Further Studies in Organic Modeling
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Using MAX Default Tools 2-15-98: This article focuses on head modeling using MAX's default tools consisting of two seperate sections that features different methods for generating complex shapes. The 1st method closely resembles the procedure I use to develop heads skinning together various cross sections. The 2nd method is a little bit more simple but, all you will end up with is a basic, featureless head that you must later tweak extensively using FREE FORM DEFORMATION, PUSH, or any other method you prefer. But, the main advantage of the second method is that it gives MAX users capabilities similar to other packages such as PowerAnimator v8 for instance. If you ever looked at a PowerAnimator tut, you no doubt noticed how they use the actual two dimensional shape of the object they are going to skin. By inserting cross sections along the length of the shape PowerAnimators get a three dimensional shape. Well, in MAX this process is way simpler and more automated. Simply take the top and side pieces of your shape and pick the cross section you want and then MAX does the rest. What shocks me to death is that their are no other tuts on this subject. Part I will address skinning using the Loft tool like the new U-Loft tool that comes with MAX R2 at my Studies on Skinning in MAX R2. Right now, I'm at a loss for the first process. It's way hard and nothing's automated. For instance, U-Loft calculates the path for you so that you will never have to draw a path spline.
Part I - Lofting Multiple Cross Sections The strange irony is that I heard it was possible from a lightwave/imagine user on one of my many travels on the net. 'Lofting' he said it was called in MAX that allows users to skin curves. Naturally I said no waaayyyy, man! You got it all wrong. You must be thinking of RHINO. But, so far my model looks normal. It's scary but I guess MAX always had the ability to skin together cross sections on its own. Just that nobody thought to give MAX a chance. But don't get too excited. This method is somewhat flawed. So far, I really can't get the shape perfectly right. My theory is once you get to that 90 degree curve you have to do something totally different than what is normally done in SURFACE TOOLS. Meaning, the curve to form the side of the head must be adjusted somewhat differently.
First draw a half circle. I used the ARC command but if you know a better way than please use it. This spline will be your PATH. The cool thing about LOFTING is that it does not care about the number of verts you have in your cross section so much as it cares about your first vertex. This is the probuly the most important step because it determines how your shape should curve around in degrees.
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Further Studies in Organic Modeling
Read the lesson on learning how to skin models using SURFACE TOOLS tutorial yet? If not, study it to see how to design cross sections and make sure you know what a big vert or FIRST VERTEX is. Just like SURFACE TOOLS, the first vertex position is very important to the lofter. That white object you see is my PATH sitting there just waiting for the cross sections to be snapped to the curve.
Sorry pic so blurry. The next step is very important. Click on the path spline and then click on LOFT option under Create->Geometry. Next, click on your first cross section. Make sure your path value is set to 0. Make sure the rest of your settings look like this one.
You should get an object like this one after you click Get Shape from the panel. From here, it's a matter of artistic judgement where to add the rest of your curves. The Path value goes from 0 to 100. Your first section will sit on 0. From here, determine the distance between each curve. For this example, try around 10 to 15. Play around with the other options and see what you get. There really is not easy way to figure where to put your cross section other than once its there, you can tell if it looks wrong.
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Further Studies in Organic Modeling
When you get halfway your face should probuly flesh out something like mine. I really don't like skinning using LOFT but, I figured why not give it a shot to see if I like it better because of the instance option and fast updates. Unfortunately, after all this hard work all you get is a mesh which is fine if you have a Mesh Deformation program. I know its possible to build a perfect head like this because I saw an example at this site. I really don't know how he did it but, he did. This method is kind of tough at first just like U-LOFT. Just keep trying and let me know if you can get this process to work. But, I hope this tut has given many of you ideas how to approach other projects.
These are the settings I checked to generate a smooth loft surface. Lofting using the default MAX tools may require the artist to edit the splines a little differently than SURFACE TOOLS. I still have to research and develop some solutions to this interesting feature of the MAX lofter.
