meant by a sub-map.
| | 04:03 | In this case, I am just going to leave
well enough alone, and that's a really
| | 04:06 | basic introduction to
procedural maps in the Material Editor.
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| Navigating shader trees| 00:00 | In the Compact Material Editor we can only see
the parameters for one shading node at a time.
| | 00:07 | In other words, we can see the
parameters for a map, but we can't see the
| | 00:10 | Material parameters at the same time.
| | 00:13 | We can go up one level out of this map
and go up to the top level by clicking
| | 00:18 | on Go to Parent here.
| | 00:20 | Now I'm back up at the material level.
| | 00:22 | There is another way that I can do this,
which is very useful, especially if
| | 00:26 | you've got a complex network of
shading nodes, that's known as a shader tree.
| | 00:31 | We can navigate through the shading
network by clicking on a button over here,
| | 00:35 | Material/Map Navigator, open that up.
| | 00:43 | You can see up here that backdropMaterial
is highlighted, and that indicates that
| | 00:47 | we're currently viewing the
parameters of the Material node.
| | 00:51 | If I click here, now I can view the
parameters for that map and that's a really
| | 00:59 | convenient way of both visualizing
the structure of your material, and also
| | 01:04 | navigating through the material
and accessing its various parameters.
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| Managing source image files| 00:00 | Procedural maps are very useful in
some cases, because you can just quickly
| | 00:03 | place a pattern onto a surface and that
pattern is resolution independent. You
| | 00:08 | can get up really close to it
and it won't break up into pixels.
| | 00:12 | However, you can't use a procedural map to,
| | 00:14 | for example, place a photograph onto a surface.
| | 00:18 | For that you need a bitmap or an image file.
| | 00:20 | If you're working with image files then
you have got to make sure that the links
| | 00:24 | between the scene and the
image files are preserved.
| | 00:29 | You need to follow this procedure in order
to make sure that that will actually work.
| | 00:34 | First of all, you will need to go in
the Customize menu and in the Preferences
| | 00:39 | choose the Files tab, and make sure
that the Convert local file paths to
| | 00:43 | Relative is enabled.
| | 00:45 | That means that when you create a link
to a file, that link will be recorded
| | 00:50 | relative to the current project folder.
| | 00:54 | It will not be recorded relative to
a volume name, or a drive letter, or
| | 00:59 | a specific computer.
| | 01:01 | This is important, because Relative
path means that you can take your project
| | 01:05 | and move it to a different machine or
to a different folder, and all the links
| | 01:09 | that are internal to that
project structure will be preserved.
| | 01:13 | This switches off by default.
| | 01:15 | It's very important that it be enabled.
| | 01:18 | Second, you have to
actually have a project folder.
| | 01:22 | We did this at the beginning of the course.
| | 01:24 | You can either create a new
project folder or set to an existing one.
| | 01:29 | Since we have the exercise files here,
then we just want to make sure that we're
| | 01:33 | pointing at the Exercise Files folder.
| | 01:36 | If you are a premium subscriber
you've got the exercise files.
| | 01:40 | If you are not a premium subscriber, then
you've already made your own project folder.
| | 01:44 | Up here on the Caption bar is a button
that allows us to point to an existing
| | 01:49 | project folder or make a new one, and
if I click on that, it will take me to the
| | 01:55 | current project folder, and right
now you'll see that Exercise Files is
| | 01:59 | highlighted, and that's exactly what I want.
| | 02:02 | I don't want to select anything inside
there, because if I do, I'll be creating
| | 02:06 | a nested project folder inside the current one.
| | 02:09 | I just want to make sure
that that is currently selected.
| | 02:13 | Okay, so that's step two.
| | 02:14 | I have now got a project defined.
| | 02:17 | Step three is I need to actually
place the image files in the appropriate
| | 02:22 | location within the project.
| | 02:25 | Let me minimize 3ds Max for a
moment and go out to the Desktop.
| | 02:29 | Here's the Exercise Files folder.
| | 02:31 | We need to place our image files in a
very specific location and we need to do
| | 02:36 | this before we build the material.
| | 02:39 | And that location is sceneassets >
images, and you will see I have got some
| | 02:44 | files in there now.
| | 02:45 | Once again, you will need to place the
images into this special folder before
| | 02:51 | you create the material,
and they are in there now.
| | 02:54 | Okay, I will go back to 3ds Max, I will
open up the Material Editor with the M key.
| | 03:00 | I want to make a duplicate
of this backdrop material.
| | 03:03 | All I need to do to do that is just drag
it onto another Sample Slot, and now I've
| | 03:08 | got another one with the
same name, backdropMaterial.
| | 03:11 | I want to place a bitmap into the Diffuse slot.
| | 03:15 | I can click on this button here and
that will take me to the Map parameters.
| | 03:19 | Currently this is a Noise map,
but instead, I want a bitmap.
| | 03:24 | Click on that button that says
Noise, and you will see Bitmap here.
| | 03:28 | Double-click on that and I get a dialog
box that lets me browse for a bitmap image.
| | 03:34 | And notice, very importantly, it has
taken me to that precise location, my
| | 03:39 | current project, sceneassets > images,
and my files need to already be here.
| | 03:45 | If they are not here now I need to
stop what I'm doing, bomb out of this and
| | 03:50 | copy the files into the correct location.
| | 03:52 | The very worst thing you can do here
at this point is start browsing to some
| | 03:56 | other location on your hard drive or
on the network, and that's an almost
| | 04:00 | guaranteed situation where you are
going to have broken links to your textures,
| | 04:05 | and no one wants that.
| | 04:06 | You don't want to open up a scene
and get an error message that says,
| | 04:09 | your texture files are not being found.
| | 04:12 | Okay so, I will click on this one,
galactic_2K.png, and then click Open, and
| | 04:18 | now I have got that bitmap applied to
the Diffuse Channel of this material.
| | 04:22 | And to assign it, I can drag and drop
it, but because it's got the same name
| | 04:27 | as the existing material, in fact, I can just
click the button that says, Put Material to Scene.
| | 04:32 | Additionally, I will need to turn on
Show Map in Viewport here or Show Shaded
| | 04:36 | Material in Viewport and now it's refreshed.
| | 04:39 | That is the all-important workflow for
managing source images or texture maps.
| | 04:45 | You have to follow this religiously
and if you misstep at any stage along
| | 04:49 | that process there is a very high probability
that you'll get broken links to your textures.
| | 04:54 | And again, of course
that's not a desirable outcome.
| | 04:57 | As long as you follow this
procedure, then you will probably be fine.
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| Tracking scene assets| 00:00 | If you follow the process shown in the
last movie, then you shouldn't have any
| | 00:04 | problems with missing files.
| | 00:07 | However, if anything went wrong in
that process, or if you didn't observe that
| | 00:11 | process, then there's a very good
chance that you're going to have problems.
| | 00:15 | What I've done here is I've made a
scene in which the links are intentionally
| | 00:20 | broken, and I want to show
you how you can fix the links.
| | 00:23 | I'll go over here and open the scene,
it's called 04_trackingSceneAssets.max.
| | 00:29 | As soon as I open it I get a dialog
that says, Missing External Files.
| | 00:35 | That galactic_2K.png that we added
in the last movie is not being found.
| | 00:39 | Again, because I deliberately
moved it out of its proper location to
| | 00:43 | demonstrate the problem.
| | 00:45 | In this dialog you've got two
buttons at the bottom, Browse and Continue.
| | 00:51 | The very worst thing you could
do here would be to click Browse.
| | 00:54 | Please do not click Browse, because
what will happen if you do that is you will
| | 00:58 | get another dialog that's called the
Missing External Files dialog, and within
| | 01:03 | that dialog, you can choose
a path to your image files.
| | 01:07 | But what that's going to do, in fact, is
to add a new entry into the user paths
| | 01:13 | that would customize the
current installation of 3ds Max.
| | 01:17 | That's not what you want.
| | 01:19 | Again, that's the worst
possible thing you could do.
| | 01:21 | That's a Band-Aid short-term solution
and it won't change the recorded path to
| | 01:26 | the file, it will just tell 3ds Max to
look in a new and different location,
| | 01:31 | other than the standard sceneassets >
images, where things are supposed to be.
| | 01:36 | I know this is all very confusing.
| | 01:38 | I'm sorry that there are so
much problems around this.
| | 01:41 | There is not much we can do about
it, except to observe those proper
| | 01:45 | procedures from the beginning.
| | 01:47 | And if you run into this kind of
trouble, you can then use the Asset Tracker
| | 01:52 | to relocate the paths.
| | 01:55 | Instead of clicking Browse,
I need to click Continue.
| | 01:58 | Then I can go into another dialog here
called the Asset Tracking dialog, and
| | 02:04 | that's found under References >
Asset Tracking, click on that.
| | 02:10 | What I see here is a list of all the
maps that this scene is referencing, and
| | 02:15 | you'll see here it says, galactic_2K
is supposed to be in sceneassets\images,
| | 02:20 | but the file is missing.
| | 02:22 | So this path is correct,
but the file is not there.
| | 02:27 | Okay, I am going to go ahead and
place the file in there. Here it is,
| | 02:31 | galactic_2K, it's actually on my Desktop.
| | 02:34 | I am going to go ahead and put it in here.
| | 02:35 | I will go back to 3ds Max, and if I go
back into that Asset Tracking, I just
| | 02:40 | want to point out to you, References > Asset
Tracking, that it's still saying it's missing.
| | 02:45 | In order for it to be found, I'm
actually going to have to reset the program.
| | 02:49 | I need to go up here to Application menu >
Reset, and then reopen the file, and
| | 03:00 | now it's being found, because the
file is actually in that location.
| | 03:04 | Another situation that might happen is
if you've linked to a file that's not in
| | 03:09 | the sceneassets folder.
| | 03:10 | Let me show you that.
| | 03:12 | I will go back to the Material Editor,
and I will make another duplicate material
| | 03:16 | of that backdrop, and I will go into
the map here, the Diffuse Map, and I will
| | 03:21 | point it to a different location.
| | 03:23 | You'll see here it says, Bitmap, click
on that, and I'm actually going to do
| | 03:29 | what I told you not to do before,
which is I'm going to Browse.
| | 03:34 | I'm actually going to go into the Desktop.
| | 03:37 | You can see I have got some files here.
| | 03:40 | Okay, if I had linked to a file on my
Desktop instead of in that proper location,
| | 03:46 | now you'll see here it's got a path
that's got a couple of dots, and that
| | 03:50 | means go up one level. All right,
| | 03:53 | so I will assign this, and replace that
material, and you can see it's showing up
| | 03:57 | there and that's fine.
| | 04:00 | Now I am going to save this out,
and call this trackingSceneAssets2.
| | 04:06 | I will Reset the program and I am
going to move that file out of where Max
| | 04:14 | thinks it is, and into the correct location.
| | 04:17 | Now that's in the correct location, I
will go back into 3ds Max, I will go back
| | 04:22 | to opening that, and once again, I
get the Missing External Files dialog.
| | 04:27 | Once again, I'll click Continue, not
Browse, and once again, I will go back
| | 04:32 | into References > Asset Tracking, and
you can see here we've got a path, really
| | 04:39 | it's a relative path, but it's taking us up
one level from our current project folder.
| | 04:44 | If the path does not say sceneassets\
images, then you can just type it in.
| | 04:49 | I can select that and go up to Paths >
Set Path, or I could just right-click and
| | 04:57 | choose Set Path, and I want to
type it in here, sceneassets\images.
| | 05:06 | I could also browse for it, but since I
know what that path needs to be, I will
| | 05:11 | just type it in directly.
| | 05:12 | And I'll click OK and now it's been re-
pathed and since the file is there, it's
| | 05:17 | now being found, and now it's
finally applied onto that surface.
| | 05:22 | Again, my apologies that this is so
complicated, as long as you follow the
| | 05:25 | proper procedures from the beginning,
then you won't need to worry about asset
| | 05:29 | tracking in the first place.
| | 05:30 | But it does happen to the best of us.
| | 05:32 | We all make mistakes. Even experts have
problems with file pathing in 3ds Max.
| | 05:37 | If you have the issue then all you
need to do is make sure that you've placed
| | 05:41 | all of your maps into sceneassets\images.
| | 05:44 | Then go into the Asset Tracking
dialog and set the path appropriately.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Projecting UVW mapping| 00:00 | To place a map onto a surface, you can
do it by adjusting the Map parameters or
| | 00:05 | by adding a modifier called UVW Map.
| | 00:09 | It all depends upon whether you want
the changes to affect all of the objects
| | 00:13 | that have that map, or if you want the
changes to be on a per-object basis.
| | 00:17 | If you want to affect all the objects
that have that map applied you would do it
| | 00:21 | through the Material Editor.
| | 00:23 | Open up the Material Editor, I'll select
that material, and I'll drill down into
| | 00:28 | its Diffuse Map in this case.
| | 00:30 | And you'll see there are parameters here
in the Coordinates rollout, such as Tiling.
| | 00:34 | I can set those Tiling values to 4 and 4.
| | 00:38 | That's causing the map to repeat four times
across the surface, horizontally and vertically.
| | 00:43 | I could use these Offset values
here to place the map, although that's
| | 00:47 | not terribly intuitive.
| | 00:51 | I'm going to set these Tiling values
back to 1 and 1 in both U and V. Let's look
| | 00:57 | at placing a map on a per-object basis.
| | 01:01 | I'll select my backdrop
object and go to the Modify panel.
| | 01:04 | First, I'd like to point out to you
that there's a switch down here that's
| | 01:08 | labeled Generate Mapping
Coordinates, and it's on by default.
| | 01:13 | Whenever you create a primitive in
3ds Max, default UV coordinates will be
| | 01:17 | created and assigned to that object.
| | 01:19 | Essentially, it has implicit UVs.
| | 01:22 | If you want to place the map somewhere
else on that surface, then you'll need to
| | 01:26 | add a modifier called UVW Map.
| | 01:29 | I'll go over to the Modifier List
and scroll down looking for UVW Map.
| | 01:35 | You'll see that there are a
bunch of other variations on it.
| | 01:37 | You just want the basic UVW Map modifier.
| | 01:41 | The first thing to pay
attention to is the Mapping type.
| | 01:44 | We've got Planar Map,
Cylindrical, Spherical, and so on.
| | 01:47 | This is going to depend upon
what type of object you have.
| | 01:51 | Obviously, if you've got a cylinder, then
cylindrical mapping would be appropriate.
| | 01:55 | In this case of course, it's a flat
plane, and so Planar mapping is appropriate.
| | 02:00 | Down a little bit further, you'll see
that there are Length and Width attributes.
| | 02:03 | These parameters here are the
absolute size of the tile in world units.
| | 02:09 | So if I set this to 40 feet and 40 feet,
then that map is tiling to be exactly
| | 02:17 | 40 feet wide and 40 feet tall.
| | 02:19 | To position the map, you'll want to open
up the sub-object modes in the modifier.
| | 02:24 | You'll see Gizmo.
| | 02:26 | Click on Gizmo, and then you can use
the Move tool to position the map.
| | 02:34 | You'll notice that if I move the Gizmo
in the world Y axis, in this case, that it
| | 02:40 | doesn't actually affect the mapping.
| | 02:43 | The distance here doesn't
change the mapping placement.
| | 02:46 | And the reason for that is that you
can just imagine that this plane is
| | 02:51 | projecting pixels onto this surface and
it's doing that in orthogonal fashion, or
| | 02:57 | orthographic fashion.
| | 02:59 | Let me go to my four viewports for just
a moment and back out in the Top view.
| | 03:04 | Essentially, it's projecting
pixels perpendicular to the Gizmo here.
| | 03:10 | So moving the Gizmo forward and
back is not going to affect the pixel.
| | 03:15 | It's not going to affect how that texture
pixel, or texel, is being placed on the surface.
| | 03:21 | In this case, it's only the X
and Z axes that are relevant.
| | 03:27 | You can also rotate the Gizmo.
| | 03:32 | That's pretty intuitive.
| | 03:33 | I don't recommend that you scale the
Gizmo however, because if you scale it,
| | 03:37 | then these numbers are no longer valid.
| | 03:40 | If I scale this up, it would be
larger than 40 feet, but the readout here
| | 03:46 | still says 40 feet.
| | 03:47 | So that's a bit confusing.
| | 03:48 | So I don't recommend scaling
the gizmo. I'll undo that.
| | 03:52 | Down a little bit further you'll see
that there are a couple more useful
| | 03:55 | options such as the Alignment;
Alignment in X, or Y, or Z. 3ds Max usually gets
| | 04:02 | this right the first time.
| | 04:03 | It sort of detects how your object is
oriented and chooses an alignment to fit the object.
| | 04:09 | There's also couple other really
useful buttons down here such as the Fit
| | 04:13 | button and if you click that, then it
will stretch the Gizmo to the available
| | 04:18 | area of the object.
| | 04:20 | There's also a Bitmap Fit which is
kind of useful, because if you've got a
| | 04:23 | non-square bitmap, then you could click
on this and navigate to your bitmap and
| | 04:28 | it would automatically change the
Gizmo's aspect ratio to match your bitmap.
| | 04:33 | This was just a very quick
introduction to the UVW Map modifier in 3ds Max.
| | 04:39 | Of course, map placement can
be a much more involved process.
| | 04:43 | Here we're just barely scratching the
surface to show you how to position and
| | 04:48 | scale a map on an individual object.