Part II - Lofting Using Fit Deformation The following method will form a smooth basic shape very quickly using the Fit deformation module inside the Lofter. Probuly one of the most important modeling tools in MAX because it delivers the overall form of any organic or mechanical shape to the user very quickly. At first, the regulations regarding the use of the lofter may seem rather strict but, after a couple applications of the lofter, most MAX users will no doubt come to appreciate it as an important and efficent tool for producing low or highly detailed meshes.
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Further Studies in Organic Modeling
That single line at the top is the linear PATH which is nothing more than a single spline. The green circle will be the cross section the lofter will use to flesh out the head shape. As you may already know, nearly all organic surfaces are composed of circles. Therefore, I decided to use circles to compose my head shape. The purple circle is my FIT X shape. It is very critical that you understand what the FIT X/Y shapes represent. I recommend purchasing Inside MAX I for detailed info on the lofter. There is a whole chapter that details all of its' capabilities. The orange shape is a basic representation of a head shape that I want lofted. I used Smooth->Smooth drawing type to draw my lines instead of Bezier->Corner type. I picked Smooth because it allows the artist to draw organic shapes quickly similar to the use of NURBS curves.
First, click on the PATH shape. Next, click on Create>Geometry->Loft. Click on the LOFT button to bring out the roll out. The next step is to click on the cross section shape to fill out the path spline. Now, you should see a solid cylinder depending on the width of your circle. The lofter automatically assumes you want all the cross sections drawn from the first position 0, all the way to the end of the path, 100.
Next, click on the Modifier button. At the bottom you will see the Loft rollout. Go down and click on the Deformations rollout and click on the FIT option. In the window, click on Make symetrical to turn it off. Now make sure Display X axis is selected, then click on the shape that is going to form the top of your mesh. If you ever observed the top view of a head mesh you no doubt noticed how all the points converge to the center of the circular shape? Well, this is why I selected a circle to be my FIT X shape. Anyways, click Get Shape, then click on the circle. You should see the circle in the window like this.
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Further Studies in Organic Modeling
This is my FIT Y shape which defines the side view of the mesh. As you can see, I made some minor adjustments to the overall contour of my shape. All of the vertices as you may notice never overlap to avoid a strict violation imposed by the lofter. This is the reason why most of the organic shapes you may get from the lofter will not be very detailed. But, it is possible to loft other details of your mesh seperately then Vertex Weld them on later. Also, it is possible to add minor details such as a nose as long as your shape never hits a certain position along the Y axis more than once. Imagine taking a ruler along the X axis along your shape. If you have more than two points alone this imaginary verticle plane you have a shape that's overlaping. The lofter will still render your shape though. But, it will have numerous, uneven breaks that are tough to weld.
Now, click on the Display X/Y axis button. Match up the vertices the best you can to create a smooth transition between the two deformation curves. If you can imagine the FIT Y shape sitting in the left viewport and the FIT X shape in the same viewport just that it sits inside the FIT Y shape like the general composition of a NURBS object. That is the same logic of a lofted shape in MAX and the key to developing other meshes. Next, click on the Generate Path button to confine your lofted shape to a path.
Now you should have a smoothly rendered object. The next part is what really makes the lofter really shine. You can control the density of your mesh. First, check the Skin option under display to view your wireframe. Adjust your shape and path steps to reduce your face count. This is the main advantage of Lofting this way over U-Loft and SURFACE TOOLS. And you have the ability to generate the form you want and reduce it way lower than both NURBS and PATCHES. Be sure to check under File>Summary Info to see your face count as you adjust your steps.
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Further Studies in Organic Modeling
The shape the lofter generates never is much to look at. It's in bad need of a nose, lips, and countless other details a head mesh posesses. But, with a little tweaking, this can easily take on a little more definition.
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MAX GUIDE v.1.00 - By Olli-Pekka Saastamoinen Website: http://www.dc.fi/~ops BOX MODELING EXERCISE 3
In the next 20 minutes you'll learn an easy way to model a human body. We're going to use box modeling technique (with meshsmooth). Requirments for this tutorial are that you have 3D Studio Max 1.2 or later and knowledge of the Max basics. Note: Max 2.5 users might find useful the Cut and Slice options.
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There's no retouching made after Meshsmooth was applied.