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| Using the Real-World Map Size option| 00:00 | 3ds Max has a very useful feature
for scaling the UVW Map and it's called
| | 00:06 | Real-World Map Size, you'll find it
down in the parameters of the UVW Map
| | 00:11 | Modifier and I can tick that on.
| | 00:14 | Now that's only half of it.
| | 00:16 | Once I've turned that on I also need
to turn on the corresponding switch in
| | 00:21 | the Material Editor.
| | 00:22 | You need to open up that Material
Editor, go to the material and I'll need to
| | 00:27 | go to the Map, and it is currently
shown here, and in the Coordinates rollout
| | 00:33 | for that map I will need to enable Real-
World Scale and then give it some size,
| | 00:39 | let's say 20'x20'.
| | 00:44 | And once I've done that, now each
one of these tiles is exactly 20 feet.
| | 00:49 | Don't be distracted by the fact that
this is reading out as 19 feet and 12
| | 00:53 | inches, that's just little
bit of a quirk of the program.
| | 00:56 | This is a very, very useful technique,
because especially for architectural
| | 01:02 | scenes it might be useful for me to
have a sample that's, you know, a piece of
| | 01:07 | masonry that's maybe 3 feet on a side,
or something like that, and if I enable
| | 01:12 | Real-World Scale here and Real-World Map
Size here, then I can just type in the value.
| | 01:19 | If I get in really close on this by the
way you'll notice that the gizmo is tiny.
| | 01:23 | This is the only real issue with
this is that that Gizmo is itty-bitty.
| | 01:28 | Where is it? There it is!
| | 01:31 | That's just a byproduct of the process,
it doesn't show the gizmo at 20'x20', it
| | 01:36 | shows it at a tiny size of
an inch as we can see here.
| | 01:41 | There's not a lot I can do about that.
| | 01:42 | I don't want to scale the Gizmo for
the reasons I've mentioned in the last movie.
| | 01:46 | Just leave it as it is.
| | 01:47 | If you need to move it around you'll
just have to get in really close on that,
| | 01:52 | selected that Gizmo and I
can position it as needed.
| | 02:00 | A very helpful feature; Real-World Map Size.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adding reflections with Raytrace map| 00:00 | We want this logo to be sparkly and reflective.
| | 00:03 | Currently, it's still refracting;
| | 00:06 | it's a transparent logo.
| | 00:08 | If I do a quick render of that,
you can see we've got refractions.
| | 00:13 | Instead, I'm going to choose reflections.
| | 00:15 | Close that window and I'll go to the
Material Editor and select that logoMaterial.
| | 00:22 | Go down into the Maps rollout and
you'll see I've got a Raytrace map in
| | 00:26 | the Refraction Channel.
| | 00:27 | I want to just get rid of that.
| | 00:29 | The easiest way to get rid of a map is
to take one of these other buttons that
| | 00:34 | say None and just drag and drop it onto
that map, and when I release the mouse,
| | 00:39 | now that one has nothing in it as well.
| | 00:41 | Okay, now for the Reflection Channel,
I want to add a Raytrace map there.
| | 00:46 | I'll click on the button that says
None and the Material/Map Browser opens.
| | 00:50 | I just want to double-click on
Raytrace to add the Raytrace map.
| | 00:55 | Raytracing is a global illumination
technique that automatically calculates
| | 00:59 | reflections or refractions.
| | 01:00 | And I don't need to do
anything in the Raytracer parameters.
| | 01:03 | It's all fine as is.
| | 01:04 | I'll go back up to the top level here
and I'll do an ActiveShade rendering so
| | 01:10 | we can get a preview.
| | 01:12 | Click on the Perspective label and
choose Extended Viewports > ActiveShade.
| | 01:17 | And you can see that the
reflections are looking kind of hot.
| | 01:20 | It's a bit too bright.
| | 01:22 | I can reduce the Reflection amount
here, set that down to, let's say, 50%.
| | 01:27 | And if I want a gold look here, I might
want to play around with some of these
| | 01:30 | colors, maybe I'll go into this
Diffuse color and set this down, maybe we'll
| | 01:36 | set the Saturation to 255, fully
saturated, and the Value I'll set down to,
| | 01:43 | let's say, 190.
| | 01:48 | The Specular Highlights,
that will affect this as well.
| | 01:51 | I'll set the Specular Level to about
100 and the Glossiness to, let's say, about
| | 01:56 | 50 or so, and you can see this
is looking a little bit better.
| | 01:59 | Now as you see in my ActiveShade,
it's still not quite convincing.
| | 02:04 | It's uniformly reflective across all surfaces.
| | 02:08 | And it would look better if we could
have it be a little bit dimmer in certain
| | 02:13 | areas, and we can use
Reflection Dimming to achieve that.
| | 02:16 | I'm going to close the ActiveShade
window, right-click and choose Close, and
| | 02:21 | just get in closer here
so we can see it better.
| | 02:26 | And I'll turn ActiveShade back on again.
| | 02:31 | What I want to achieve here is that in
these curved areas here where there's not
| | 02:34 | as much light, we want the
reflection to be dimmer there.
| | 02:38 | And we can do that in the material
by going to the Extended Parameters
| | 02:42 | rollout, I'll open that up.
| | 02:45 | And within here, we've got Reflection Dimming.
| | 02:48 | I'll turn it on, and as soon as I do
that, we get some effect here and you can
| | 02:52 | see it in the Sample Slot as well.
| | 02:55 | It will even be more dramatic
if I turn the Backlight off.
| | 02:59 | With the Reflection Dim Level here
at 0, then where there's no direct
| | 03:04 | illumination, the reflection
is going to be completely black.
| | 03:07 | That's not really what I want.
| | 03:09 | I want some amount of reflection there.
| | 03:11 | The Dim Level is really the black level.
| | 03:13 | I'll set that to, let's say, 0.4.
| | 03:16 | The Reflection Level here is the white
level, and a Value of 3 is usually a bit
| | 03:21 | too high, especially when I've
got specular highlights as well.
| | 03:25 | I'll set that Reflection
Level down to let's say 1.5.
| | 03:30 | And finally, maybe I'll turn the
Reflection amount up a little bit, to let's
| | 03:34 | say 75%, and you can see that's looking
considerably better than we had a moment ago.
| | 03:40 | I'll close that and I'll do another rendering.
| | 03:42 | Let me back out a little
bit and I'll click Render.
| | 03:47 | And that's looking pretty good,
especially around the sides here where it's
| | 03:51 | actually reflecting this background.
| | 03:53 | But you'll notice that there's
no reflection on the front here.
| | 03:56 | On the front surface of our logo, it's
not showing any pattern or any image.
| | 04:01 | The reason for that is that
there's nothing there for it to reflect.
| | 04:05 | If I go out to my scene,
there's nothing out here.
| | 04:08 | It's just blackness.
| | 04:11 | There's nothing for it to reflect.
| | 04:13 | We need to create some sort of
fake environment for it to reflect.
| | 04:17 | And we'll do that in the next movie
by creating a skydome around the scene.
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| Creating a self-illuminated environment| 00:00 | To create a good simulating reflection on the
text object, I want to create an environment.
| | 00:07 | Now I could do this through the
Environment and Effects dialog in 3ds Max, and
| | 00:12 | that would create reflections and it
will actually show up as a background
| | 00:15 | too in my rendering.
| | 00:17 | However, I don't have any ability to
intuitively adjust the placement of the
| | 00:21 | texture using that method.
| | 00:23 | Instead, I would advise that you
create a self-illuminated material and apply
| | 00:29 | that to a primitive, such as a Sphere.
| | 00:32 | In gaming they use boxes usually.
| | 00:34 | It's called a skybox.
| | 00:36 | In this case, I am going to use a Sphere.
| | 00:38 | That's more convenient for me.
| | 00:39 | Go ahead and go to the
Create panel and create a sphere.
| | 00:44 | Dolly back in my Top view and drag that
sphere out, make that nice and big, and right-click.
| | 00:50 | I will go the Modify panel, I'll set
that Radius for this sphere to let's say
| | 00:54 | 400 feet, and just position it at the
center of the world with the Move tool,
| | 00:59 | giving it X, Y, Z values of 0.
| | 01:03 | If I dolly back in the Perspective view
you will see that when I'm outside the
| | 01:06 | sphere I can't see my logo.
| | 01:10 | I'll show you a trick here that will
make it so that you can always see the
| | 01:13 | interior of this sphere
even if you're outside it.
| | 01:15 | This is a two-part process.
| | 01:18 | First, I want to select the Sphere and
right-click, go to its Object Properties,
| | 01:23 | and turn on the switch that says, Backface Cull.
| | 01:26 | That means that if a surface is
pointed away from the camera, it will not be
| | 01:30 | rendered, Backface Cull on.
| | 01:34 | Now if I am inside the sphere I cannot
see it, and if I dolly back and go outside
| | 01:39 | it, then I can see it.
| | 01:41 | The second part of this is I just want
to invert the surface of the sphere or
| | 01:45 | flip its surface Normals.
| | 01:47 | Very easy to do that, I'll just select
the sphere, go to the Modify panel and
| | 01:52 | from the Modifier List I'll choose a
modifier called Normal, and Flip Normals is
| | 01:59 | turned on by default.
| | 02:01 | This is really useful because I can be
inside or outside the sphere and I'll
| | 02:05 | always see the interior.
| | 02:08 | Okay, now I want to create a self-
illuminated material and apply it.
| | 02:12 | I will go to the Material Editor and
I'll grab a new blank Sample Slot and I'll
| | 02:18 | call this one skydomeMaterial.
| | 02:22 | I will add a Diffuse Map, Diffuse
Color, and click on the button here.
| | 02:27 | It opens up Material/Map Browser
and I'll double-click on Bitmap.
| | 02:32 | I will use this Sky image, open that.
| | 02:37 | Now I've got the image
applied to the Diffuse Channel.
| | 02:40 | I will go ahead and drag and drop that
material onto the sphere and enable Show
| | 02:46 | Material in Viewport, and now we can see it.
| | 02:51 | Okay, we can play around a little bit
with a tiling here and maybe make this
| | 02:54 | look little bit better.
| | 02:56 | I'll set the U and V Tiling values over
here to 2, and press Tab and 2, and I can
| | 03:02 | change the Offset as well.
| | 03:05 | If I set this V Offset to .25 it will
move up by 25%, and now we can see that
| | 03:15 | it's placed pretty well onto the sphere
except that now I am getting this seam here.
| | 03:21 | Well I can mitigate that by
enabling mirroring for the V axis.
| | 03:26 | So I will just turn on Mirror,
and that looks pretty good.
| | 03:32 | Finally, I need to make
this fully self-illuminated.
| | 03:35 | That way no matter what the
lighting is in the scene this will be
| | 03:38 | completely 100% brightness.
| | 03:40 | The pixel brightness on the rendered
image will be the same as the pixel
| | 03:46 | brightness of the original source map.
| | 03:48 | I'll go up to the top level of my
material and you'll see Self-Illumination here
| | 03:54 | and I will just turn that up to 100%
and now that is fully bright. Cool!
| | 04:01 | So I will go back into the scene and
get in close on my logo and do a quick
| | 04:05 | render of that, and you can see now that
we are getting nice strong reflections
| | 04:10 | on the front surface of the logo.
| | 04:12 | That's how you can create a
self-illuminated environment.
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| Mapping a bump channel| 00:00 | We can add more visual interest to
our material by using a Bump Map.
| | 00:05 | A Bump Map is a way of
deviating the surface of the model.
| | 00:10 | Now it's not actually changing the
shape of the model, it's just changing the
| | 00:13 | way that the lighting and rendering works.
| | 00:16 | I will go into my current material here,
here is the logoMaterial, and I have got
| | 00:22 | my Maps rollout, and you'll
see there's a Bump channel here.
| | 00:25 | I will click on the button that says None.
| | 00:28 | I could add a procedural map here or a bitmap.
| | 00:32 | Let's do a procedural map.
| | 00:33 | I will just do a simple Noise Map.
| | 00:36 | Double-click on that.
| | 00:39 | And to see this most effectively
let's do an ActiveShade rendering.
| | 00:42 | I will go into the Perspective View, click on
Perspective > Extended Viewports > ActiveShade.
| | 00:49 | You can start to see that the cloud
pattern on the reflections is starting to
| | 00:54 | deviate, it's getting a
little bit swirled there.
| | 00:57 | If I change the Noise parameters,
we will see this more dramatically.
| | 01:00 | Let's say I will set the noise
Size down to only 5 and press Enter.
| | 01:06 | And now you can see very clearly
that we're getting a Bump effect on the
| | 01:10 | surface of our logo.
| | 01:11 | Now this is not affecting the profile,
it's not affecting the actual model in
| | 01:16 | any way, it's just affecting the material.
| | 01:19 | And I can play around with this.
| | 01:20 | I could do Fractal and getting a nice rough
effect there, but that might be too strong.
| | 01:27 | And in fact, the default
Bump amount is usually too much.
| | 01:30 | I will go back up to the top level of
my material, I will just reduce the Bump
| | 01:35 | amount to 10 instead of 30, and now it's
not quite as extreme, and it's a little
| | 01:40 | bit more believable.
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| Instancing material sample slots| 00:00 | Here is a really cool technique
that will allow you to visualize a map
| | 00:05 | independently of the
material to which it is applied.
| | 00:09 | All I need is an empty Sample Slot to do it.
| | 00:12 | I have got my logoMaterial active and
I'll just go down here and click on this
| | 00:17 | Bump map button and drag it
up to that empty Sample Slot.
| | 00:21 | When I release the mouse button, I
get a pop-up dialog asking, do you want
| | 00:26 | an Instance or a Copy? And as we saw
earlier in the course, an Instance is
| | 00:31 | when something is in more than one place at
a time, and that's exactly what I want here.
| | 00:36 | That way I can make changes to the map
in this slot and it will also affect the
| | 00:41 | material. Instance is what I want, click OK.
| | 00:46 | Now I'm seeing a 2D
representation of the Noise map.
| | 00:51 | If you see something like this, that
means you're working on a map and not a
| | 00:54 | material, and in fact, you cannot assign
a map directly to a model, you can only
| | 00:59 | assign materials to models.
| | 01:02 | So I can't actually drag this on
to anything and expect that to work.
| | 01:05 | However, I can select it and go
into these parameters and adjust them.
| | 01:10 | Let's say, I will set the Size back up
to 25 and press Enter and you'll see that
| | 01:14 | that is reflected in the material instantly.
| | 01:17 | This is very helpful because you can
break down a complex material into multiple
| | 01:22 | Sample Slots and work on them
independently without having to navigate back and
| | 01:27 | forth and up and down through the shader tree.
| | 01:30 | This chapter has been a basic
introduction to mapping in the Material Editor.
| | 01:35 | We've really only scratched the
surface here and there's quite a lot to be
| | 01:38 | learned, but the 3ds Max interface is
pretty intuitive and so you will have
| | 01:42 | a lot of fun in building materials and applying
them to objects in your own scenes.
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|
|
14. Camera Basics Working with Display layers| 00:00 | Camera and scene layout is an
essential part of any production.
| | 00:04 | I have got a very simple scene here,
but nevertheless it's a good idea for me
| | 00:09 | to put things onto layers so that I
can hide things, or I can freeze them to
| | 00:14 | make them untouchable.
| | 00:15 | For example, I might want to animate the
logo but not move the backdrop objects.
| | 00:21 | Let's take a look at Display layers.
| | 00:23 | I will open up the Manage Layers
dialog either by going to Tools menu and
| | 00:29 | choosing Manage Layers, or I can go
over to the main toolbar and click on the
| | 00:33 | button, Manage Layers.
| | 00:36 | Now I have got a window here and I
have got one layer currently, the default
| | 00:40 | layer, and it's currently active as
indicated by this little check box here.
| | 00:44 | What I would like to do is to create
a new layer for the backdrop objects.
| | 00:48 | What I will do is I will highlight
these two, the Sphere and the Plane, and they
| | 00:54 | are not actually selected in the
viewport, they are just highlighted in this
| | 00:57 | panel here, in this window.
| | 00:58 | I will need to select them by
clicking this button, Select Highlighted
| | 01:03 | Objects and Layers.
| | 01:04 | Now they are actually selected.
| | 01:06 | Then I can click this button here
that says, Create New Layer (Containing
| | 01:10 | Selected Objects), and when I do that a
new layer is built and those two objects
| | 01:15 | are placed within it. I will rename it,
| | 01:18 | I'll call this one backdropLayer.
| | 01:24 | When a layer is built,
it's made active by default.
| | 01:28 | This is the current layer.
| | 01:29 | I can go ahead and hide everything on
that layer by just clicking the Hide
| | 01:34 | column here, I can also freeze
everything on that layer, and when it's frozen, by
| | 01:39 | default, it will be displayed in gray.
| | 01:41 | Turn that back off again.
| | 01:43 | If I need to move things from one layer
to another, I can do that through a sort
| | 01:48 | of cumbersome process.
| | 01:50 | I can't just drag and drop from one
layer to another, and I can't really
| | 01:54 | effectively cut and paste because I
can only cut and paste one object at a
| | 01:58 | time, and obviously for a heavy scene with
thousands of objects, that's really not practical.
| | 02:03 | What I will need to do, if I want to
move objects from one layer to another, is
| | 02:08 | highlight them in the
window here and then select them.
| | 02:12 | Then I'll highlight the name of the
destination layer and press this plus
| | 02:17 | sign, Add Selected Objects to Highlighted
Layer, and now they are moved into the other layer.
| | 02:22 | I will just move those back,
| | 02:25 | select, then select the target
layer name, and press the plus sign.
| | 02:31 | Now they have been moved back.
Let's talk about hiding.
| | 02:34 | If I hide a layer, then the
object won't be displayed.
| | 02:38 | There is one thing about 3ds Max here
that can kind of trip you up, which is
| | 02:42 | that the active layer, or the one that
has a check box, is the one in which new
| | 02:47 | objects will be placed.
| | 02:49 | If I create a new object now, then it
will be placed into this backdropLayer.
| | 02:54 | But that layer is hidden.
| | 02:56 | If I go and create a primitive like a
Sphere here, then I won't see it because
| | 03:01 | it's being placed into a hidden layer, and if
I unhide that layer, now I can see the sphere.
| | 03:07 | The solution to this is, immediately
after you make a new layer, then you want
| | 03:13 | to click on the default layer and make
that one active, and that way new objects
| | 03:18 | will not be hidden, delete that.
| | 03:21 | Now let's talk about freezing.
| | 03:23 | If I freeze a layer, then it's untouchable.
| | 03:27 | I can't select it and therefore I can't move it.
| | 03:29 | That's very helpful
especially for these backdrop objects.
| | 03:33 | However, by default, frozen objects and
frozen layers are displayed in gray and I
| | 03:39 | can't see the texture on the object.
| | 03:41 | I will unfreeze it and what I will do
is I will change an option so that frozen
| | 03:47 | objects will not be displayed in gray.
| | 03:50 | I can set that on a per-object
or a per-layer basis.
| | 03:55 | I'd like to set it on a
per-layer basis in this case.
| | 03:58 | I will right-click on the
layer and choose Layer Properties.
| | 04:03 | On the left-hand side of this dialog,
you'll see Display Properties, and there is
| | 04:07 | an option here that says Show Frozen in Gray.
| | 04:09 | I will turn that off and then when I
click OK, I would expect that if I freeze
| | 04:15 | this layer then I would still
see the texture on my backdrop.
| | 04:21 | However, that's not the case because
the default installation of 3ds Max gives
| | 04:26 | priority to object properties.
| | 04:29 | If you are using 3ds Max design, or
if you have chosen one of the design
| | 04:34 | templates in the Customized UI and
Default Switcher, then you will get Layer
| | 04:40 | Properties taking priority.
| | 04:42 | But again, the default 3ds Max
install gives priority to Object Properties.
| | 04:48 | But we can switch that.
| | 04:50 | I want to select these two objects
and actually fully select them and then
| | 04:57 | right-click anywhere, and go to Object
Properties, and for each one of these
| | 05:03 | sections here, you will see a
button here that says By Object.
| | 05:07 | That button is displaying the current state.
| | 05:10 | In other words, it's telling me that
the Display Properties are giving objects
| | 05:15 | priority, and if I click on that button
then for the currently selected objects
| | 05:21 | their priority will be By Layer.
| | 05:25 | And with that having been done, now if
I click Freeze, the objects are still
| | 05:31 | displayed in their normal color and
their normal texture but they are now
| | 05:36 | untouchable, and I can't
actually mess up my scene accidentally.
| | 05:40 | If you want to change this behavior and
give priority to Layer Properties, you
| | 05:45 | can do that from the Customize >
Preferences dialog, and you want to go to the
| | 05:51 | layer defaults and that's found in the
General tab, General > Layer Defaults >
| | 05:57 | Default to By Layer for New Nodes.
| | 06:01 | A node is an object.
| | 06:02 | If that switch is on, then all new
objects will have their Display Properties
| | 06:08 | priority set to By Layer, and then I
won't need to go in there and change each
| | 06:13 | one of those each time.
| | 06:15 | That's a real brief
introduction to managing layers in 3ds Max.
| | 06:19 | It's important that you place objects
of the same type onto Display layers so
| | 06:25 | that you can hide or freeze them all at once.
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| Creating a free camera| 00:01 | Now I'm ready to create a camera. I
have a Perspective view here and I actually
| | 00:05 | could render the Perspective view, but
that's not a good practice. You really do
| | 00:10 | need to have an actual camera in the scene.
| | 00:12 | Think of the camera as being the
camera on a live action set, and think of the
| | 00:18 | Perspective view as the point
of view of the director onset.
| | 00:21 | Usually the director is not looking
through the camera lens, the camera operator
| | 00:25 | is looking through the lens and the
director is standing off to the side
| | 00:29 | directing the talent and can see
the entire set and the camera itself.
| | 00:34 | Again, don't use the Perspective
view to render, create an actual camera.
| | 00:39 | I'll go to the Create panel and go to
the section labeled Cameras. You'll see
| | 00:44 | that there are two types of camera:
| | 00:46 | Target and Free. I'll create a Free
camera this time, click on the button.
| | 00:52 | And I want to click in the
Front viewport to create my camera.
| | 00:56 | That's because when I create a Free camera,
it will be pointing into the current viewport.
| | 01:01 | I'll click in Front, and move back out
a little bit in the Perspective view, and
| | 01:06 | you'll see that, that
camera is correctly oriented.
| | 01:09 | If I clicked in the Top view, then the
camera would be pointed down, back out a
| | 01:15 | little bit so you can see that.
| | 01:18 | There is my second camera that I made.
| | 01:21 | That's why you don't want to click in the
Top view, you usually use the Front view.
| | 01:23 | So I'll right-click to exit Camera
Creation and then just delete that second one.
| | 01:31 | Now I want to load the camera into
a viewport and I'll do that just by
| | 01:35 | sacrificing one of the existing views here.
| | 01:38 | I probably want to keep the Left view,
but I don't really need the Front view
| | 01:42 | anymore. I'll load the
camera into that Front viewport.
| | 01:45 | I'll go up here to the Front viewport
and click on that Front label and then
| | 01:50 | choose Cameras > Camera001.
| | 01:52 | Now I've got a free camera and I'm
looking through that camera lens, and in the
| | 01:57 | next movie we'll use the
Viewport controls to frame the shot.