Step 1. Making Profiles file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...20Tutorials/Box%20Modeling/Modeling%20Body.htm (2 of 11) [29/07/2002 15:19:47]
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First we have to make (well not have to, but helps a lot) 2 reference pictures (front and side view of what we are modeling). If you have a scanner you can draw them on paper and scan to you computer. I don't have, so here's how I did it. I drew the profiles in Max with splines. See bellow.
Click here to see a high res version. You can use that if you want.
Step 2. Modeling Leg
It's easier to start from a leg. Start by makeing a box. Oh and remember that you have to model only the other half.
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Now apply Edit Mesh and select a top face. You don't have to enter anything in the "amount", just press up arrow and you'll see the extrusion.
Next picture shows you "have to do" segments.
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Those thick red lines shows you where you have to stop the extrusion. When you hold down the arrow and see the extrusion you have to stop in these lines (you get minimum detail). In Max 1.2 and 2.0 you have to think in the future, because you can't add more segments afterwards (in middle of the body). Max 2.5 users can make a whole body first and then add more segments (Cut and Slice) You also should watch your side view.
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Leg extrusion ready. See those segments on the knee area (you should add more segments in knees, start of an arm, elbow etc.. to make it better for animation). Now It's time for editing the leg. Move vertices so they match with the reference pictures you made. You might see that I placed some segments wrong (on butt area). That doesn't matter much when Meshsmooth is applied. Max 2.5 owners have no problems, use Slice.
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Step 3. Torso
Use the same technique as with the leg.
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Step 4. Arm file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...20Tutorials/Box%20Modeling/Modeling%20Body.htm (8 of 11) [29/07/2002 15:19:47]
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Start by selecting the face where to start arm extrusion
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Here's what I got.
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Click here to continue - Making hand
© Copyright 1998-99, Lukas & Dominik Dryja. All Rights Reserved. Duplication strongly prohibited.
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MAX GUIDE v.1.00 - By Olli-Pekka Saastamoinen BOX MODELING EXERCISE 4
Step 5. Hand
I made a side view of the finger with splines (top view also)
I made some boxes to help the extrusion process. Black boxes shows points where the finger bends. Whites are for nail (yes we're going to do a finger nail also) Pictures bellow shows how I extruded the finger.
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Next step is to move vertices so they match with the profiles. Note that I added more segments on tip of the finger to make it more smooth.
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Now comes the "hardest" part extruding a finger nail
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Select the faces and press ONLY once the extrusion arrow.
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Now select those extured vertices and scale them inside the finger as bellow picture shows.
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Red line shows what where scaled
You need 3 segments to make this nail. Seg 1. You did this minute ago. Seg 2. These vertices you pull IN the finger, so you get a finger nail "socket" Seg 3. This is the nail it self. You pull vertices OUT of that "socket"
FINISHED FINGER (MeshSmooth)
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Well it's not perfect. When your character is ready (and meshsmooth applied) you can select fingers vertices and apply FFD modifier to edit fingers. Finger nail is little too big, but that's very easy to correct.
Now we have one finger. All we need is a thumb.
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As you can see I made a copy and deleted half of a finger and scaled it bigger (looks almost a thumb)
Step 6. Connecting Fingers To A Palm
Start by makeing 3 copies of your fingers
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Place them as you can see on above picture.
Next make a box (width 4, lenght 4, height 1)
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Now move vertices so it look something like pictures bellow
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Here I've placed a thumb in it's place. I just rotated it and moved vertices so they can be welded with palm vertices.
Now it's time to connect those fingers to a palm If you're getting following results when you apply Meshsmooth
You have made one mistake (yes you welded those vertices together), but did you deleted the faces?
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Here all "connection faces" are deleted.
Now you just attach them together and weld those vertices (white dots)
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Ending result
Fingers are way too long. Meshsmooth also makes finger nail area look like a box (can't figure out why)
Continue On Next Page - Making The Shoe
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MAX GUIDE v.1.00 - By Olli-Pekka Saastamoinen BOX MODELING EXERCISE 6
Step 6. Shoe Makeing a shoe is so simple, that couple of pictures explains it all
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Some help made with splines.
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There's 2 segments first is pulled little bit over a leg and second one is pulled down.
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Not bad.