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| Moving a camera with Truck, Dolly, and Pan| 00:00 | To adjust a camera, you
have two ways of doing it:
| | 00:03 | you can do it in a third person point of
view or in a first person point of view.
| | 00:08 | To adjust the camera in a third person
method, all you have to do is select the
| | 00:11 | camera in a Non-camera
viewport and then move and rotate it.
| | 00:16 | I will select this and pull it back and
you can see that my Camera view is updating.
| | 00:21 | Maybe I will go over to the
Left view and move the camera up.
| | 00:26 | I can rotate the camera as well.
| | 00:28 | I can tilt it down and I can rotate it.
| | 00:33 | I can right-click in the Top view and then Pan.
| | 00:38 | This is a third person method.
| | 00:40 | I can also do it in a first person
method by highlighting the Camera viewport,
| | 00:46 | and then going down to the Viewport
controls in the lower right-hand corner.
| | 00:50 | And these are slightly different than
you would see in a Perspective view.
| | 00:53 | For example, I've now got a Dolly
button here and I can click on that and drag
| | 00:58 | in the viewport to move forward and back.
| | 01:03 | We've also got a Hand button here which
allows me to Truck the camera left and
| | 01:07 | right and pedestal up and down.
| | 01:12 | And finally, we've also got an Orbit
Camera button here, and when I do this in a
| | 01:18 | free camera, it's not really panning.
| | 01:22 | We can see this here, if
we get a little bit closer.
| | 01:25 | It's not actually really panning, you
can see that, that camera is swiveling
| | 01:30 | and orbiting around.
| | 01:31 | What I'd like is for the
camera to stay in one place.
| | 01:35 | If I go back down here and I click
and hold this button, I get a flyout,
| | 01:39 | and there's a really important button
hidden underneath there, and that's Pan Camera.
| | 01:44 | This is probably the most important
button that's hidden inside of 3ds Max.
| | 01:49 | And now you can see, in the Top viewport
that the camera is panning and tilting,
| | 01:54 | but it's not changing position.
| | 01:57 | That's very, very helpful.
| | 01:58 | In a first person Camera
viewport, your hotkeys are limited.
| | 02:02 | You have really only got the ability
to use the middle-mouse button to track
| | 02:07 | left or right, and pedestal up and
down. Otherwise if you want to Dolly
| | 02:12 | forward/back or to Pan, then you will
want to use the Viewport controls in
| | 02:16 | the lower right-hand corner.
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| Using a target camera| 00:01 | 3ds Max also offers a target camera,
which is a camera that's always constrained
| | 00:06 | to look at its target or its aim point.
| | 00:09 | I have got a free camera in here now, I
will just go ahead and select that and
| | 00:13 | press the Delete key, and I will back out in
the Top viewport to create my target camera.
| | 00:19 | I recommend that you always create
the target camera in the Top view.
| | 00:22 | If you create it in a different view,
it might be pointing down or in some
| | 00:25 | other weird direction.
| | 00:26 | I will go to the Create
panel > Cameras, and click Target.
| | 00:31 | I want to click and hold the mouse button
down to create the target and the camera.
| | 00:36 | The first time I click, I am creating
the position of the camera, and I will drag
| | 00:40 | out, and when I release the mouse
I'm setting the position of the target.
| | 00:44 | And when I'm finished I will
right-click to exit that tool.
| | 00:47 | Then I can use the Move tool to select
either the target or the camera and to
| | 00:53 | change its position.
| | 00:56 | To see what I'm doing, I want to
load the camera into a viewport.
| | 00:59 | I will go over here to this Perspective
view and click on that Perspective label
| | 01:03 | and choose Cameras > Camera001.
| | 01:07 | Okay, so now, as you see, if I move
the target, the camera is panning.
| | 01:11 | If I move the camera, then
it's orbiting around its target.
| | 01:18 | It works very similarly to a free camera,
and if you want to change its framing,
| | 01:23 | then you would want to use the Viewport
controls in the lower right-hand corner,
| | 01:28 | for example, the Dolly tool.
| | 01:30 | But there's one important
difference from a free camera.
| | 01:34 | If I Dolly forward and back, by default the
camera is going to move, but the target isn't.
| | 01:39 | And the implication of that is that
when the camera moves forward enough, it
| | 01:43 | will actually flip around backwards,
because the target is not moving.
| | 01:49 | We can change that behavior.
| | 01:51 | All we have to do is go down to the
Viewport controls and click on the Dolly
| | 01:56 | button and hold it down, and you'll
see a flyout, and the one that you want
| | 02:01 | is the one that has a red arrow and a
red cross, and that one is Dolly Camera
| | 02:07 | and Target, and now if I Dolly forward and
back you will see that it won't flip around.
| | 02:13 | That's a real basic introduction
to using a target camera in 3ds Max.
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| Adjusting Field of View| 00:01 | One of the most important properties of
a camera is its Field of View, sometimes
| | 00:05 | known as angle of view, or
focal length, or simply zoom.
| | 00:09 | We can control the zoom on a 3ds Max
camera in a couple of different ways.
| | 00:15 | One would be through the Modify panel.
| | 00:17 | If I select the camera, go to its Modify
panel, you'll see an FOV parameter, and
| | 00:23 | this is simply zooming in and out.
| | 00:25 | And if I have a wide angle, I will
see a high number to Field of View.
| | 00:30 | That means I've got 141 degrees currently.
| | 00:35 | If I have a low number, then that means
I am going to be zoomed in really tight.
| | 00:39 | You will also see that if the camera
is selected, there is a handy pyramid
| | 00:43 | structure here that shows what's
within the camera's Field of View.
| | 00:47 | That's very useful.
| | 00:48 | It's technically called a Frustum.
| | 00:52 | In 3ds Max, here it's called the Cone.
| | 00:55 | And if I want to see that Cone, even if
the camera is not selected, then I can
| | 01:00 | enable this switch here that says Show Cone.
| | 01:02 | Now if the camera is not selected,
I can still see its Frustum or Cone.
| | 01:07 | I can also adjust the Field of View
interactively in a First Person viewport.
| | 01:11 | If I click on the Camera view, then
down in the Camera Viewport controls, I can
| | 01:16 | click on Field of View and then zoom in or out.
| | 01:21 | Very basic and very important, you'll
need to set Field of View for each shot in
| | 01:26 | your movie, and 3ds Max makes
it quite easy for you to do so.
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| Choosing an aspect ratio| 00:00 | Another critical consideration
of a camera is its aspect ratio.
| | 00:06 | What is the proportion of
the width to the height?
| | 00:10 | For example, HDTV has an aspect of 16x9.
| | 00:14 | Standard Definition
television has an aspect of 4x3.
| | 00:18 | We need to know what the aspect
ratio is going to be in order to properly
| | 00:23 | compose a shot, and if we're not
careful we may end up with problems, like
| | 00:27 | things that weren't supposed to be in
the shot are in the shot, or they were not
| | 00:32 | supposed to be there and they are.
| | 00:34 | Let me show you an example of what could happen.
| | 00:36 | I'm going to resize this Camera view so
that I've got a different aspect ratio.
| | 00:41 | This is a more or less square aspect.
| | 00:43 | And I'm going to use the middle-mouse
button just to reposition the camera, so
| | 00:47 | that my logo is near the top of the frame.
| | 00:50 | And then I'll do a quick test
render by selecting that Camera view and
| | 00:55 | clicking the Render Production button
up here, on the extreme far right-hand
| | 00:59 | side of the main toolbar.
| | 01:02 | And as soon as I do that, you'll see
that there's something quite different here.
| | 01:06 | The first word of my logo is being
completely cropped off here, whereas I'm able
| | 01:11 | to see it in the viewport.
| | 01:13 | The problem here is that the aspect
ratio of the renderer and the aspect ratio
| | 01:18 | of the viewport are two different things.
| | 01:22 | What I need to do is I need to
enable an option in the Camera viewport
| | 01:27 | called Show Safe Frames.
| | 01:30 | I need to crop that viewport to the
aspect ratio of the renderer so that I'll
| | 01:35 | have a, what-you-see is what-you-get situation.
| | 01:39 | To turn on Safe Frames, one way that
you can enable Safe Frames is with a
| | 01:43 | hotkey, which is just Shift+F, and now
you can see that it's cropping the top
| | 01:50 | and bottoms of the viewport to
correspond to the renderer aspect ratio.
| | 01:56 | I can also enable Safe Frames by
clicking on the Viewport label, in this case
| | 02:01 | Camera001 and I can
toggle it on and off from here.
| | 02:06 | That's very important.
| | 02:08 | That's the only way I'll be able to know
what's in the frame and what's not in the frame.
| | 02:13 | You always need to have Safe
Frames enabled for a camera.
| | 02:17 | There's never a case when it's okay to
not enable it, it must always be enabled,
| | 02:22 | otherwise you'll have no idea what
you're going to get when you render.
| | 02:25 | Safe Frames are really critical.
| | 02:27 | If you want to change the aspect
ratio of the camera, it's actually not a
| | 02:31 | property of the camera itself,
| | 02:33 | it's a property of the renderer.
| | 02:35 | I'll need to go into the Render Settings dialog.
| | 02:37 | Here we go, Render Setup.
| | 02:40 | It's a little teapot that has a
dialog next to it, and in this dialog I can
| | 02:45 | choose the size that I want to render to.
| | 02:48 | You'll see here Output Size, and the
default is 640x480 with square pixels.
| | 02:55 | If we have square pixels, that means
that the image aspect is going to be the
| | 02:59 | Width divided by the Height.
| | 03:01 | You'll see here 640 divided by 480 is 1.333.
| | 03:05 | Just to demonstrate how I can change
the aspect ratio, I'll choose one of the
| | 03:09 | other Output Size presets,
such as an HDTV preset.
| | 03:14 | I've got 1920x1080, or let's say 1280x720.
| | 03:20 | Let me reset the Viewport panels here.
| | 03:22 | I'll right-click in the center here and
choose Reset, and you can see here now
| | 03:27 | that getting a good widescreen aspect,
and the viewport is being cropped at the
| | 03:33 | tops and bottoms to show me
the framing in the renderer.
| | 03:36 | And then I can compose my shot, and
what I see is what I get in the viewport.
| | 03:42 | I'll Dolly back a little bit,
and do another test rendering.
| | 03:46 | That's how we can set the aspect ratio
and turn on Safe Frames in order to make
| | 03:52 | sure that we get what we
want in the final rendering.
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|
|
15. Lighting BasicsUnderstanding CG lighting| 00:00 | This chapter is an introduction to
basic CG lighting, and we will be using the
| | 00:06 | flying logo scene, but first I'd like
to take a few moments to talk about the
| | 00:12 | basics of CG lighting, how it's
different from the real world.
| | 00:16 | And this simple primitive scene
will be a better illustration of that.
| | 00:21 | Before we even begin to put lights
into the scene, I need to take a moment
| | 00:25 | to talk about just the interface and how to
change the display modes in the viewports.
| | 00:30 | You will see the default
display mode is Realistic.
| | 00:34 | That means that it's going to use a
default lighting, an over-the-shoulder
| | 00:38 | light, that's attached to the current
perspective camera, and that shadows will
| | 00:44 | be enabled, and something called
Ambient Occlusion is also enabled.
| | 00:49 | Ambient occlusion is
another word for contact shadows.
| | 00:53 | If I use the middle-mouse and position
my Perspective view a little bit, you'll
| | 00:57 | see that graininess and
then it will sort of refine.
| | 01:01 | That's the Ambient Occlusion
and it's turned on by default.
| | 01:05 | Ironically, when you render a scene like this,
there is no Ambient Occlusion in the rendering.
| | 01:12 | Therefore, it seems a little bit
strange that we will have Ambient Occlusion in
| | 01:15 | the viewport, but it is enabled by default.
| | 01:18 | Let's take a look at the options here.
| | 01:20 | If I click here where it says Realistic
or wherever it lists the shading mode,
| | 01:24 | you'll see I have
Realistic and Shaded and so on.
| | 01:28 | And then under Lighting and Shadows, I can
play around with these different options.
| | 01:33 | First of all, the default behavior
is to Illuminate with Default Lights.
| | 01:38 | And again, that's an over-the-shoulder light.
| | 01:41 | If that's on, then if I create
actual lights in the viewport, we will not
| | 01:46 | see any illumination.
| | 01:47 | It's very important that the first
thing you must do is turn on the switch that
| | 01:50 | says Illuminate with Scene Lights.
| | 01:52 | We don't actually see any change here
now, but it's important that we do that,
| | 01:57 | because again, if we create a light
and that switch is set to Illuminate with
| | 02:01 | Default Lights, then we won't see any
true lighting in the viewport, that's just
| | 02:05 | a bit of a strange default.
| | 02:07 | I'll go back into the shading modes
and also, once again, go back to Lighting
| | 02:12 | and Shadows and I'm just going
to disable Ambient Occlusion.
| | 02:15 | That will improve the performance, and
once again, Ambient Occlusion doesn't
| | 02:20 | show up in an actual rendering.
| | 02:22 | And if it's on in the viewport, that
might give me a kind of inaccurate idea of
| | 02:28 | what I'm going to get in the final render.
| | 02:30 | Another thing I want to mention is
that if you go into standard Shaded mode
| | 02:35 | without the Realistic option, and if
you go back in the Lighting and Shadows,
| | 02:39 | all of that stuff is grayed out.
| | 02:41 | And in this standard Shaded mode we
can't change any of these options.
| | 02:46 | Again, this is a very
strange quirk in the interface.
| | 02:50 | All I have to do here, in order to
adjust these options, is I have to go back to
| | 02:54 | Realistic and then go into these
options and change it up to whatever I want,
| | 03:00 | and then finally, switch it over to Shaded.
| | 03:04 | This is the behavior of the program as of 2013.
| | 03:08 | Well, in fact, what I want is
Realistic without Ambient Occlusion.
| | 03:12 | So now we've set up the interface, and
let's talk about the difference between
| | 03:17 | CG lighting and real world lighting.
| | 03:20 | To illustrate this, I'll go to
the Create panel and I'll create an
| | 03:23 | omnidirectional light.
| | 03:26 | You see I've got the Lights panel
selected, and within that panel I've got a
| | 03:31 | pulldown list that currently reads Photometric.
| | 03:33 | Well in this course we're
going to be using Standard lights.
| | 03:37 | Standard lighting is
essentially cartoon lighting.
| | 03:40 | It doesn't have any relationship to
measurements of illumination in the real world.
| | 03:46 | If you want to learn about
photometric lighting, we have another course
| | 03:49 | for that, it's 3ds Max 2010: Lighting and
Rendering with mental ray.
| | 03:54 | In this course we'll be
looking at the Standard lights.
| | 03:57 | So I'm going to create an Omni light.
| | 03:59 | That acts just like a point light or a light
bulb that shines equally in all directions.
| | 04:05 | I'll click the Omni button and then
click in the viewport and a light is created.
| | 04:11 | Once again, if I did not change my
display options to Illuminate with Scene
| | 04:16 | Lights, then I would not
see any change at this point.
| | 04:20 | If I was using the default lights,
then nothing would change on the screen.
| | 04:23 | I'll right-click to exit Omni light creation.
| | 04:27 | And let's take a look at this.
| | 04:28 | I'll Orbit around and you'll see
something kind of unusual here, which is that
| | 04:33 | everything seems black and dark.
| | 04:36 | The reason is that the
light has an elevation of 0.
| | 04:39 | Its position is exactly at a Z value of 0.
| | 04:43 | I'll need to move it up in
order to see light in my scene.
| | 04:48 | The first thing that's kind of
counterintuitive about CG lighting is that as
| | 04:52 | you move a light closer to a surface,
paradoxically that surface will sort of become darker.
| | 04:59 | And that of course is the
opposite of what you'd expect.
| | 05:02 | You'd expect that as you move the light
closer, things will get brighter, but
| | 05:07 | CG lighting it doesn't work that way,
because the lighting model is very simple.
| | 05:12 | All that really matters in a standard
CG lighting scenario is, is the surface
| | 05:17 | pointed towards the light or not?
| | 05:18 | For example, with this sphere, you
will see that this side of the sphere is
| | 05:23 | illuminated, and that's simply
because it's facing towards the light.
| | 05:27 | The other side of the sphere is not
illuminated because its faces are pointed
| | 05:31 | away from the light.
| | 05:33 | The standard CG lighting model
is only based upon face angle.
| | 05:37 | If the polygon faces or surface is
pointed towards the light, it will receive
| | 05:41 | illumination, and that's it.
| | 05:43 | The implication of that is that as a
light moves farther away from a planar
| | 05:47 | surface, such as my ground plane here,
more and more of that surface will be
| | 05:52 | pointed towards the light.
| | 05:54 | And if I move the light back down again,
less and less of that surface will be
| | 05:58 | pointed towards the light.
| | 06:00 | Only this area here is
really pointed towards it.
| | 06:03 | This area, the angle is far too
shallow to receive any illumination.
| | 06:08 | So that's one of the first things that's
going to be a little bit different from
| | 06:11 | what you're used to from
lighting in the real world.
| | 06:14 | The next thing that's kind of different
from the real world, as you will see, is
| | 06:19 | shadows don't come for free in CG lighting.
| | 06:22 | I don't see any cast shadows on
the surface of the ground plane.
| | 06:27 | In CG, shadows actually have to be calculated.
| | 06:30 | And in fact, they're disabled by default.
| | 06:33 | You can turn shadows on, on a per-light basis.
| | 06:37 | Finally, the other thing that's quite
different from the real world is that by
| | 06:40 | default you won't have any
decay in intensity over distance.
| | 06:45 | To illustrate that, I'm going to move
this light down close to this sphere here.
| | 06:50 | And take a look at this;
| | 06:51 | I've got two spheres, one here and
one here, and they're equally bright.
| | 06:57 | The reason that they're equally
bright is because their faces are pointed
| | 07:00 | towards the light, and there is no decay in
intensity over distance by default in CG lighting.
| | 07:07 | In the real world, for a radiant light
source such as this point light, the
| | 07:12 | intensity will decay with the
inverse of the square of the distance.
| | 07:16 | That's called the inverse square law.
| | 07:18 | That can be enabled in CG, but
it's turned off by default for
| | 07:23 | performance reasons.
| | 07:24 | Those are some of the differences between
CG lighting and lighting in the real world.
| | 07:29 | If you've been working in photography
or cinematography to light real scenes,
| | 07:34 | you're going to have to sort of relearn
some of what you already know in order
| | 07:39 | to leverage your
knowledge in the CG environment.
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| Controlling an object's shadow properties| 00:00 | Here is our flying logo scene with a
camera and backdrop already in place.
| | 00:06 | Currently, in my Camera view we
are looking at a Wireframe view.
| | 00:10 | If I go up here and choose
Realistic, then you'll see that my scene goes
| | 00:14 | almost completely black.
| | 00:17 | The reason this is happening is
because despite the fact that I have no
| | 00:21 | lights in the scene, the sphere for
my skydome is in fact casting a shadow
| | 00:27 | on to everything else.
| | 00:29 | That's just the default
behavior of the viewports.
| | 00:32 | Even if there are no lights
we will still get shadows.
| | 00:35 | I could disable shadows from the Viewport
menu, but I am going to need shadows later.
| | 00:41 | What I will do is I will disable
shadow casting from the backdrop object.
| | 00:47 | The object, this skydome, is
currently on a frozen layer.
| | 00:52 | I want to go into the Manage
Layers window and select this sphere and
| | 00:58 | right-click and go into its Object
Properties, and in the Rendering Control
| | 01:02 | section I simply want to turn off
these two switches that say Receive
| | 01:07 | Shadows and Cast Shadows.
| | 01:09 | And when I click OK now you'll see I
am getting shadows projected onto this
| | 01:14 | backdrop object, I'm not getting
shadows cast from the skydome.