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Step 7. Connections
All we have left to do is connecting a hand to an arm and then 2 body halfs together
Connecting all the parts together you do just like with the fingers. Delete connection faces and then weld vertices together.
Step 8. Meshsmooth
Now just apply Meshsmooth. Check "quad output" and "smooth".
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Now it's time for rotating your character and saying "Did I do this!"
If you watch very carefuly you might see, that something important is missing. Yep, a head. file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...20Tutorials/Box%20Modeling/Modeling%20Shoe.htm (7 of 8) [29/07/2002 15:23:48]
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Don't worry here's a small link list for the best head tutorials. Modelling a Face With Patches Modelling a Head With Patches Modeling a Head With NURBS And THE head tutorial for Surface Tools owners Facial Modeling - Spline Modeling Heads
All questions/comments are welcome
[email protected]
© Copyright 1998-99, Lukas & Dominik Dryja. All Rights Reserved. Duplication strongly prohibited.
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Chapter 7
Making Creatures with FFD
This tutorial is a chapter from my Building Awesome Creatures Book. Last section, we took capsule primitives and formed them into muscle primtives. Then we used FFD and booleans to make our biped seamless. By relying heavily on a blending plugin such as blend by digimation, we were able to achieve excellent results. Now, let's model a more irregular type surface using FFD again. This character is way simplier than the blobby mesh, therefore you may not even need to merge the various mesh parts we are going to create. Modeling with FFD Golden Rule: 1. When adjusting FFD lattice points, always drag to select your points. 90% of the time, I always make square selections. This is very important. First, we are going to build our creatures leg. Draw a 12-sided capsule in your Top and Front viewports Radius:42 and Height:-242. It should have at least 3 to 4 segments. Apply modify FFD(box) 4x4x5. Adjust your leg to look this Left viewport.
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Chapter 7
Label this object leg01. Now we need to make a shape that slightly resembles a bone and then position it directly above this one at a nice angle. Draw a capsule of dimension Radius:68 and Height:-421. Give the primitive at least 5 segments. Rotate the leg on the Z axis. MAke sure it is properly placed in your Front and Left viewports. Remember, do not apply any transforms in your perspective view. Apply FFD. Manipulate the lattice until you get a nice bone shape where both ends are kinda balls up. Label this object leg02. To complete this leg object, clone leg02. Drag the copy to where the ends meet with leg02. Your viewport should look something like this one.
Notice my pivot point is at the end of my bone. For animation purposes, this is very important. Our creature's leg is almost done. Let's add some claws for his feet. Create a multisegment capsule of dimensions Radius: 70 and Height: 368. This shape must be at least 4 to 5 segments. Apply FFD. Adjust your lattice using the Top and Left viewports until it resembles a claw. Move it to your leg. Now let's design our little creature's body. In your Top viewport, draw a capsule. Watch as it extends into your Left viewport. It should be dimensions Radius: 81 and Height:-839. Make the segments 5. Now go to the scale transform and hold down your mouse and choose non-uniform scale. Restrict your axis to X. Now increase your capsules X scale a reasonable amount. Apply FFD (box) 4x4x5. To adjust the creatures' body, it may mean adjusting the lattice points in all three 2D views. Label this object body01.
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Chapter 7
This is my Left viewport. Now, we can complete his lower body. If you want, go ahead and collapse your modifier stack for each individual object. Highlight your entire leg object by holding CTRL key and clicking on each part. Now SHIFT and rotate your clone on it's Y axis in your left viewport. Try to place somewhere along the body. Check all of your views to make sure the placement is accurate. Now repeat this procedure twice. When you are done, you will have a quadraped built. It kinda squat in a menacing position similar to spider. All of your legs should meet in the center of your body.
Position a sphere a top of your boy and label it Head01. Now create a second object to hollow a section for a huge eyeball. Position the second object slightly in front of the first. Align both in your Front and Left viewports making sure you will get a good compound object. Perform a boolean subtraction B-A operation and then collapse your head01 object. Operand B should have been Sphere01. Now you should attach the head piece to the body. Pick the head object and boolean union it to the body. Collapse the mesh. If you have the blend plugin that comes with Bones Pro, apply a seperate Edit Mesh modifier and then blend. Make sure you check the selected vertices box and then set up a nice tension amount.