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| Creating a target spotlight| 00:00 | Let's create a key light.
| | 00:02 | In the language of cinematography
and photography, the key light is the
| | 00:07 | dominant source of illumination; the
one that's the brightest and the one
| | 00:11 | that's casting shadows.
| | 00:13 | Usually in a studio lighting setup, such as
this, you'd use a spotlight as your key light.
| | 00:18 | If you were at an outdoor shot then you
would probably use a directional light.
| | 00:23 | The difference between the two is the
spotlight has a pattern of distribution
| | 00:27 | that's in a cone shape, rays of light
will move outward from the light source in
| | 00:33 | a cone pattern, whereas a directional
light has parallel rays. That would be more
| | 00:37 | appropriate for an outdoor shot.
| | 00:39 | I'm going to go to my Create panel,
Lights, and I want to choose the Standard
| | 00:45 | lights, and I've got two flavors of
spotlight, Target Spot and Free Spot.
| | 00:50 | It's exactly like the difference
between a target camera and a free camera.
| | 00:54 | The target camera or target spot has
an aim point, that's what I usually use
| | 00:59 | because it's easier to work with.
| | 01:00 | I'll click on Target Spot, and in
the Top view, I'll click to define the
| | 01:05 | location of the light, hold down the
mouse and drag, and when I find the
| | 01:11 | location I want for the target, I'll
release the mouse, and then right-click to
| | 01:16 | create the Target Spot creation.
| | 01:19 | I won't see anything in the shaded
views unless I turn on scene lights.
| | 01:26 | Sometimes it might be difficult to
select the Viewport menus. You'll need to
| | 01:30 | sort of click on here until you get
the label visible, and I'm in Realistic
| | 01:36 | mode. I want to go down into Lighting and
Shadows and turn on Illuminate with Scene Lights.
| | 01:41 | And again I want to go back down into
Lighting and Shadows and disable Ambient
| | 01:45 | Occlusion just for performance reasons.
| | 01:48 | But I do want shadows to remain on.
| | 01:50 | Now I've got a pretty good
approximation of what this lighting will look like.
| | 01:54 | If I go to my Top view, or any other
view and use the Move tool, I can position
| | 01:58 | the light or its target in
order to change the lighting.
| | 02:04 | Sometimes it might be difficult for
you to select the target or the light.
| | 02:08 | You might accidentally
select a piece of geometry.
| | 02:11 | Up here on the main toolbar is a
Selection Mask or Selection Filter, and if you
| | 02:16 | click on that you can choose to
select only Lights or Cameras or different
| | 02:22 | object types, I'll choose Lights.
| | 02:25 | And now I can't accidentally select
a camera or anything else other than
| | 02:28 | lights and light targets.
| | 02:33 | So I'll go into my Perspective view and
maybe move that up a little bit, and you
| | 02:39 | can see that the spotlight has a
conical shape, shape like a cone, and that
| | 02:45 | outside of that cone there is no illumination.
| | 02:48 | Now I've got a spotlight in the shot
and next I can go and change the spotlight
| | 02:53 | parameters to get whatever
look I'm trying to achieve.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Adjusting intensity and color| 00:00 | Let's look at changing the
brightness and color of a spotlight.
| | 00:04 | I will simply select the light and
open up the Modify panel, and there is a
| | 00:09 | rollout here that's labeled
Intensity/Color/Attenuation.
| | 00:12 | I will open that rollout.
| | 00:15 | The most important attributes of the
light are its Multiplier, which is its
| | 00:20 | intensity, and this color swatch here.
| | 00:23 | You can see if I change the Multiplier
value, let's say I knock it down to 0.5,
| | 00:28 | we will get, in this case, a dimmer
illumination, or if I set it to a value of 2,
| | 00:33 | it'll actually be so bright that
it's kind of distorting the color here.
| | 00:36 | I'll set it back down to a value of 1.
| | 00:39 | For standard lights, the
intensity here is an arbitrary value.
| | 00:43 | It's not connected to any type of
metrics such as the number of lumens put
| | 00:48 | out by a light bulb.
| | 00:50 | If you need photometrics then you'll
need to create a photometric light.
| | 00:54 | And again that's covered in the title: 3ds
Max Lighting and Rendering with Mental Ray.
| | 00:59 | There's also a color swatch here, and
I can click that and adjust the color.
| | 01:05 | For example, I can create a red
light or an intense green light.
| | 01:11 | I am actually going to use a
slightly orange light here.
| | 01:14 | Let's set it to something like that, and it will
give a warm color to the illumination. There we go!
| | 01:21 | We've just adjusted the basic parameters
of intensity and color for the spotlight.
| | 01:26 | All of the other standard
lights work exactly the same way.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Controlling contrast and highlights| 00:01 | One of my favorite features of 3ds Max
lighting is the ability to adjust the
| | 00:06 | contrast of the light and the look
of the highlights on object surfaces.
| | 00:11 | I reverted back to this simple
primitive scene, because that's a better
| | 00:14 | illustration than the flying logo.
| | 00:16 | In order to see this in the
viewports we will need to use ActiveShade.
| | 00:20 | I'll go to the Perspective viewport
label, click on that, and choose Extended
| | 00:24 | Viewports > ActiveShade, and now
you see what it looks like with no
| | 00:29 | adjustments to the contrast.
| | 00:31 | I'll select this Omni light, and go to
the Modify panel and open up the rollout
| | 00:37 | that says Advanced Effects.
| | 00:40 | If I increase this Contrast value
up to the maximum of 100 you'll see a
| | 00:44 | very dramatic change.
| | 00:46 | Basically, we are blasting out the scene.
| | 00:49 | It's extremely contrasty.
| | 00:51 | So contrasty that it even looks
like it's a cartoon-type shader.
| | 00:55 | Usually I will set that Contrast to
something more reasonable like, let's say, 50%.
| | 00:59 | Below that you'll see Softened Diffuse
Edge, and as the name implies it's going
| | 01:05 | to soften the gradient from the
brightest part to the darkest part of a surface,
| | 01:12 | and I will set that up to let's say 50
as well, and that softened up the look.
| | 01:18 | Additionally, within here, you can do
things like disable Specular highlights for
| | 01:22 | the light completely.
| | 01:23 | That's sometimes useful when you're just
using a fill light that's just supposed
| | 01:27 | to fill in some of the shadows.
| | 01:30 | That's a basic introduction to
using the advanced effects to control
| | 01:33 | the contrast of a shot.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Setting a spotlight's hotspot and falloff radius| 00:00 | One of the most important properties of
a spotlight is the softness of the edge.
| | 00:05 | This is sometimes called the Penumbra.
| | 00:08 | To adjust the softness of the edge, I'll
want to select the spotlight and go to
| | 00:11 | the Modify panel, and open up
the Spotlight Parameters rollout.
| | 00:17 | Within the Spotlight Parameters you'll
see Hotspot and Falloff, these correspond
| | 00:22 | to the two cones that you see in the viewport.
| | 00:26 | The hotspot is the inner cone, and if I
reduce that angle you'll see I'm getting
| | 00:31 | a softer edge to the spot, I've also got
the Falloff value, and I can increase or
| | 00:38 | reduce that as well.
| | 00:40 | The greater the differences between
the Hotspot and Falloff values, the softer
| | 00:45 | the look will be, and let's say I
reduce this Falloff value down until it gets
| | 00:50 | close to the Hotspot value.
| | 00:52 | If it starts to go below the Hotspot
value, the Hotspot value will actually be
| | 00:57 | adjusted automatically, and 3ds Max
is set up to maintain a difference of 2
| | 01:03 | degrees between these two.
| | 01:05 | If you want a super-sharp
spotlight edge then you can go into the
| | 01:09 | Preferences and change that.
| | 01:12 | Go ahead and increase this.
| | 01:14 | Okay, so that's pretty cool, but here's
something that's even cooler, I can look
| | 01:18 | through the light as if it were a
camera, and this will give me the ability to
| | 01:23 | adjust this hotspot and falloff
interactively, as well as change the position and
| | 01:28 | orientation of the light.
| | 01:30 | I need a viewport to do this.
| | 01:32 | I'm not really using the Left view
right now, so I can sacrifice that one.
| | 01:36 | I'll click on the Viewport label and
go up to Lights > Spot001, and now I'm
| | 01:44 | looking through the spotlight. I'll
want to go up here and change some of the
| | 01:48 | display options, I'll switch it over
to a Realistic view, and I'll need to see
| | 01:53 | scene lights. I'll additionally to
click on Realistic and go to Lighting and
| | 01:58 | Shadows and enable Scene Lights.
| | 02:01 | And now I can see what the light is
actually illuminating and I can move the
| | 02:06 | light around with the middle-mouse
button. I can go down to the Viewport
| | 02:12 | controls and use the Orbit tool to
orbit the light around its target, and
| | 02:19 | additionally, I can adjust the Hotspot
and Falloff values in this viewport.
| | 02:25 | You'll see here that there are couple
of buttons here: Light Hotspot and Light
| | 02:30 | Falloff, I can click on that and
adjust it directly in the viewport.
| | 02:36 | It's a little bit easier to see if the
light is actually selected, I'll use the
| | 02:40 | Select Object tool and then select the
light, and now I can actually see the
| | 02:44 | circles here. I'll right-click in the
Spotlight viewport so that I don't lose
| | 02:49 | the selection, and I'll go back to
adjusting the Hotspot and Falloff values.
| | 02:56 | So that's how I can use a first person
method to adjust the light position and
| | 03:01 | orientation and also its
Hotspot and Falloff values.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Choosing a shadow type| 00:00 | To achieve realism in a shot, we
need the key light to project shadows.
| | 00:05 | Shadows are disabled for each light by default.
| | 00:09 | I'll need to select the light and go to
Modify panel, and enable Shadows in the
| | 00:13 | General Parameters rollout.
| | 00:15 | I will go ahead and tick this switch
to turn it on, and you will see now I am
| | 00:19 | getting shadows projected onto that backdrop.
| | 00:21 | Let's talk about the different types
of shadows and which one you'd choose in
| | 00:24 | different situations.
| | 00:26 | The default is called a Shadow
Map, and that's a pixel-based shadow.
| | 00:31 | That means that it's exactly
projecting a pixel-based image onto the backdrop
| | 00:36 | and that's the cheapest.
| | 00:38 | It's the most efficient and fastest of all the
shadow types, and that's why it's the default.
| | 00:43 | As we'll see in a later movie, if you
use Shadow Maps you are going to have to
| | 00:47 | adjust the pixel values in
order to get good results.
| | 00:52 | The disadvantage of Shadow Maps is that
they don't respect transparency, and we
| | 00:56 | will not get a variable softness
to the shadow based upon distance.
| | 01:02 | Shadow Map is just equally soft or
equally hard throughout, and again, it
| | 01:06 | doesn't respect transparency.
| | 01:08 | If I have a glass object, it will cast an
absolutely black shadow if I'm using a Shadow Map.
| | 01:14 | What are the other options?
| | 01:17 | If I click on this pulldown list,
you will see a few other options.
| | 01:21 | Specifically, we've got Ray Traced
Shadows, and if I select that you will see
| | 01:25 | that in my viewport, now I'm
getting a little bit harder edge shadows.
| | 01:29 | That's because Ray Traced
Shadows are vector-based.
| | 01:32 | And by default, Ray Traced Shadows will
give you very hard edges, and they do
| | 01:38 | respect transparency.
| | 01:40 | So a glass object would cast a very
light shadow, if I choose Ray Traced Shadows.
| | 01:47 | We've also got Area Shadows.
| | 01:50 | Area Shadows are useful because you
can get a really soft effect and it's
| | 01:55 | vector-based, which means I don't have to worry
about mosaicing or pixelation in the rendering.
| | 02:02 | But Area Shadows do not respect
transparency, and if again I have a glass object,
| | 02:08 | I will get perfectly black
shadows, if I use Area Shadows.
| | 02:12 | Finally, there is Advanced Ray Traced.
| | 02:15 | Advanced Ray Traced Shadows are the
best option because they do respect
| | 02:19 | transparency and the softness of
the shadow does respect distance.
| | 02:25 | However, they are the slowest to
render, because they are the most
| | 02:28 | computationally expensive.
| | 02:30 | We are going to look at Shadow
Maps first in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Optimizing shadow maps| 00:00 | Shadow maps are the most efficient
type because they calculate fastest.
| | 00:06 | However, in order to get good
results, you need to understand how to
| | 00:09 | adjust their settings.
| | 00:10 | I'll select the spotlight and go to
the Modify panel, and I'm looking for the
| | 00:15 | Shadow Map Parameters rollout.
| | 00:18 | The two important parameters
here are Sample Range and Size.
| | 00:22 | Sample Range is the amount of blur and
Size is the resolution of the shadow.
| | 00:27 | I'll set the Sample Range down to 0,
press Enter, and now you can see in my
| | 00:33 | Camera viewport, I'm getting
sort of jagged edges here.
| | 00:37 | If I reduce the Size or Resolution
down to, let's say 128, then we can very
| | 00:43 | clearly see the mosaic
structure of the Shadow Map.
| | 00:48 | It's built out of pixels.
| | 00:50 | In order to get a nice clean result, I'll need
to have a larger size or a higher resolution.
| | 00:57 | Let's say I set that up to 1024, press
Enter, and now I'm getting a cleaner edge.
| | 01:03 | The Size works best if it's set to a
power of 2 value, such as 512 or 1024 or 2048.
| | 01:12 | The useful range of values is usually
somewhere between 512 and 8192, which
| | 01:18 | is an 8K value.
| | 01:20 | There are a couple other factors that
also influence the quality of a shadow map.
| | 01:27 | The size of the spotlight's falloff or
the distance of a light to the shadow
| | 01:34 | receiving surface can also affect the quality.
| | 01:37 | Let's say I set the Size back
down to 128, and then I'll adjust the
| | 01:42 | spotlight's Falloff value.
| | 01:44 | I'll open up the Spotlight
parameters and increase the Falloff.
| | 01:49 | Now watch what happens in my Camera view.
| | 01:52 | As I increase the Falloff, this
starts to look even more blocky.
| | 01:57 | If I reduce the Falloff and have a very
narrow angle to that, then you can see
| | 02:01 | that the Shadow Map is
looking better and better.
| | 02:05 | What's happening here is that this is a
pixel-based image of only 128 pixels on
| | 02:13 | a side, and that's being
stretched across this falloff radius.
| | 02:17 | I've only got 128 pixels this
way and 128 pixels that way.
| | 02:22 | That means that a greater Falloff amount is
usually going to result is a blockier shadow.
| | 02:28 | The distance of the light to the
shadow receiving surface is also going to
| | 02:32 | influence the shadow quality.
| | 02:34 | I'll click in this Spotlight
viewport and I can Dolly back using the
| | 02:38 | Viewport controls down here.
| | 02:40 | If I pull the light back, you can see
that is also affecting the shadow quality
| | 02:45 | because that pixel-based shadow is
being stretched over a larger area.
| | 02:51 | To get good results with shadow maps,
you'll need to adjust the light parameters
| | 02:55 | as well as its position.
| | 02:57 | Let's set this to a pretty good value.
| | 02:59 | I'll select the light, and I'll go back
to a Size of 1024 with a Sample Range of,
| | 03:07 | let's say 5, which will give me a
little bit of blur, and adjust the Falloff
| | 03:13 | amount to make this a little bit larger.
| | 03:14 | And I'll just click in the Camera
viewport and then click Render Production to
| | 03:20 | do a Preview Render.
| | 03:21 | That's the basics of
setting shadow map parameters.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Optimizing area shadows| 00:00 | Area shadows are a more
realistic alternative to shadow maps.
| | 00:05 | They don't respect transparency,
but area shadows do respect distance.
| | 00:10 | I've got a slightly modified version of
my logo here, in which you can see part
| | 00:15 | of the logo is very close to the backdrop and
part of it is pretty far away from the backdrop.
| | 00:19 | Let's do a rendering of this with just
default shadow maps, click on Render.
| | 00:25 | And you can see although I've got a
little bit of a soft edge to the shadow,
| | 00:29 | it's a consistently soft edge
across the entire surface here.
| | 00:33 | To be more convincing, what we
would want is a sharp shadow here and a
| | 00:38 | softer shadow over here.
| | 00:40 | And I can do that using Advanced Ray-
Traced Shadows and I can also use area
| | 00:45 | shadows, which are a
little bit faster to calculate.
| | 00:50 | I'll select the light and go to the
Modify panel and I want to choose Area
| | 00:55 | Shadows as my shadow type, click on that.
| | 00:59 | I'll go up here and re-render this
view, and that's a default Area Shadow.
| | 01:06 | You can see that it's
sharper here and softer over here.
| | 01:10 | The quality isn't that good,
but we will change that up.
| | 01:13 | I'd also like to show you how to use
Region Render so that you can render just
| | 01:18 | part of a frame and not have to wait
for the entire thing to render each time.
| | 01:23 | I can go up here and make sure that
I've chosen the Camera view, and I'll lock
| | 01:28 | that view so that that's the only
thing that will render, regardless of what I
| | 01:31 | have selected in the viewport.
| | 01:32 | I'll go over here to Area to Render and
I'll choose Region, and now I get a red
| | 01:39 | box around my rendering and I can
resize that box to enclose just the area
| | 01:45 | that I need to render.
| | 01:47 | I'll click the Render button, you'll
see that's the only part that renders.
| | 01:51 | Now I'll go back to my Light parameters and
I'll start adjusting the Area Shadow parameters.
| | 01:56 | I'll open up the Area Shadows
rollout and you'll see the Basic Options
| | 02:01 | here, Rectangle Light.
| | 02:03 | The light itself is a point source, but
for the purposes of shadow calculation,
| | 02:08 | light is considered to have some area
and we can choose different shapes for
| | 02:12 | that area, Rectangle, Disc, and so on.
| | 02:15 | And the size is controlled
by these dimensions here.
| | 02:19 | The larger the area light dimensions are,
the softer the shadows will be overall.
| | 02:25 | If I set this to a value of, let's
say, 24 inches, press the Tab key and 24
| | 02:31 | inches, click Render over here and
it'll just render that region again.
| | 02:35 | Now you can see I'm
getting a much softer result.
| | 02:39 | To control the quality, I'll have to
go up here to the Antialiasing Options.
| | 02:44 | The Integrity is essentially
the accuracy of the shadow.
| | 02:48 | I'll set that Integrity up to, let's
say, a value of 5 and click Render to
| | 02:53 | render that region again.
| | 02:55 | And you can see that although it's
looking kind of grainy, it's more accurate.
| | 02:59 | To improve the graininess, I'll go over
here to Shadow Quality and set it to a
| | 03:04 | value of let's say 10.
| | 03:08 | And as you can see, it takes longer to render.
| | 03:11 | Every shot that you do is
going to need to be tuned.
| | 03:14 | The shadows are going to be
slightly different in each situation.
| | 03:18 | And so that means you'll need to
go in here and adjust these values.
| | 03:22 | That's how you can set the Area
Shadow parameters to get good results.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating omni lights| 00:01 | Although you can control the color of a
shadow independently or the color of a
| | 00:05 | light, that's actually not a very
good way to lighten up dark shadows.
| | 00:11 | Instead you should do what's done in the
real world, which is to add fill lights.
| | 00:16 | A fill light is one that just
simply fills in dark shadows in the shot.
| | 00:21 | A good option for that is an omni
light or an omni directional light.
| | 00:27 | I'll go to the Create panel and in
the Lights panel I'll choose Standard,
| | 00:31 | and you'll see Omni.
| | 00:33 | I'll click on that, and then click in the
Top view to create that omni light, and
| | 00:39 | then right-click to finish omni light creation.
| | 00:43 | You'll see in the Top view that my key
light, the Spotlight here, is on one side
| | 00:48 | of the camera and my omni fill light
is on the other side of the camera, and
| | 00:53 | that's a traditional way
of filling in dark shadows.
| | 00:57 | You'll also see in the shaded views that
my shot is now over-lit, it's too bright.
| | 01:03 | I'll want to go into that Omni
Light's Modify panel, and knock its
| | 01:08 | Intensity down a little bit.
| | 01:10 | I'll open up that Intensity/Color/
Attenuation and knock this Multiplier down to
| | 01:15 | a value of, let's say, 0.5, and while I'm
here I'll also take the opportunity to
| | 01:20 | change the color of the fill light.
| | 01:23 | A good artistic technique is to use a
complimentary color for the fill light.
| | 01:29 | I've got a warm color for the spotlight,
for my key, and I'll want to use a cool
| | 01:34 | color for the omni light which is the fill.
| | 01:38 | I'll click on Color and I'll just
change that Hue to a blue and have it be
| | 01:44 | very, very de-saturated.
| | 01:45 | It does not need to have much saturation to it.
| | 01:48 | If you add too much saturation, it
would start to look kind of strange.
| | 01:50 | Bring that back down a little bit.
| | 01:53 | Let's look at this in ActiveShade.
| | 01:55 | I'll click on the Camera Viewport
label and choose Extended Viewports >
| | 01:59 | ActiveShade, and you can see here that it's
still over-lit, even with the value of 0.5.
| | 02:06 | I'll reselect that omni light and
reduce that Multiplier down, even lower to,
| | 02:10 | let's say, 0.2 or 0.3, and I think that's
maybe the sweet spot in terms of the shadows.
| | 02:19 | But now my logo itself is over-lit.
| | 02:22 | To get good results with lighting,
you'll need to adjust the brightness of all
| | 02:26 | of the lights in your shot.
| | 02:28 | I'll go back to my key
light and reduce its intensity.
| | 02:32 | Open that Intensity and then knock the
Multiplier down to let's say 0.8, and now
| | 02:39 | I'm not getting the
highlights blasting out on my logo.
| | 02:42 | A good rule of thumb for a standard
lighting in 3ds Max is, you don't want all
| | 02:48 | of the lights in your scene to have a
cumulative multiplier value beyond let's
| | 02:53 | say 2, and in this case I've
got a cumulative value of only 1.
| | 03:00 | It's 0.8+0.3 or 1.1.
| | 03:04 | Additionally, I probably want to use a backlight,
or a rim light, to highlight some of the edges.
| | 03:10 | I can make a clone or a copy of this
omni light, by just holding down the
| | 03:15 | Shift key with the Move tool active,
and drag this over and place that behind
| | 03:22 | the logo.
| | 03:25 | When the Clone Options dialog pops up,
I want to choose Copy as the Object
| | 03:29 | type, because I might need this Rim Light to
have different parameters than the fill light.
| | 03:36 | I'll click OK, and now I'm getting a
little bit more highlighting on the edges,
| | 03:40 | we can see that as we move this around.
| | 03:44 | You'll notice also that it's
illuminating the backdrop itself, and if I
| | 03:48 | don't want that then I can change
the behavior of that and we'll do it in
| | 03:52 | the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Excluding objects from lights| 00:01 | I've got a rim light, or a backlight
over here, and it's illuminating my logo
| | 00:05 | edges pretty well, but I'm getting
too much light on the backdrop here.
| | 00:11 | Let's go back to
ActiveShade so we can see that better.
| | 00:16 | Again, the rim light is lighting up
the sides and back of the logo, but it's
| | 00:22 | also lighting up this Backdrop panel here.
| | 00:26 | What I want to do is exclude this
object from illumination from the light.
| | 00:33 | I'll select that light and then
right here in the General Parameters is a
| | 00:39 | button that says Exclude.
| | 00:40 | I'll click on that.
| | 00:42 | And what I have here is a dialog with two sides.
| | 00:46 | On the left are all of the objects in
the scene and on the right are any objects
| | 00:51 | that I want to exclude from either
Illumination or Shadow Casting, or Both.
| | 00:58 | In this case, I'm not
casting shadows from the rim light.
| | 01:02 | It doesn't really matter
whether I choose Illumination or Both.
| | 01:04 | I'll just leave it at Both.
| | 01:06 | Here's my backdrop object, it's called
Plane01, and I'll click this arrow to
| | 01:11 | move it over into the
Exclude section and click OK.
| | 01:17 | We might not see the result right away in
ActiveShade and we might need to reinitialize.
| | 01:23 | Right-click and choose Initialize, and
now you'll see that I'm getting highlights
| | 01:28 | on the rim of the logo, but I'm not
getting any illumination on the backdrop.
| | 01:34 | This is an extremely useful technique.
| | 01:37 | It's very easy to exclude
objects from lights in CG.
| | 01:41 | This is something that live action
cinematographers and photographers have to
| | 01:46 | work very hard to do in the real world.
| | 01:49 | But here in CG, it's super easy-breezy.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using the Light Lister| 00:00 | To complete our chapter on basic
lighting, let's look at the Light Lister.
| | 00:05 | This is a panel that lists all of the
lights in the scene and gives us easy
| | 00:09 | access to their most common parameters.
| | 00:12 | It's found in the Tools
menu, Tools > Light Lister.
| | 00:17 | And in this window, you'll see all of
the lights in the scene listed, and we can
| | 00:22 | do all sorts of things.
| | 00:23 | Like, for example, turn them on and off, or
change their intensity, set that back down.
| | 00:31 | I can turn their Shadows on and
off, change the Color, and so on.
| | 00:37 | Not all of the light parameters are
listed here, but if I need to get to the
| | 00:41 | more obscure parameters in the Modify
panel, all I need to do is click this
| | 00:45 | little button over here on the extreme
left, and that actually selects the light
| | 00:51 | and then I can open the Modify
panel and get at those parameters.
| | 00:55 | The Light Lister is a super useful
window in 3ds Max and I use it all the time.
| | 01:01 | The more lights you have in a scene, the
more valuable the Light Lister will become.
| | 01:06 | And that concludes our
chapter on basic lighting.
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|
|
16. Keyframe AnimationUnderstanding keyframes| 00:00 | Keyframing is the foundation of all
computer animation, whether it be 2D or 3D.
| | 00:06 | Here's an example of a flying logo that
comes and spins around in front of the camera.
| | 00:13 | If I select that logo, in the timeline
here, you'll see these little ticks and
| | 00:17 | those are keyframes.
| | 00:19 | The idea of keyframing is simple;
| | 00:22 | the artist sets a value for some
parameter, such as the position of an object at
| | 00:27 | a certain point in time.
| | 00:29 | Then sets another value for that
same parameter at a different point in
| | 00:34 | time, and the computer fills in all the
blanks, and that's called keyframe interpolation.
| | 00:40 | What you see here is a keyframe
at frame 0, another at frame 60.
| | 00:45 | There's no data in here except for what
the computer has filled in, and that's
| | 00:50 | keyframe interpolation.
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| Setting up the time configuration| 00:00 | Before you begin animating, you'll
probably want to go in and change the
| | 00:04 | preferences for how you're
displaying time in the timeline here.
| | 00:09 | For example, how many frames you're
seeing, and whether they're listed as frame
| | 00:13 | numbers or timecode.
| | 00:15 | Before we do that, let's just make sure
that you can actually see the Track Bar
| | 00:18 | here, which is this little slider.
| | 00:20 | You might have turned
that off in an earlier movie.
| | 00:23 | I'll just go into Customize > Show UI,
and make sure the Track Bar is checked on.
| | 00:29 | That means it's visible.
| | 00:30 | Now we'll go into the Time Configuration
dialog, which is down here in the lower
| | 00:34 | right-hand corner of the interface.
| | 00:36 | I'll click on Time Configuration.
| | 00:39 | And here we can change the Frame Rate.
| | 00:41 | The default is 30 frames per second, NTSC,
which is the US standard frame rate of
| | 00:48 | approximately 30 frames per second.
| | 00:50 | We'll leave it at 30 for now.
| | 00:51 | We've also got the ability to
display either frame numbers or timecode.
| | 00:57 | I can switch this to SMPTE or timecode.
| | 01:00 | SMPTE just stands for Society of
Motion Picture and Television Engineers.
| | 01:05 | And now the Track Bar is
displaying minutes, seconds, and frames.
| | 01:11 | In the Animation area here, we can set the
total length of the visible area of the timeline.
| | 01:18 | Currently, it's set to 3 seconds 10 frames.
| | 01:20 | I'm going to increase that
to 6 seconds and 0 frames.
| | 01:27 | Also, there's a helpful
switch here, Active Viewport Only.
| | 01:31 | If that's on, then we'll only see
playback in the currently selected viewport.
| | 01:35 | I'm going to switch that off and
that way we can see playback in all
| | 01:40 | viewports simultaneously.
| | 01:42 | Click OK, and now you'll see I've got 6
seconds worth of time in my timeline and
| | 01:48 | it's being displayed as SMPTE timecode.
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| Choosing Set Key filters| 00:00 | 3ds Max has two methods for creating
keyframes, and you'll see them on these two
| | 00:05 | buttons here: Set Key and Auto Key Mode.
| | 00:10 | Let's look at Set Key mode first.
| | 00:12 | Before we create any keyframes with Set
Key, we'll want to choose which types of
| | 00:18 | keyframes we want to create.
| | 00:19 | In other words, do we want to create
keyframes for position or rotation, and so on?
| | 00:25 | We can control that
behavior through the Key Filters.
| | 00:28 | I'll click on this button here, Key Filters.
| | 00:31 | I get a little pop-up dialog and here
I can choose which parameters I want to
| | 00:37 | keyframe in Set Key mode.
| | 00:40 | For the first pass at our animation,
I'll just create Position keyframes.
| | 00:45 | So I'll turn off everything except for Position.
| | 00:48 | That setting is sticky and it will
be remembered in the current scene.
| | 00:52 | Next, we'll actually create
keyframes in Set Key mode.
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| Creating keyframes in Set Key mode| 00:00 | To create keyframes in Set Key mode,
the first thing you'll do is activate Set
| | 00:05 | Key mode, click the
button that's labeled Set Key.
| | 00:09 | As soon as you do that, you'll notice
that you get a big red indicator in the
| | 00:14 | Track Bar and that means that we're
actually in Set Key mode currently.
| | 00:19 | Also the currently selected
viewport is outlined in red.
| | 00:23 | I'll select my flying logo and on
frame 0, I'll move it off screen in the X
| | 00:30 | axis, and of course, I have Safe
Frames enabled in my Camera view, that way I
| | 00:37 | know exactly whether the
object is, in the frame or not.
| | 00:42 | Once I have positioned the object and
I'm ready to create the keyframe, all
| | 00:47 | I have to do is click the big Skeleton Key
button and immediately a keyframe is created.
| | 00:55 | And you can see now, that we've got a little
red keyframe indicator here on the timeline.
| | 01:01 | The timeline will only display
keyframes for the currently selected object.
| | 01:05 | If I deselect my logo my keyframe
will not be displayed. I'll reselect it.
| | 01:13 | Now I'll go down to about 3 seconds in,
move the Track Bar down to 3 seconds, 0
| | 01:19 | frames, I'll select the logo and
position it in center of the Camera viewport,
| | 01:27 | and click the Skeleton Key button
again, a second keyframe is created.
| | 01:33 | To view the animation, I'll go down
to the Transport Controls here, and
| | 01:37 | click Rewind and Play.
| | 01:40 | And now I've created a very simple
animation, there are only two keyframes and
| | 01:46 | the only parameter that is animated is Position.
| | 01:52 | When you finish creating keyframes, you
want to click the Set Key button again,
| | 01:56 | to turn Set Key mode off.
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| Editing keyframes in the timeline| 00:00 | The simplest method for editing
keyframes is directly in the timeline.
| | 00:05 | I'll select the logo and play the
animation, and you'll see it takes 3 seconds
| | 00:10 | for it to get to its destination.
| | 00:12 | If I wanted to move more quickly, all
I'll have to do is click and drag on a
| | 00:15 | keyframe and move it to
an earlier point in time.
| | 00:20 | Rewind and Playback, and now it's only
taking about 1 second to get to its destination.
| | 00:26 | I can click that keyframe and move it
down to later point in time, which means
| | 00:30 | the object will move more slowly.
| | 00:32 | Now it's taking a full 6 seconds
to get to the center of the screen.
| | 00:36 | I'll move that keyframe back to a 3
seconds, paying attention to the numbers at
| | 00:41 | the bottom of the screen.
| | 00:42 | And it says Moving key(s) from 6seconds
to 3 seconds 0 frames, and release the
| | 00:50 | mouse, and now I'm back where I was.
| | 00:55 | Additionally, I can change
the value of the keyframe.
| | 00:59 | I can position the Track Bar directly on
top of the keyframe and then change the
| | 01:04 | parameters, such as Position, and create
a keyframe on top of the existing one.
| | 01:10 | I'll active Set Key mode, grab the
Move tool, move the logo out of frame and
| | 01:19 | then click the Skeleton Key button again.
| | 01:22 | And I have just had
overwritten the existing keyframe.
| | 01:24 | I'll rewind and test that, and you'll see that
3 seconds in, it's completely left the frame.
| | 01:31 | When it finished, of course, I
want to turn Set Key back off again.
| | 01:35 | There's a handy feature of 3ds Max that
lets you skip the Track Bar to exactly
| | 01:41 | the time of a keyframe and all I've to
do is go down to the Transport Controls
| | 01:47 | here and activate this
button that's called Key Mode.
| | 01:50 | And when that's on, these two buttons here will
let me go to the Next Key or the Previous Key.
| | 01:57 | That's very helpful,
| | 01:58 | especially if you're editing existing
keyframes, you don't want accidentally
| | 02:02 | create another keyframe that's
right next to an existing keyframe
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| Creating keyframes in Auto Key mode| 00:00 | Here is another way to create
keyframe in 3ds Max, it's called Auto Key mode.
| | 00:06 | I'll go ahead and turn that on, and
as soon as I do that, once again, the
| | 00:10 | Track Bar is highlighted in red and
the currently active viewport is also
| | 00:14 | highlighted in red.
| | 00:16 | Auto Key is a very useful function, but if
you're not careful, it could get you into trouble.
| | 00:22 | Because when this is on, literally
almost anything that you do in the program
| | 00:27 | will create keyframes.
| | 00:30 | For example, if I go into the
Material Editor and change the color of a
| | 00:33 | material, in fact, I'll be
creating keyframes for that color.
| | 00:37 | You just need to make sure that you're paying
attention when you're use the Auto Key mode.
| | 00:40 | One of the quirks of Auto Key is that
it'll not create a keyframe at frame 0 by
| | 00:48 | default, if you're parked on frame 0.
| | 00:51 | In other words, if I grab my logo and move it,
and I'm on frame 0, no keyframe is being created.
| | 00:59 | However, if I position this on frame 0,
let's say, right out of the frame,
| | 01:04 | and then I go to a different point
in time, let's say at 3 seconds in.
| | 01:09 | now when I move the object, I'll create
keyframes at frame 0 and at 3 seconds in,
| | 01:18 | As soon as I do that you'll notice I
got two keyframes, one here at frame 0
| | 01:22 | and one at 3 seconds.
| | 01:25 | This behavior can be changed in the
Preferences, but this is the default.
| | 01:29 | Once again, if you're on frame 0 and
you manipulate something in Auto Key mode,
| | 01:34 | by default nothing will happen.
| | 01:36 | But if you're on any other time, other
than frame 0 and you use Auto Key, 3ds
| | 01:42 | Max will create two keyframes, one at
frame 0 and one at the current time.
| | 01:47 | I'll rewind and play that back,
and you'll see I got two keyframes.
| | 01:55 | When I'm finished, I want to
turn Auto Key back off again.
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| Building up animation in passes| 00:00 | I've created Position keys for the logo.
| | 00:03 | To show you that, I'll select it, and you'll
see I've got Position keys down here.
| | 00:07 | When I press Play, the
logo moves through the scene.
| | 00:11 | Now I want to add another pass of animation.
| | 00:14 | I'll create some Rotation
keys to make the logo spin.
| | 00:18 | Probably the easiest way to do that is
by using Set Key mode with a Key Filter
| | 00:22 | set to Rotation only.
| | 00:24 | I'll click on Key Filters and I'll
disable everything, except for Rotation.
| | 00:31 | And then activate Set Key mode.
| | 00:34 | I'll go to frame 0 and click
the big Skeleton Key button.
| | 00:40 | Now you'll notice that this first
keyframe has two colors, red and green.
| | 00:45 | This is an indicator that there is
a Position key and a Rotation key at
| | 00:49 | that point in time.
| | 00:51 | In 3ds Max, red is a Position
key and green is a Rotation key.
| | 00:57 | Now I'll go down to 3 seconds in, and
I'll grab the Rotate tool, and I want to
| | 01:03 | spin this around exactly 360 degrees.
| | 01:07 | One way to do that is to use Angle Snaps.
| | 01:10 | On the main toolbar and I
can click on Angle Snaps.
| | 01:13 | You can also use the keyboard
shortcut which is A. Then I'll rotate the
| | 01:18 | object exactly 360 degrees.
| | 01:22 | I can see the numeric value at the bottom
of the screen in the Transform Type-In area.
| | 01:27 | When I reach 360, I'll release the mouse,
and then click the big Skeleton Key button.
| | 01:34 | When I'm finished I'll turn Set Key mode
off, and then I'll rewind and admire my work.
| | 01:39 | You'll see that it's spinning around
exactly 360 degrees over the course of 3 seconds.
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| Editing keyframes in the Dope Sheet| 00:00 | I want to edit the Position and Rotation
keys of this object separately from one another.
| | 00:07 | If select it, you'll see in the
timeline however, that both the Position and the
| | 00:12 | Rotation keys are at the same point in time.
| | 00:15 | There's no way for me to select
only position or only rotation in the
| | 00:19 | timeline in this case.
| | 00:21 | To do that I can use another
window called the Dope Sheet.
| | 00:25 | Dope Sheet, or Exposure Sheet, is a
term from traditional animation.
| | 00:30 | It's a spreadsheet that lists every
frame in the animation, and instructions on
| | 00:35 | what should happen on that frame.
| | 00:37 | To open the Dope Sheet in 3ds Max, I'll
go upto the menu labeled Graph Editors,
| | 00:43 | and we'll see, Track View-Curve
Editor and Track View-Dope Sheet.
| | 00:49 | The Dope Sheet will show you
keyframes for the currently selected object.
| | 00:55 | If I deselect my logo, I won't
see anything in the Dope Sheet.
| | 00:58 | I'll go ahead and select it again.
| | 01:01 | Text001 has got several keyframes on it.
| | 01:04 | What I need to have happened
here is I need to edit those
| | 01:07 | keyframes independently.
| | 01:09 | To do that I'll open up the Text001
hierarchy and you'll see Transform.
| | 01:16 | I'll open Transform up, and now
finally I have separate keyframes for
| | 01:20 | Position and Rotation.
| | 01:23 | I can zoom in on that.
| | 01:25 | I got some controls over here on
the right-hand side, Zoom Region.
| | 01:29 | I'll click that and then draw a box around that
region, and that'll just zoom in on that area.
| | 01:35 | My current time is
indicated here by this blue line.
| | 01:38 | If I want to move keyframes around, then I can
use the Move Keys tool here, and click on that.
| | 01:43 | Let's say that I want the
rotation to happen more slowly.
| | 01:47 | Then I can click on the Rotation key
and then drag it down to a later point in
| | 01:53 | time, and you can see as I do
so, the Dope Sheet will scroll.
| | 01:57 | Let say I move it down to 6
seconds, and release the mouse.
| | 02:03 | I'll minimize that, rewind in my Transport
controls and playback and see what I'm getting.
| | 02:10 | The position settles down at 3
seconds, but the rotation takes a full 6
| | 02:14 | seconds to complete.
| | 02:18 | I'll go back to the Dope Sheet,
which is minimized down here.
| | 02:21 | I want to give you a little bit more
clarity about what these boxes represent.
| | 02:25 | I can also click here to
frame the entire keyframe range.
| | 02:30 | Now we can see all of them.
| | 02:33 | Some of these rows here are not
actually keyframable channels.
| | 02:37 | For example here, Text001, there
is no animation channel or track,
| | 02:43 | called Text001.
| | 02:45 | However there are actual real
keyframes here in Position and Rotation.
| | 02:50 | What are these white boxes here?
| | 02:52 | Well these are just methods
for you to select keyframes.
| | 02:56 | It's a hierarchical selection method.
| | 02:59 | If I click up here at the top, then
all of the keyframes at that position in
| | 03:03 | time will be selected, and I can move
them around or do whatever I need to.
| | 03:09 | If I open up some of these, you will
see that in fact, Position has got several
| | 03:13 | keyframes within it; there's X,
Y and Z position keys here.
| | 03:17 | If I wanted to move just one of those I can
click on it, and now that's the only one selected.
| | 03:22 | If I wanted to move all of the
Position keys, I could click up here in the
| | 03:26 | Position row and that will
select all of the Position keys.
| | 03:32 | Again, these rows here are methods of
hierarchically selecting keyframes.
| | 03:37 | This can take a little bit of getting
used to, but once you're familiar with
| | 03:41 | the idea that these are not actual keyframes,
you'll be able to use them to great advantage.
| | 03:47 | Again, that's not a keyframe, that's
just a method for selecting keyframes that
| | 03:51 | are hierarchically below that level, and
actually 3ds Max calls these Fake keys,
| | 03:59 | because it's not actually a keyframe.
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| Editing function curves in the Curve Editor| 00:00 | The Dope Sheet is essential
for adjusting animation timing.
| | 00:04 | However, eventually you're
going to need finer control.
| | 00:07 | To do that you can use another
window called the Curve Editor.
| | 00:12 | I will select my animated object and
go to the Graph Editor's menu and choose
| | 00:16 | Track View - Curve Editor.
| | 00:18 | What we see here are Function Curves.
| | 00:22 | The animation data is
being visualized as a curve.
| | 00:26 | The horizontal dimension here is time,
and the vertical dimension is the value of
| | 00:32 | that particular track, or animation channel.
| | 00:35 | If the curve is steep, that
means the value is changing quickly.
| | 00:40 | If the curve is shallower, that means
the value is changing more slowly, and if
| | 00:45 | the curve is completely flat, that
means the value is not changing at all, and
| | 00:49 | in fact, in this case, only two out of the six
function curves are actually changing in value.
| | 00:56 | To clean up my view here, I can
delete some of this other stuff.
| | 01:00 | I'll select the Y Position, Z Position,
X Rotation and Y Rotation, and those are
| | 01:05 | all just flat static channels.
| | 01:08 | I will select all those keyframes and
press the Delete key on the keyboard.
| | 01:13 | Now I am just going to work
on X Position and Z Rotation.
| | 01:17 | I will hold down Ctrl to select both of those.
| | 01:20 | To change the timing of the
animation in the Curve Editor, I can move
| | 01:24 | these keyframes around.
| | 01:26 | The Move Keys tool is active by default.
| | 01:28 | I will drag a selection window around
these two, and I only want to move them in
| | 01:33 | time, I don't want to move their values.
| | 01:36 | I will hold down the Ctrl key and
click and drag, and now I'm living only in
| | 01:43 | time, changing the timing.
| | 01:45 | Bring that down to 6 seconds and if I
rewind and playback my animation, you'll
| | 01:50 | see that it's taking 6 seconds to
reach the final destination there.
| | 01:56 | I will go back to the Track View - Curve Editor.
| | 01:59 | There is another way I can adjust the timing.
| | 02:01 | With selected keyframes, I can
type in their frame value up here.
| | 02:06 | Currently, they're at 0 minutes 6 seconds.
| | 02:09 | I will just highlight that 6 and type in a 3
and press Enter, and now they're at 3 seconds in.
| | 02:16 | Another very important aspect of a
Function curve is its shape and that
| | 02:20 | determines the interpolation.
| | 02:22 | These have default Auto Key interpolation,
which is going to give us an ease out and ease in.
| | 02:29 | If I wanted a straight-line interpolation,
| | 02:33 | that would be a linear interpolation,
and that would be a very sudden stop.
| | 02:37 | I will select all these keyframes and
go up here to this toolbar and I will
| | 02:43 | click on the button labeled Set
Tangents to Linear, and now the tangent handles,
| | 02:49 | which we saw a moment ago, are being
hidden, but we've got a linear curve now.
| | 02:54 | I'll minimize that view, rewind, and
playback, and what we will see here is that
| | 03:00 | the logo comes to a very
sudden stop at the end there.
| | 03:03 | I'll rewind and play that again for you.
| | 03:07 | That's linear interpolation.
| | 03:08 | I will go back to the Track View, select them
again, and I can switch it back to Auto Tangents.
| | 03:17 | Now I've got the default auto
interpolation or default ease in/ease out.
| | 03:24 | If I want to change the behavior this
ease in/ease out, I can directly edit
| | 03:29 | the Tangent handles.
| | 03:30 | I can click on one of these and move
it around and you can see I am changing
| | 03:34 | the shape of the curve.
| | 03:35 | Let me undo that with Ctrl+Z. To make
sure that the curve doesn't overshoot the
| | 03:40 | mark, I'll hold down the Ctrl key and
drag to change the length of that handle
| | 03:46 | horizontally, without moving it vertically.
| | 03:49 | Still holding down Ctrl and I will
do the same for the second keyframe.
| | 03:54 | What this is going to be is a very
slow ease in to the resting position.
| | 03:59 | I will rewind and play that back.
| | 04:04 | And you see, that's a very slow
and graceful transition into that
| | 04:07 | resting position.
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| Cycling and extrapolating function curves| 00:00 | One of the most common things that
you need to do in animation is to
| | 00:03 | create cycles and loops.
| | 00:06 | Now we could do this by
copying and pasting keyframes.
| | 00:09 | But 3ds Max provides an easier way to do this.
| | 00:12 | All I need to do is select the
object and go into the Curve Editor, Graph
| | 00:17 | Editors > Track View-Curve
Editor, and I'm working on rotation.
| | 00:22 | I want the logo to spin infinitely.
| | 00:25 | I'll select that curve, select all its
keyframes and to get a clean loop, I'll
| | 00:31 | want to use Linear Interpolation.
| | 00:33 | I'll click up here once again
to set those tangents to Linear.
| | 00:37 | Notice, before and after the
keyframed area, we're seeing a dashed line.
| | 00:43 | 3ds Max calls this the Out Of Range time.
| | 00:48 | Anything before the first keyframe or after
the last keyframe is known as Out Of Range.
| | 00:54 | To create a cycle, we can
choose a different Out Of Range type.
| | 00:58 | We'll just go upto the Edit menu inside
the Curve Editor, and go to a menu item
| | 01:03 | that says Controller.
| | 01:05 | Controller is a program module
that creates motion or animation.
| | 01:13 | Inside that Controller item,
I'll choose Out Of Range Types.
| | 01:17 | I get another pop-up dialog.
| | 01:20 | These are all the different possibilities.
| | 01:22 | The default is Constant, which means
that before the first keyframe and after
| | 01:27 | the last keyframe, we'll
just hold a constant value.
| | 01:31 | Let's try Loop and click OK, and now
what you'll see here is a saw tooth wave
| | 01:38 | indicating the rotation over time.
| | 01:41 | With the Loop Out Of Range type, you'll
see that the last keyframe immediately
| | 01:47 | jumps to the value of the first keyframe.
| | 01:51 | I'll rewind my animation and it playback,
and it's actually working just fine.
| | 02:00 | It's rotating infinitely, and in fact,
I could change my time configuration and
| | 02:05 | make this 10 minutes long, and
it would keep spinning forever.
| | 02:09 | What if I want to change the rate here?
| | 02:11 | What if I wanted it to spin faster or
slower, or what if this second keyframe
| | 02:16 | were not at exactly 360 degrees?
| | 02:20 | There's an alternate method I can use,
to determine the Out Of Range value.
| | 02:24 | I'll go back to the Curve Editor, and
I'll go back into the Edit menu, to
| | 02:30 | Controller > Out Of Range Types, and
in this case the optimal one to use
| | 02:37 | is Linear.
| | 02:38 | I'll click on that, and then
click OK, and with Linear Out Of Range
| | 02:44 | interpolation, in fact, what we're
really doing is extrapolating the curve.
| | 02:48 | I'll use the middle-mouse button to
move around in the track view here, and
| | 02:53 | you can see that after the last
keyframe, that value is being extrapolated, or
| | 02:59 | it's being continued onward on that
path, and it'll actually look the same
| | 03:04 | when I play it back.
| | 03:07 | However, this is going to give me more
freedom, because now using this method
| | 03:12 | the second keyframe does not have
to have a value of exactly 360 degrees.
| | 03:18 | I can go back to that Curve Editor,
and as long as the curve is a Linear
| | 03:23 | Interpolation I can make
these keys whatever I want.
| | 03:26 | Let me just click on that, and I can move
it wherever. I can make it go faster or
| | 03:33 | slower by changing the slope.
| | 03:38 | Rewind and play that back, and now you'll
see it's spinning a lot faster and it's
| | 03:42 | spinning infinitely.
| | 03:45 | Out Of Range types are a really useful
way of creating loops and cycles, and for
| | 03:51 | extrapolating existing animation.
| | 03:54 | This concludes our
chapter on keyframe animation.
| | 03:57 | Of course, we just barely
scratched the surface here.
| | 04:00 | 3ds Max has a very deep and a very
powerful toolset, for creating animation.
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|
|
17. HierarchiesUnderstanding hierarchies| 00:00 | In most cases, animation is not just the
movement of a single object, but rather
| | 00:06 | the movement of an entire
linked chain or hierarchy of objects.
| | 00:11 | For example, this robot arm.
| | 00:13 | If I grab the Rotate tool and select
one of these objects and turn it, you'll
| | 00:17 | see that the other objects turn as well.
| | 00:20 | We can rotate this object and you'll see
that we've got a relationship between these.
| | 00:25 | This is called an animation hierarchy
or sometimes called linking or parenting.
| | 00:31 | Those all basically mean the same thing.
| | 00:33 | There are three main
principles around animation hierarchies.
| | 00:37 | First of all, children
inherit transforms of their parent.
| | 00:42 | For example, if I select this
turntable object and rotate it, then all of its
| | 00:46 | children will rotate as well.
| | 00:48 | Second, a child may have exactly one
parent and no more, unlike in biology where
| | 00:56 | a child has two parents.
| | 00:58 | And finally, a parent
may have multiple children.
| | 01:02 | For example, I've got this wrist
object down here and it's got two children,
| | 01:08 | these two claws, and if I manipulate
this wrist by, let's say, for example, moving
| | 01:14 | it, you'll see that
those two claws move as well.
| | 01:19 | Those are the basic principles of hierarchies.
| | 01:22 | Children inherit transforms of their parent,
| | 01:25 | a child may have exactly one parent,
but a parent may have more than one child.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Understanding coordinate systems| 00:00 | To work effectively in a 3D program,
such as 3ds Max, you need to understand how
| | 00:05 | reference coordinate systems work.
| | 00:08 | When you transform an object, move,
rotate, or scale it, you can choose
| | 00:13 | different points of reference
around which that transform will happen.
| | 00:16 | In 3ds Max, the Reference Coordinate
System is chosen from this pulldown list
| | 00:21 | here and it's sticky for
each of the three transforms.
| | 00:25 | In other words, 3ds Max will remember
your choice for each of the three transforms.
| | 00:30 | Right now I've got the Move tool
active and I can choose a different
| | 00:33 | Reference Coordinate System.
| | 00:36 | Let's use the World Coordinate System,
because that's the most easy to understand.
| | 00:40 | When I activate that, then when I move
something, it will be moved according to
| | 00:46 | the World Coordinates, or
along the three axis of the grid.
| | 00:51 | If I select an object, such as the base
of my robot, you will notice that the
| | 00:56 | Move Gizmo is aligned
with the World Coordinates.
| | 00:59 | In the lower left-hand corner of each
viewport, you will see an axis tripod that
| | 01:04 | indicates the current
orientation of the World Coordinates.
| | 01:08 | When I've chosen World Coordinates as
my Reference Coordinate System, then the
| | 01:13 | Transform Gizmo is always
aligned with the World Grid.
| | 01:16 | That's very simple and very straightforward.
| | 01:19 | The default Reference Coordinates
System however is not World, but View, and in
| | 01:25 | View Coordinates, when you transform
something, you're transforming it relative
| | 01:30 | to the viewport itself.
| | 01:32 | In the Top view, it just so happens that
the View Coordinate System is identical
| | 01:37 | to the World Coordinate System.
| | 01:39 | You can see that my Transform Gizmo
shows X pointing to the right and Y pointing
| | 01:44 | up, and the axis tripod also shows X
pointing to the right and Y pointing up.
| | 01:50 | However, if I choose a different viewport,
such as this Left view, the Transform
| | 01:55 | Gizmo is still aligned with X to the
right and Y going up, but the World
| | 02:01 | Coordinates are in some other orientation.
| | 02:04 | Once again the View Coordinate
System operates in screen space.
| | 02:09 | The Transform Gizmo is
aligned with the current viewport.
| | 02:13 | The exception to that is the
Perspective view or a Camera view.
| | 02:16 | I will right-click over here so I don't
lose my selection, and you will notice
| | 02:20 | that in this case the Transform Gizmo
is not aligned with the viewport, but
| | 02:24 | rather with the World.
| | 02:26 | The View Coordinate System
operates in screen space, except for in a
| | 02:30 | Perspective view or Camera view and
in that case the View Coordinate System
| | 02:34 | defaults to the World Coordinates.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Controlling rotations| 00:00 | Controlling animated rotations for an
articulated hierarchy such as this, can
| | 00:05 | be challenging if you are not familiar with
the way that Reference Coordinate Systems work.
| | 00:10 | To illustrate this, I will grab the
Rotate tool, and I am in the default
| | 00:14 | View Coordinate system.
| | 00:16 | I'll turn this robotTurntables about 45
degrees, and what I want to do here is I want to
| | 00:23 | turn the elbow down.
| | 00:24 | As soon as I select that with the
Rotate tool in View Coordinate System, you
| | 00:29 | will see that the Rotate Gizmo
is not aligned with the object.
| | 00:33 | I will get in a little bit closer on that.
| | 00:35 | And if I try to rotate this in any
direction, I am not able to turn it, so that
| | 00:39 | it rotates directly down.
| | 00:41 | There is no way that I can achieve that
result in the View Coordinate System, and
| | 00:46 | that's because the Rotation axes
are currently locked to the world.
| | 00:50 | I have other options however.
| | 00:52 | The one that most people
use is Local Coordinates.
| | 00:55 | Now go up to the Reference
Coordinate System and choose Local.
| | 01:00 | And now I can actually turn the object
in the direction that I want, because
| | 01:04 | Local Coordinates are a temporary Reference
Coordinate System that's locked to the object.
| | 01:10 | And that seems okay at first, but
Local Coordinates can be problematic.
| | 01:14 | For one thing, I can't see the absolute
rotation value when I am in Local mode.
| | 01:20 | You'll see that as I turn it, I
am getting numerical readout on the
| | 01:24 | Transform Gizmo that's telling me
the offset value that I've rotated it
| | 01:29 | away from its starting position.
| | 01:32 | However, there's no way for me to find
the absolute rotation value in Local mode.
| | 01:35 | What I will have to do to see a
rotation value is go into Parent mode, and now
| | 01:41 | what I am going to see is rotation
values relative to the object's parent, and
| | 01:46 | you'll see down here in the Transform Type-In
dialog, I've got an X rotation of 89.
| | 01:51 | I can also right-click on any one of the
Transform tools and open up a Transform
| | 01:56 | Type-In dialog, and this is a little bit
more convenient for me. And I can type in
| | 02:01 | 90 degrees exactly, and that's 90 degrees of
rotation relative to the object's Parent, which in
| | 02:07 | this case is this robotShoulder object.
| | 02:10 | So you think the Parent rotation is what
you want, but it's still not quite right.
| | 02:16 | To illustrate this, I will rotate this
wrist object a little bit and now you'll
| | 02:22 | see that I'm not able to actually
rotate it around its own coordinate system.
| | 02:26 | If I try to turn this it's sort of
weaseling around and spinning around.
| | 02:32 | Well you'd think that then in this case we
would just switch back to Local mode and
| | 02:36 | that would probably work. Let's try that.
| | 02:38 | I will go back to Local Coordinate
Systems and you'll see now the Rotate Gizmo
| | 02:42 | is aligned with the object and
it looks okay, so far so good.
| | 02:48 | However, it's not okay, because as soon
as I try to keyframe this, I am going to
| | 02:51 | have problems and this is where
people really get tripped up in 3D.
| | 02:55 | This is one of the most common problems
that people have when trying to animate
| | 02:59 | a character or other articulated hierarchy.
| | 03:02 | I will go down here to my Key tools and
turn on Auto Key and I will go to lets
| | 03:07 | say, frame 30, and in Local mode, I
will just spin this around to be about 200
| | 03:14 | and something degrees.
| | 03:15 | And I will turn off Auto Key and
rewind and play this back, and you will see
| | 03:20 | that I get this very strange result.
| | 03:22 | It's not spinning around
the axis that I wanted it to.
| | 03:26 | It looked okay when I was in the
viewport and turning it, but as soon as I tried
| | 03:30 | to animate this, I got problems.
| | 03:32 | This is not a bug, this is the way that
all 3D software is designed, and if you
| | 03:38 | are not careful you will run into this problem.
| | 03:40 | If I go back to Parent mode, this might be a
clear explanation of why this is happening.
| | 03:46 | If I rotate in just one axis in
Parent mode, I can see rotation values, and
| | 03:51 | notice although I'm rotating only
in X, all three of these values are
| | 03:56 | changing over here.
| | 03:58 | So that's the problem, is that we can't
use Local mode, because interpolations
| | 04:04 | will get messed up, and we can't use
Parent mode, because we can't actually
| | 04:09 | rotate it in the direction that we want here.
| | 04:12 | The solution is we need to use
another mode, which is called Gimbal.
| | 04:16 | I will go up here to Reference
Coordinate System and choose Gimbal.
| | 04:21 | Now when I rotate in Gimbal mode, it's
only rotating in one axis at a time and
| | 04:28 | that's really good, because now if I
animate this, it's only going to rotate in
| | 04:33 | one axis, the one that I've chosen, and
I won't get that strange behavior that
| | 04:37 | we saw a moment ago.
| | 04:38 | I will delete these
keyframes down here and start over.
| | 04:41 | I will just select those keyframes and
press the Delete key on the keyboard.
| | 04:45 | So I am in Gimbal mode, and so far so
good, as far as I'm only getting one
| | 04:51 | axis of rotation at a time, but I'm
not able to rotate it in the direction
| | 04:56 | that I need to, and the final
linchpin to this whole problem is I need to
| | 05:01 | change the rotation order.
| | 05:04 | 3ds Max, like most 3D programs,
calculates the rotations in linear sequence.
| | 05:11 | In other words, it's calculated in the
X rotation, then the Y rotations, and
| | 05:15 | finally Z rotations.
| | 05:18 | What I want to do is I want to
give priority to the Z axis here.
| | 05:23 | To change the rotation order, I
will select the object and go to the
| | 05:27 | Motion panel up here.
| | 05:30 | And in the PRS Parameter
section, I want to choose Rotation.
| | 05:34 | Then I have got the Euler Parameters
here, and I want to change the Axis Order to
| | 05:40 | give priority to the Z axis.
| | 05:44 | In this pulldown list, I will choose ZXY,
and although my object is turned in a
| | 05:51 | different direction now, I have
actually got exactly what I need now, because I
| | 05:55 | can spin it around Z and you
will see only Z is updating.
| | 06:00 | And if I do it this way, then I can
keyframe this exactly the way I need to.
| | 06:04 | I will turn Auto Key back on.
| | 06:05 | I will go to frame 30, and turn the
object, and now you'll see it's spinning in
| | 06:12 | the direction that I needed to.
| | 06:17 | Gimbal mode is essential
for controlling rotations.
| | 06:21 | But Gimbal mode alone is not good enough.
| | 06:24 | You'll also need to, in many cases, change
the order of rotations to give priority
| | 06:30 | to the most important rotation axis.
| | 06:33 | That's a little bit of obscure
information, that's something that's not quite
| | 06:38 | obvious in the interface and it may
not really be covered very well in most
| | 06:41 | training materials, but this is really
a life or death for creating convincing
| | 06:46 | animation that doesn't spin
around in uncontrollable ways.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Moving and rotating pivot points| 00:00 | Another critical consideration for
hierarchies is the position and orientation
| | 00:06 | of the pivot point of each object.
| | 00:08 | In this version of the robotArm, some of the
pivot points are correct and some are not.
| | 00:13 | For example, this shoulder object has
its pivot point exactly in the center
| | 00:19 | of this ball joint.
| | 00:20 | I'll select the Rotate tool
and turn it so you can see.
| | 00:25 | This object however does not have its pivot
point in the correct location, I'll undo that.
| | 00:31 | To move or rotate the pivot point,
select the object and go to the Hierarchy
| | 00:35 | panel, and the Pivot sub-
panel is active by default.
| | 00:40 | To move or rotate the Pivot, click on
Affect Pivot Only, and now you'll see a
| | 00:46 | new axis tripod that indicates the
position and orientation of the pivot point.
| | 00:51 | Don't confuse the pivot point with
the Transform Gizmo, because they are
| | 00:55 | two different things.
| | 00:56 | The pivot point is a property of the
object itself and the Transform Gizmo is
| | 01:02 | merely a manipulator that you can use
to move things around and rotate them.
| | 01:06 | Sometimes the Transform Gizmo is at the same
location as the pivot point, but not always.
| | 01:11 | For example, the Gizmo could be
located at the origin of the World.
| | 01:15 | I want to move this pivot point down so
it's at the center of this ball joint here.
| | 01:21 | I'll choose the Move tool and I
can just move it straight down.
| | 01:25 | To make sure that it's exactly where I
want it to be, I'll hit Alt+W and get in
| | 01:29 | very close in the Front viewport.
| | 01:32 | I just want to make sure that that's
positioned exactly in the center of that sphere.
| | 01:36 | To test it, I'll exit Affect Pivot
Only and grab the Rotate tool and turn the
| | 01:42 | object and make sure that it's
turning in the direction that I need it to.
| | 01:46 | And that looks okay, so
I'll hit Ctrl+Z to undo that.
| | 01:50 | Next I want to look at
the pivot point orientation.
| | 01:54 | I've got these two claw objects up here.
| | 01:57 | What I want here is I want to be able
to select both of those claws and rotate
| | 02:01 | them in opposite directions at once.
| | 02:05 | Currently, if I select them both and
try to rotate them, they'll rotate in the
| | 02:08 | same direction, but I can change
the pivot point orientation to get the
| | 02:13 | result that I need.
| | 02:15 | Once again, I'll select the object and
go to Affect Pivot Only, and what I want
| | 02:21 | to have happen here is I want the Y
axis to be pointing in opposite directions
| | 02:26 | for each one of these.
| | 02:28 | You can see here the Y axis here is
pointing in the world positive Y, and
| | 02:32 | this one as well is pointing in the
world positive Y. I want this to point in
| | 02:38 | the world negative Y.
| | 02:41 | With Affect Pivot Only active, the
Rotate tool active, and Angle Snaps turned
| | 02:47 | on, I'll rotate the pivot
point exactly 180 degrees.
| | 02:53 | I'll disable Affect Pivot Only, make
sure that I'm in Gimbal mode, and use
| | 02:59 | pivot point center.
| | 03:01 | Then I'll grab the two objects and
rotate in Y, and you'll see I can rotate
| | 03:06 | them both symmetrically. Excellent!
| | 03:09 | So now I have set the position and
orientation of each pivot point on my object.
| | 03:15 | And next I'm going to lock some of the
transforms so that I can't accidentally
| | 03:19 | move or rotate them in undesired directions.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Locking transforms| 00:00 | I'm just about ready to link all my
objects together, but one thing I can do
| | 00:05 | just to protect myself from
accident is to lock some of the transforms.
| | 00:10 | I can do that from the Hierarchy panel,
select an object, go to the Hierarchy
| | 00:16 | panel and choose Link Info,
and here you will see Locks.
| | 00:21 | For example, I'm not going to be
moving this object and I'm not going to be
| | 00:24 | scaling it at all, I can turn on the
Locks for Position X, Y, and Z and Scale
| | 00:30 | X, Y, and Z. For rotations, I'm really only
going to rotate this one in one direction.
| | 00:36 | I'll choose the Rotate tool so I
can figure out which direction I need.
| | 00:40 | Looks like it's the X axis
that I'll be rotating in.
| | 00:44 | I'll lock the Y axis and the Z axis,
and now if I try to rotate it in any
| | 00:50 | direction, I can really only rotate in X.
Even if I click on Y or Z, it's still
| | 00:56 | going to turn in X, and that's in Gimbal mode.
| | 01:00 | If I switch over to Local mode, you
can see actually that the other axes are
| | 01:05 | currently grayed out. That's optional.
| | 01:09 | However, I do prefer to work in Gimbal mode.
| | 01:12 | Before you link all your objects
together I do recommend that you check in on
| | 01:15 | all of these things.
| | 01:17 | You want to check in on the rotation
order, the pivot point position, and
| | 01:21 | orientation, and optionally lock
some of the transforms so that you don't
| | 01:26 | get into trouble later.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Linking objects| 00:00 | Once you've set up all your objects,
as described in the previous few movies,
| | 00:05 | then you're ready to link them together.
| | 00:08 | One way to do that is, in the viewport,
using the Select and Link button on the
| | 00:14 | extreme left-hand side of the main
toolbar. Select that icon, then click on
| | 00:20 | the object that you want to be the child and
drag to the object that you want to be the parent.
| | 00:25 | For example, I'll click on this
robotElbow, hold down the mouse, and drag it
| | 00:31 | down to robotShoulder and release the
mouse, and the parent object will flash
| | 00:38 | just for a moment, you'll see that
selection bracket just flash for a moment and
| | 00:43 | that will indicate that the link has been made.
| | 00:44 | Of course you have to have Selection
Brackets visible in order to see that, and
| | 00:49 | remember the shortcut is J.
Generally, you want to work from the outer
| | 00:53 | extremities inward, because the
outer parts are usually the children.
| | 00:58 | I can continue that process.
| | 01:00 | I can click on the shoulder, hold down
the mouse, and you'll notice, by the way,
| | 01:05 | as I move my cursor around,
I'll get different cursor icons.
| | 01:12 | When I get this icon with the little x,
that means that's not a legal object.
| | 01:16 | I cannot actually link something to itself.
| | 01:19 | But if I go down here, I get an
icon that indicates it's okay to make
| | 01:24 | this object the parent.
| | 01:26 | Then I'll release the mouse button and
the parent will flash for just a moment.
| | 01:30 | Once again, I'll click on this one,
hold down the mouse, and drag to the object
| | 01:36 | that I want to be the parent.
| | 01:38 | I can test all of this by using the Move
tool or any one of the Transform tools,
| | 01:43 | just making sure I don't try to
rotate or move it in a locked transform.
| | 01:48 | This base here does not have locked positions.
| | 01:52 | I've locked the positions of these ones
here so I can't actually move those, but
| | 01:56 | I can rotate them just to test
to see if my links are working.
| | 02:01 | Now up here at the top, I'm going to link
this wrist, link the wrist here to the elbow.
| | 02:10 | And finally, I've got these two
claws that I want to link to the wrist.
| | 02:14 | And in fact, I can do those both at once.
| | 02:18 | I can drag a selection rectangle to
select both of those and then click and hold
| | 02:24 | and drag down to the object that I want
to be the parent, and you'll see I get
| | 02:27 | two dashed line this time.
| | 02:30 | And when I release the mouse, those two
objects are now linked to the parent wrist.
| | 02:35 | And again, I can test this by selecting
that parent and rotating and making sure
| | 02:40 | that the children are actually following along.
| | 02:44 | To test the entire hierarchy I'll go
back to the Move tool and move the root and
| | 02:49 | make sure that everything
else is following along.
| | 02:52 | If I need to break links, I can simply
select the object and click the Unlink
| | 02:58 | button, and now this is no
longer a child of the shoulder.
| | 03:03 | And I can test that by selecting the
base and moving it and you'll see the elbow
| | 03:08 | is not following along.
| | 03:09 | I'll undo that and go ahead
and link it back up again.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Using Schematic View| 00:00 | 3ds Max has a very helpful window
called the Schematic View, which lets
| | 00:04 | you visualize the structure of your
hierarchy and also make or break links
| | 00:10 | in a node-based editor.
| | 00:13 | The Schematic View can be
opened in a couple of different ways;
| | 00:17 | one would be from Graph Editors > New
Schematic View, or from the main toolbar,
| | 00:22 | there's a button that says
Schematic View (Open), I'll click on that.
| | 00:27 | And what I see here are two windows;
| | 00:29 | I've got this little child
window here called Display.
| | 00:32 | I can use this to visualize
other types of relationships beside
| | 00:36 | from parent/child links.
| | 00:38 | Right now I don't need that so I'll close it.
| | 00:40 | The main window is showing me parent/child
links, and I can navigate in that
| | 00:44 | window using the keyboard shortcuts,
the middle-mouse button, Ctrl+Alt+Middle
| | 00:50 | mouse to zoom in or the mouse wheel.
| | 00:54 | The root, or the first parent, is shown at the
top here and each of children is shown below it.
| | 01:01 | If I need to make or break links, I
can do that within the Schematic View as
| | 01:05 | well, and you'll see I've got a
Select and Link button here that's labeled
| | 01:09 | Connect, and I've also got an Unlink button.
| | 01:13 | If I want to unlink everything, I can
just select it all and then click on Unlink.
| | 01:19 | And then to link things back up
again, I'll choose the link tool, Connect.
| | 01:24 | I'll link the Turntable to the Base, the
Shoulder to the Turntable, Elbow to the
| | 01:31 | Shoulder, Wrist to the Elbow, and
these two I can select the left and right
| | 01:37 | Claws and then link them to the Wrist.
| | 01:41 | The Schematic View is very helpful for
you, because you can, again, visualize
| | 01:45 | the structure of the hierarchy.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Solving problems with scale| 00:00 | To conclude our chapter on hierarchies,
I'd like to show you a common problem
| | 00:05 | that many users have.
| | 00:07 | It has to do with non-uniform
scale in an animated hierarchy.
| | 00:13 | In general, all objects in a hierarchy
should have scale values of 100%, 100%, 100%.
| | 00:21 | And if that's not the case, then
you will probably have issues when you
| | 00:25 | rotate child objects.
| | 00:27 | Here's a simplified version of a robot arm
that's a good illustration of the problem.
| | 00:32 | I've linked all the parts
except for the bottom parts here.
| | 00:35 | Just to illustrate that, you can
see if I rotate this, all these others
| | 00:38 | are rotating as well.
| | 00:39 | So I've got a box down here and that's
going to be the base of my robot arm, but
| | 00:44 | it's not tall enough.
| | 00:46 | If I didn't know any better, I
would just stretch it up by scaling.
| | 00:50 | And again, this is a problem.
| | 00:51 | I'll go ahead and grab the Scale tool,
and down here at the Transform Type-In
| | 00:57 | area, watch these numbers.
| | 00:59 | I'll scale it up in Z to make it
taller, and X is a 100, Y is 100, and I'll
| | 01:06 | set Z to be about 400.
| | 01:08 | It's about four times its
original size, and I release the mouse.
| | 01:13 | And that seems okay, it looks fine.
| | 01:16 | Now I'll go ahead and link the rest
of the hierarchy to the scaled box.
| | 01:20 | I'll click the Select and Link button
and link this shoulder object to the box,
| | 01:27 | and then I'll test this.
| | 01:29 | I'll select the box and rotate
it around, and that looks okay.
| | 01:35 | I'll select this elbow object
and rotate, and that seems okay.
| | 01:41 | And I'll select the shoulder and try to
rotate that, and oh my goodness, that is not okay.
| | 01:47 | That is an issue.
| | 01:48 | We're seeing this very strange
and bizarre scaling artifact.
| | 01:53 | The reason this is happening is
because of 3ds Max's internal order of
| | 01:57 | transform operations.
| | 02:00 | The Position is calculated, then
the Rotation, and then the Scale.
| | 02:04 | And those transforms are
calculated relative to the object's parent.
| | 02:09 | And what that means for us is that
these child objects are being rotated and
| | 02:15 | then scaled relative to the parent.
| | 02:20 | And then additionally, 3ds Max has sort
of gone behind my back here and it has
| | 02:26 | applied an inverse scale to this child so that
when the rotation value is 0, it looks okay.
| | 02:34 | But that's deceptive.
| | 02:36 | If I have that child object selected
and I go to the Scale tool and right-click
| | 02:40 | on it, you'll see that the
Absolute Y scale is set to 25% or so.
| | 02:47 | And that's the inverse of
the scale of its parent.
| | 02:51 | In other words, the parent was scaled
up to four times its original size in Y,
| | 02:56 | and then the child was scaled down to
one-quarter of the original scale in
| | 03:01 | order to compensate.
| | 03:03 | If this had a value of 100, then
all of the children would stretch out.
| | 03:09 | So this is clearly not what we want.
| | 03:11 | How do we avoid this situation?
| | 03:12 | I'm going to hit Ctrl+Z a few times
and get back to where I was originally.
| | 03:18 | I'll break the link here as well, just
go ahead and click on Unlink Selection.
| | 03:22 | You notice as soon as I did that, the
scale reverted back to 100%, and that's good.
| | 03:29 | To avoid the problem, don't non-
uniformly scale anything, or if you do, you'll
| | 03:34 | have to take steps to correct it.
| | 03:37 | The easiest thing to do here is to
leave the Scale at 100% in all axes and
| | 03:43 | simply change the Height parameter of the box.
| | 03:46 | I can set that Height to be four
times as high or 50 times 4 is 200.
| | 03:51 | And that's going to be just fine.
| | 03:53 | I haven't scaled it at all.
| | 03:55 | And that's the optimal solution.
| | 03:57 | However, if it's not a procedural
primitive object, then you can't just
| | 04:01 | adjust its parameters.
| | 04:03 | What if it's an editable poly or something
like that, that doesn't have those parameters?
| | 04:07 | I'll set this back down to 50 and then
convert it to editable poly, right-click,
| | 04:13 | Convert To > Convert to Editable Poly.
| | 04:17 | And in this case now, I don't
have any parameters to adjust.
| | 04:20 | Instead what I'll do is I'll just go
into Polygon Face Selection mode, grab that
| | 04:25 | top face, and simply move it up.
| | 04:28 | And that's not going to
affect the transform scale at all.
| | 04:30 | If I go back to object level, you'll see the
scale values are all still at 100, 100, 100.
| | 04:38 | That's one solution. I'll undo that.
| | 04:42 | Another solution would be to scale
all the polygons at the sub-object level.
| | 04:47 | If you've got a complex shape and you
need to stretch it in some way, you can't
| | 04:51 | just select one polygon and move it.
| | 04:53 | You'll need to select all the polygons,
drag a box around that, and I can scale
| | 05:00 | up here at sub-object level, and I'm
looking at the bottom of my screen and the Z
| | 05:05 | Scale value is about 400 now,
and I'll release the mouse.
| | 05:10 | And I'll need to Position it up as well.
| | 05:13 | But having done it this way, I have not
changed the Scale values at the level of the object.
| | 05:20 | Instead, I've changed the shape of the
object at sub-object level using the Scale tool.
| | 05:25 | Now I know that's not a very obvious
distinction, because I've clicked on
| | 05:29 | the same button to do it, but the difference
is whether I'm in sub-object mode or object mode.
| | 05:36 | And if I do scale operation at
sub-object mode, I'm affecting the shape of the
| | 05:40 | object without changing the transform values.
| | 05:44 | And to prove that, I'll go back up to
the Scale tool and you'll see that I've
| | 05:48 | got scale values of 100 in all axes.
| | 05:51 | Now I simply create my link and do a
test rotation and everything is fine.
| | 06:00 | Now what would you do if you
accidentally scaled the object at object level or
| | 06:06 | maybe you've got a scene from someone
else that had been non-uniformly scaled?
| | 06:10 | What would you do in that situation?
| | 06:14 | I'll reopen the same file to illustrate
what we can do in case we get into trouble.
| | 06:19 | Let's say I select the object and
then scale it up and it has got a
| | 06:26 | non-uniform scale of about 400 in Z. I
can reset this back to 100 and preserve
| | 06:33 | the existing shape.
| | 06:35 | To do that, I'll go into the
Hierarchy panel, and in the Adjust Transform
| | 06:41 | rollout, there's a button that says Reset Scale.
| | 06:44 | I'll click on that and now all three of
the X, Y, and Z axes have a scale of 100.
| | 06:52 | And now this is safe to link up.
| | 06:53 | Just go ahead and link it and do a
test rotation and everything is fine.
| | 07:01 | And that concludes our chapter on
hierarchies, best practices for transform
| | 07:07 | coordinate systems, pivot
points, linking, and scaling.
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|
|
18. Controllers and Constraints Understanding controllers| 00:00 | In the terminology of 3ds Max, a
controller is a program module that can vary
| | 00:06 | some parameter, such as an animation track.
| | 00:10 | Controllers can create procedural animation.
| | 00:13 | It's an alternate way of
making things move, instead of the
| | 00:15 | traditional keyframing.
| | 00:17 | To illustrate this, I'll make a bouncing
ball using a Waveform Float controller.
| | 00:23 | I'll just create a small sphere in my
world and just to make it a little bit
| | 00:27 | easier to see on the screen, I'm
going to go into my Time Configuration.
| | 00:31 | I want to use a custom frame rate of
15 frames a second, because that's the
| | 00:36 | capture rate that this
movie is being delivered at.
| | 00:40 | And I also am going to turn off
the Active Viewport Only option.
| | 00:44 | That way I'll be able to see the
motion in all the viewports. Click OK.
| | 00:50 | Now I'm ready to assign a controller.
| | 00:52 | One way to do that is through the Curve Editor.
| | 00:55 | With the ball selected, I'll go up to
Graph Editors > Track View - Curve Editor.
| | 01:00 | The elevation or vertical
position of the ball is the Z Position.
| | 01:03 | I'll select the Z Position track
and you'll see currently it's flat.
| | 01:08 | It's a constant value of 0.
| | 01:10 | To assign a controller, I'll go up to the
Edit menu and choose Controller > Assign.
| | 01:17 | Now I've got a list of all the possible
controllers that could be assigned to this track.
| | 01:21 | The one with the little carrot
in front of it is the currently
| | 01:24 | assigned controller.
| | 01:26 | Bezier Float is the default
controller for all transforms, and in fact for
| | 01:32 | most tracks in 3ds Max.
| | 01:35 | In this case, I'm going to choose
Waveform Float, and I'll click OK.
| | 01:40 | Now I get a child window popping up,
that gives me control over the Waveform
| | 01:44 | properties, such as its Period and so on.
| | 01:48 | I'll minimize the Curve Editor for a
moment and play back my animation so you
| | 01:52 | can see that, in fact, now
I've got a procedural animation.
| | 01:55 | It's oscillating back and forth.
| | 01:58 | Stop that, go back to the Curve Editor,
and I'll make some changes, like for
| | 02:02 | example, instead of a sine wave, as we
can see here, I'll do a half sine, and
| | 02:10 | that means it will bounce up and down,
and it won't oscillate in that same way.
| | 02:14 | It will look a little bit more realistic.
| | 02:15 | I'll change the Period,
which is the length of the cycle.
| | 02:19 | Let's make it 20 frames, and
let's see what that looks like.
| | 02:23 | I'll minimize, rewind and playback.
| | 02:26 | Wow, we're getting a pretty
cool bouncing ball effect for free.
| | 02:32 | You'll see however that
it's going through the floor.
| | 02:34 | I can just go back into those
parameters, and I want to position my time on
| | 02:41 | frame 0, so I can see what it looks
like at the very bottom of that curve, and
| | 02:47 | I've got a manual bias here I can adjust.
| | 02:50 | So I'll just drag this spinner out, until
the ball is right on the floor at frame 0.
| | 03:00 | Maximize the view and play that back.
| | 03:04 | Now you'll see the ball is bouncing up
and down, and it will actually bounce
| | 03:08 | up and down infinitely, because the
Waveform controller is now taking full
| | 03:13 | control over the Z axis.
| | 03:15 | That's a very basic example of how
you can use a controller to produce
| | 03:20 | procedural animation.
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| Constraining animation to a path| 00:00 | A constraint is a special type of
controller in which one object drives another.
| | 00:06 | A common application of
constraints is a constraint to a path.
| | 00:10 | We can attach an object to a spline
curve, and it will travel down the path,
| | 00:15 | moving and rotating
according to the shape of the path.
| | 00:18 | One thing that we could do with that is
to create a turntable animation in which
| | 00:23 | a camera is spinning around an
object so we can show off our model.
| | 00:28 | For a constraint I'll need a constraint object
and an object to which it will be constrained.
| | 00:33 | So the constraint object in
this case would be a Target camera.
| | 00:36 | I'll go to the Create panel, Cameras > Target.
| | 00:41 | Click to define the camera position,
hold the mouse and drag out and release to
| | 00:46 | define the target position, right
-click to complete that camera.
| | 00:52 | Next, I need an object to constrain it
to, and that will simply be a circle.
| | 00:56 | Go back to the Create panel and Shapes > Circle.
| | 00:59 | I'll drag that out at the
origin, and now I've got a circle.
| | 01:03 | I'll right-click to complete
that and I'll move it up a little bit.
| | 01:06 | Go to the Perspective view and move
that up, and now I'm ready to constrain the
| | 01:12 | camera to the circle.
| | 01:14 | Let's make this bigger with Alt+W.
I'll need to select the camera first, and
| | 01:20 | then go up to the Animation menu and
choose Constraints > Path Constraint.
| | 01:27 | Now 3ds Max is expecting me
to click on a Spline Curve.
| | 01:31 | I'll click on that circle, and now the
camera is attached to the circle, and if
| | 01:36 | I play the animation, you'll
see the camera is spinning around.
| | 01:42 | Let's see what that looks like in the
Camera viewport, Alt+W to go back to my 4
| | 01:46 | Viewport Layout, and I'll choose one of
these viewports that I'm not using, like
| | 01:51 | the Front view and choose Cameras > Camera001.
| | 01:55 | I'll press F3 to see the Shaded mode,
and I'll use the Shift+F hotkey to turn on
| | 02:01 | Safe Frames, and now when I press Play,
I can see the turntable animation.
| | 02:07 | Wow, that's pretty cool!
| | 02:10 | If I want to get closer to this, I
can change the size of the circle.
| | 02:13 | I'll just select that circle, go to
the Modify panel and reduce its Radius.
| | 02:20 | If I want it to be up a little
bit higher, I'll just move it up.
| | 02:24 | The camera's target is
not constrained to anything.
| | 02:26 | I can go to one of these other
views and select that target.
| | 02:29 | It might be a little tricky to do so.
| | 02:31 | You might need to get in really close.
| | 02:32 | I'll click on that target and I'll move
it up to frame my model better, and I'll
| | 02:38 | give focus to that Camera viewport
and press Play, and I've got a basic
| | 02:44 | turntable animation.
| | 02:48 | If I want to change the speed of this,
then I'll select the camera, which is the
| | 02:51 | constrained object, and you'll
see I've got keyframes here.
| | 02:55 | I've got a keyframe at 0
and a keyframe at 10 seconds.
| | 02:59 | If I want this to go faster, I can just
select this keyframe and move it to an
| | 03:03 | earlier point in time.
| | 03:05 | These keyframes represent the distance
along the path, and by default 3ds Max
| | 03:10 | sets the first keyframe to a position
of 0 on the path, and the second keyframe
| | 03:16 | to a position of 100% along the path,
and it will stretch those keyframes across
| | 03:21 | the currently visible timeline,
and now it's moving faster.
| | 03:26 | I'll give focus to the Camera view once again.
| | 03:32 | That's just a very basic introduction
to how you can use a Path constraint to
| | 03:36 | create a turntable animation.
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| Assigning a Link constraint| 00:00 | Another very common and extremely useful
type of constraint is a Link constraint.
| | 00:07 | This will allow you to link an
object to more than one parent.
| | 00:11 | The most common application of this
is to transfer a linkage over time.
| | 00:16 | Here's an example with a robot arm. I
want the robot arm to reach down and pick
| | 00:21 | up that cylinder and then bring it over
here and drop it, and a Link constraint
| | 00:26 | is perfect for this.
| | 00:28 | You'll notice that I've
completed the animation first.
| | 00:31 | That's not an absolute requirement,
but it's going to make things easier.
| | 00:34 | So I do recommend that you complete
your animation first, before you bother
| | 00:38 | trying to make the Link constraint.
| | 00:42 | So back at frame 0, what I want do is
assign a Link constraint to this cylinder, and
| | 00:48 | at first it's going to be constrained
to the room and then when the robot is
| | 00:52 | supposed to pick it up, then we will
constrain it to the wrist of the robot arm.
| | 00:57 | I can assign controllers and assign
constraints in multiple ways. The easiest way
| | 01:01 | to do this now is through the Animation menu.
| | 01:04 | I've got the Cylinder selected and I'll go up
the Animation > Constraints > Link Constraint.
| | 01:11 | And now 3ds Max is expecting me to
click on something, and I want to link it to
| | 01:16 | the room first, I'll click on the room.
| | 01:19 | You'll see that 3ds Max is also
automatically opened up the Motion panel, and
| | 01:24 | you can see here I got the all
bunch of parameters available.
| | 01:28 | Specifically, I've got a rollout that's
labeled Link Params, and in this little
| | 01:33 | window here is a list of
all of the Link Targets.
| | 01:37 | Currently there's just one.
| | 01:39 | This is telling me that at frame 0
the cylinder is linked to the room.
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| Adding link targets in the Motion panel| 00:00 | Now I'm ready to add another link target to
transfer the parenting to the robot arm's wrist.
| | 00:08 | I'll move my Track Bar down to the time
at which I want the link to be transferred.
| | 00:12 | And it will be some time right
before the robot arm lifts up.
| | 00:15 | I'll set that to let say 2 seconds 25 frames.
| | 00:20 | Then I'll go up here the Motion panel
and click Add Link and then click on the
| | 00:25 | robot arm's wrist, and a
new link has been created.
| | 00:31 | And after that point in time, now the
cylinder is linked to the robot arm's wrist.
| | 00:36 | Wow, that's pretty cool!
| | 00:43 | And then I just wanted to drop at about
let's say 5 seconds 0 frames, I'll link
| | 00:51 | the cylinder back down to the floor.
| | 00:53 | With the Cylinder selected, in the
Motion panel you'll see that the Add Link
| | 00:57 | button is still active.
| | 01:00 | All I need to do now is click on the
room and now the object is linked back to
| | 01:06 | the room at frame 150.
| | 01:08 | It's not going to drop by itself.
| | 01:10 | I will have to animate that in the next movie.
| | 01:12 | When I am finished, I want to
turn Add Link back off again.
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| Animating constrained objects| 00:00 | The constraints in 3ds Max
have quite a lot of flexibility.
| | 00:04 | In some other programs like Maya,
when you sign a constraint to a
| | 00:08 | Transform Channel, that's it.
| | 00:10 | You can't animate the
object in the traditional way.
| | 00:13 | But actually in 3ds Max you can,
because there's a system of layering to the
| | 00:18 | controllers and constraints.
| | 00:20 | And that kind of happens for you
by default, it's very convenient.
| | 00:25 | Right now, I don't have any animation
on the cylinder proper, I just got some
| | 00:30 | Link constraints, and I'm just going
to animate that cylinder dropping.
| | 00:35 | I will go ahead and position that at
about 5 seconds in, select that cylinder,
| | 00:41 | and I want to keyframe it.
| | 00:42 | You notice these keyframes here now?
| | 00:44 | Those are the Link keyframes that
correspond to the Motion panel targets here.
| | 00:49 | I want to keyframe the Position and
Rotation for the cylinder at this point in
| | 00:54 | time at 5 seconds in.
| | 00:56 | I will go over to my Key Filters
and turn on Position and Rotation.
| | 01:00 | I will enable Set Key, click the
Skeleton Key and now I've got Position and
| | 01:07 | Rotation keyframes at that point in time.
| | 01:10 | Then I will just go a little bit
later, maybe about 15 frames later or so.
| | 01:15 | Grab the Move tool and position the
cylinder, and maybe I'll rotate it too a
| | 01:21 | little bit and click the Skeleton Key again.
| | 01:27 | And as you can see, even though it's
constrained to the floor at that point in
| | 01:31 | time, I'm also able to animate it as well.
| | 01:35 | Maybe I'll move that keyframe a
little bit earlier to speed that up.
| | 01:42 | That's pretty cool!
| | 01:43 | And that all happens because 3ds
Max has something called a List
| | 01:47 | controller added by default.
| | 01:49 | Turn off Set Key, I'll go up here in
the Motion panel to Assign Controller, and
| | 01:54 | you can see that there is a Link
controller in effect, but if I open that
| | 01:59 | up, there is also Position and
Rotation controllers inside that.
| | 02:03 | So in fact I've got nested controllers there.
| | 02:06 | It's a very useful feature of 3ds Max
and it makes it so you don't have to
| | 02:10 | actually build a separate hierarchy
in order to animate constrained objects.
| | 02:16 | That's the basic introduction to
controllers and constraints in 3ds Max.
| | 02:20 | Again, it's a very powerful set of
tools that you can use to animate objects.
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|
|
19. RenderingUnderstanding image sequences| 00:00 | When you've completed the modeling
materials, camera, and scene layout,
| | 00:06 | lighting and animation fore shot,
your final result will be rendered to a
| | 00:12 | series of images on disk.
| | 00:14 | That's what this chapter
is about, is rendering.
| | 00:17 | When you render in production, you
always render to an image sequence, a
| | 00:22 | series of individually numbered still
frames, and that's what you'll see here,
| | 00:26 | in my Exercise Files folder;
renderoutput, logoAnimation, and I can just page
| | 00:32 | through this.
| | 00:35 | We can see one of these frames
one at a time. Why do we do this?
| | 00:40 | Why don't we just render directly to a movie?
| | 00:43 | Well there are a lot of reasons why.
| | 00:45 | For one, if you render directly to a
movie file, then there's a good chance that
| | 00:50 | if your machine crashes or anything
goes wrong, the entire movie will be lost.
| | 00:57 | Whereas, if you render to individual
still frames, then if something goes wrong, you can
| | 01:02 | just pick up the rendering on the next
frame, and this is really important to
| | 01:06 | especially if the frames
are taking a really long time.
| | 01:10 | It's not unusual in feature film
production for a frame to take at least a
| | 01:15 | half hour to render just one frame.
| | 01:19 | So it might take months to
render your entire movie.
| | 01:23 | Another reason why you would render
to an image sequence is because if you
| | 01:26 | render to a movie file, a movie
file can end up being very, very large.
| | 01:32 | In fact, just a standard definition
video, a minute of uncompressed footage is
| | 01:38 | going to be almost 2 GB in size,
and that can get very unwieldy.
| | 01:43 | If you've got a large image size or
a long sequence, it can add up to be
| | 01:49 | sometimes tens of gigabytes, and you can
actually exceed the capabilities of your
| | 01:54 | computer, or file system, or archive media.
| | 01:59 | And for these reasons, you always
want to render your final production to a
| | 02:03 | series of numbered stills, as seen here.
| | 02:07 | And then you can take it into some other
program like QuickTime, or After Effects,
| | 02:11 | or Final Cut, or Premiere, or whatever;
take that image sequence into an editing
| | 02:15 | or compositing program and use that
program to compress it to a movie file.
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| Choosing Render Setup options| 00:00 | I've got a cute little flying logo
animation here, and I'm ready to render this
| | 00:05 | out to an image sequence.
| | 00:08 | I'll go into the Render Setup dialog
here and play around with some of the
| | 00:13 | properties of the renderer.
| | 00:15 | The first thing is, of course, whether we
want to render out to a single frame or
| | 00:20 | to a sequence of images, and I'll
choose the Active Time Segment, the full 180
| | 00:25 | frames of my timeline.
| | 00:28 | I could choose an
alternate range, if I wanted to.
| | 00:31 | This Active Time Segment
is what I want this time.
| | 00:34 | I also need to set the Output Size here,
that's the pixel resolution of the image.
| | 00:40 | Right now it's at the default
of 640x480 and that's fine.
| | 00:45 | If I wanted something else, I could go
to this Output Size pulldown and choose
| | 00:49 | something else like HDTV.
| | 00:51 | And of course, as you note, if I change
the resolution, that's going to change
| | 00:56 | the aspect ratio in my Camera view, and
I'll only be able to see that if I have
| | 01:02 | Safe Frames enabled in the Camera
viewport, and they are enabled currently.
| | 01:08 | I'm just going to switch this
back to the default of 640x480.
| | 01:13 | Scrolling down a little bit, I
also have a choice of renderers.
| | 01:17 | Down here at the very bottom of the
Common tab, you'll see Assign Renderer, and
| | 01:22 | you can open that rollout and you
can assign different renderers to the
| | 01:26 | Production Renderer or the ActiveShade Renderer.
| | 01:31 | Right now they're both set to
the Default Scanline Renderer.
| | 01:34 | If I wanted something else, I would click
here on this little browse button and I
| | 01:39 | get a pop-up dialog here. It's out of
scope for this training title for us to
| | 01:44 | talk about all the different
possibilities of the different renderers, but you
| | 01:47 | can see we have a lot of choices here.
| | 01:50 | I'm just going to leave it at the
default, which is the Scanline Renderer.
| | 01:56 | Those are some of the most basic
options, but next, I need to set the file
| | 02:00 | output and we'll do that in the next movie.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Specifying file output| 00:00 | To save my rendered images to disk, I
have to specify a file output, a location,
| | 00:06 | and also an image file type.
| | 00:09 | Right now I haven't done that, and
if I click the Render button now, I'll
| | 00:13 | actually get a warning message that says, You
are rendering a sequence with no assigned file.
| | 00:18 | Frames may be lost.
| | 00:20 | Do you want to continue?
| | 00:21 | Well actually it should
say frames will be lost.
| | 00:25 | It's not a question of if; it's absolute.
| | 00:28 | If you render without specifying a file
output, what will happen is 3ds Max will
| | 00:32 | draw the images onto the screen, but
then nothing will get saved on the disk.
| | 00:37 | No I don't want to
continue. I'll bomb out of there.
| | 00:40 | I'll scroll down in the Render Setup
window and I'm looking for Render Output.
| | 00:47 | And currently no file has been assigned.
| | 00:50 | I'll click on the Files button here and
here's where I get to define where I'm
| | 00:55 | going to save to and in what format.
| | 00:57 | You'll see that it has taken me
directly to my current project, which is
| | 01:00 | Exercise Files, and the renderoutput folder.
| | 01:05 | I recommend that you
create a subfolder within this.
| | 01:08 | It's a good idea to make a folder for each
and every image sequence that you create.
| | 01:12 | If you're doing a movie, you might
have a project that has a 100 different
| | 01:17 | shots in it, and if you dump those all
into the same renderoutput folder, it's
| | 01:21 | going to be very confusing, because you'll
have thousands and thousands of files there.
| | 01:26 | So I recommend that you create a
subfolder and I'll call this logoAnimation.
| | 01:32 | Then I'll double-click on that to go
into that folder and now I need to give a
| | 01:37 | file name, and I'll call this one logo,
and I'll put an underscore after that.
| | 01:42 | Just for convenience sake.
| | 01:44 | 3ds Max is going to append a number to
the end of every frame and it's just a
| | 01:49 | little bit easier to read
if I put in an underscore.
| | 01:52 | I'll also need to define a format.
| | 01:54 | You'll see that there are a bunch of
options here in the Save as type pulldown list.
| | 02:00 | What's good here?
| | 02:01 | Well I'll tell you what's not good, JPEG.
| | 02:04 | You never want to render directly to a
JPEG file unless it's just for preview
| | 02:09 | purposes, like if you're doing dailies,
something that's going to be reviewed,
| | 02:13 | and you don't really care if
it's in full production quality.
| | 02:17 | A JPEG file is always lossy-compressed,
and it becomes a real problem if you take
| | 02:23 | a JPEG file into a compositing program
and then try to change its contrast or
| | 02:27 | color or something like that.
| | 02:29 | You always want to save your
renders to an uncompressed or a
| | 02:34 | losslessly compressed format.
| | 02:36 | My favorite is actually PNG
or Portable Network Graphics.
| | 02:42 | Now I have not yet set the
options for the PNG format.
| | 02:46 | If I click the Save button,
the Configuration dialog pops up.
| | 02:51 | I've already played around with this
a little bit and so it's actually not
| | 02:54 | at the default values.
| | 02:55 | The default is in fact RGB
48 with an Alpha channel.
| | 03:00 | A 48 bit file is a high-dynamic range image,
and some programs won't be able to read that.
| | 03:06 | I recommend that you choose RGB 24 bit.
| | 03:09 | The Alpha channel is the transparency.
| | 03:12 | If I was going to layer this with
any other images, then I might need an
| | 03:16 | Alpha channel to do that.
| | 03:18 | But this one already has a background in it.
| | 03:20 | I'll turn the Alpha channel off.
| | 03:23 | When I click OK, both of those dialogs close.
| | 03:26 | If I need to go back in there and change
those, I can click on the Files button again.
| | 03:31 | And if I need to change my file format
options, I can go here and click on Setup.
| | 03:37 | Don't be dismayed or
confused that it's grayed out.
| | 03:40 | That's actually a minor bug in the program.
| | 03:43 | It doesn't matter that it's grayed out.
| | 03:44 | I can go ahead and click on that.
| | 03:46 | I might need to do it more than
once and then I can get back into that
| | 03:49 | Configuration dialog.
| | 03:53 | So I've set all of the options for my rendering.
| | 03:55 | I've got a file location, I've got a render
size, and I've got a duration of 180 frames.
| | 04:03 | It's a good idea to save your scene at this
point, and I'll go ahead and click Render.
| | 04:09 | 3ds Max draws the frames to the screen as we go.
| | 04:14 | And that's very convenient, because we
can see what's happening as it is rendering.
| | 04:19 | It's also giving us some really
helpful feedback here about how long it
| | 04:24 | might take to render.
| | 04:26 | As we go forward, you'll see that each
frame is taking longer to render because
| | 04:30 | 3ds Max is calculating these Ray-
traced reflections on the logo.
| | 04:36 | In my test with this, it took about 20
minutes to render on my machine here at
| | 04:41 | lynda.com, but this is a pretty
fast machine, so your mileage may vary.
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| Playing Image Sequences in the RAM Player| 00:00 | To check our animation, we can use the 3ds
Max RAM Player. This is a file player that
| | 00:06 | will load all of those individual images into
System Memory, and play them back at a precise
| | 00:11 | frame rate of our choosing. It's found in
the Rendering menu, and it's right down at
| | 00:17 | the bottom, RAM Player. To open up an Image
Sequence, I will go up here to Channel A and
| | 00:24 | click on the file browser. There is a
Channel A and Channel B because if we want to, we
| | 00:29 | can load two separate Image Sequences and
compare them. I just have one this time. I
| | 00:34 | will click on the file browser and it takes
me directly to my renderoutput folder. Here
| | 00:39 | is my logoAnimation folder inside there,
and I will drill-down in there and select the
| | 00:44 | very first frame, and click Open. I get some
dialog boxes that pop-up here. First of all,
| | 00:51 | do I want to load the entire Image Sequence
or just part of the Sequence? If I've got
| | 00:56 | HD frames, or if I've got a lot of them,
they might not all fit in System Memory, and I
| | 01:01 | could choose to load just some of them at
this point. But I've got a lot of memory on
| | 01:05 | this machine and I'm sure that they will fit,
and it will be no problem. I'll click OK.
| | 01:10 | Then I get another dialog box opening up
that asks, Do you want to knock the resolution
| | 01:15 | of this down? Again, if you've got HD frames
and you are having memory issues, you could
| | 01:20 | go in here and reduce the Resolution and 3ds
Max will resize the images so that they will
| | 01:26 | fit into memory better. I will just click
OK to click through that, and you'll see now
| | 01:31 | that it is loading all the images, and it
is bringing them into System Memory. And I
| | 01:36 | can choose the frame rate here, I've got the
default frame rate of 30 frames per second
| | 01:41 | right now, and just press the Play button
and see what I have got. And this is a very
| | 01:46 | helpful way to analyze your animation to make
sure that it's working okay. If you want to
| | 01:51 | you can actually play in reverse, or you can
play back at a different frame rate, maybe
| | 01:57 | slower; 10 frames a second for analysis
purposes. Very useful. I'll put it back to 30 frames
| | 02:03 | per second. That concludes our chapter on
rendering, and it also concludes our course
| | 02:09 | on 3ds Max Essential Training.
| | 02:11 |
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ConclusionGoodbye| 00:00 | 3ds Max 2013 is an extremely powerful,
yet relatively easy to use program.
| | 00:06 | I hope that what you've learned
here will inspire you to go on to
| | 00:10 | create incredible things;
| | 00:11 | movies, animations, games,
visualizations of interior designs and so on.
| | 00:16 | We've got lots of other great titles
on 3ds Max, here at lynda.com, so please
| | 00:22 | explore the rest of the online
training library and go out there and do
| | 00:26 | incredible things with this
powerful software. I'm Aaron F. Ross.
| | 00:31 | I would like to thank you
for listening and say goodbye!
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