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Chapter 7
These are pics of the head object and the blended surface. If you are not planning on animating the inner legs, you may want to boolean union these parts together. You can do this by going to Display->Click on the body->Hide Selected. Now attach all the legs in the center. Since the seams will be beyond the viewer's perspective, it is not necessary to blend between these parts. Now go back to Display and choose unhide all. It is possible to animate the body and head pieces together but, not the whole body without a mesh deformation plugin. If you have Bones Pro MAX or Character Studio, it is possible to blend all the pieces together and then use the segmented frame we set up as the bones. Because this is a quadraped and not a two legged creature, you cannot use Character Studio's biped plugin to animate this mesh. If you planning on incoporating this character in a game, it may be best to leave this little guy segmented. This site is ©1999 by Richard Osborne. All rights reserved. Duplication strictly prohibited without my written permission.
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Tutorials section - Modeling
Constructing A Face Using Surface Tools
Creating a detailed face using a polygonal modeling tool like 3D-Studio Max has traditionally been very difficult. Until recently, most people doing this kind of work have needed to spend thousands of dollars on 3D digitizing devices. Other 3D packages that allow B-Spline modelling have faired better at the task, but as of release 1.2 MAX users do not have NURBS modelling capability The tutorials that come with Surface Tools only touch on what is possible with the plugin. This document is designed to supplement the tutorials, not replace them. You should read the tutorials that come with the package before reading this one. You should also be somewhat familiar with MAX in general. This tutorial assumes you have the latest version of Surface Tools, as well as the rewrite of the EditSpline modifier called EditSpline2. EditSpline2 is available on the Spectral Imaging home page in the Surface Tools section. The first step involved with modelling a face with Surface Tools is gathering reference material. Even if you intend to model a face of your own design, you should use source material. Source material commonly includes hand drawn sketches or photographs. You may also wish to model the object in clay or plaster and then take a picture of it with a digital camera. The reference material will give you a basis for creating splines. Splines make up the structure of the face and provide the framework for which the surface modifier will create the skin. The more views you have for reference, the better off you will be. Mostly you will rely on the front and side view of your face. I used the following reference images when modelling the face above.
These images are photographs of a model created with plaster. The photographs were then scanned into the computer using a mid range quality scanner.
The next step is to create two boxes of suitable height. Make them thin and arrange them perpendicular to each other at their midpoints, as shown in the figure below.
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Max3D - Tutorials
Map your reference images onto the boxes. You may need to resize your mapping coordinates or scale your map to match both of the images. You want the various parts of the two images to correspond. In other words, the eye ball socket should be roughly the same height along the Z axis on both of the boxes.
These images will provide you with enough information to begin creating an outline of the face. Since most faces are symmetrical, you will usually only want to model half of the face and then mirror it. If you have an asymetrical face, you will need to model the whole thing, but working with one half at a time is probably a good idea to help you modularize the process. At this point you will begin tracing the contours of the face. Through this process, you will create a basic framework of splines that intersect each other at common vertex points. Each area of intersection must create either a three or four sided area. The reason that you must create three or four sided areas is that the Surface modifier functions by placing either Tri or Quad patch objects in the areas outlined by the splines. These Patch grids become the surface or skin of your face. You should pay attention to where you place your vertices on your splines. If vertices are placed on a spline and don't serve to connect with another spline to create a three or four sided area, the surface modifier won't function correctly. You will end up with pieces missing from your face where the unattended vertices lie.
You will want to start by creating a line and then changing the vertices to Smooth, Corner, Bezier or Bezier Corner. You will probably want to create a rough outline and then apply EditSpline2 to your line. By modifing individual vertices with EditSpline2, you will fine tune your outlines. One advantage to using EditSpline2 over EditSpline, is that the vertex ticks appear while out of sub-object mode, which helps you visualize where you need to create connecting splines. It is a good idea to start with the major curves which outline the whole face, and fill in detail from there.
Notice the white splines which surround the outlines of the face images. Once you have these basic outlines, draw lines which follow the contours of the face horizontally. You may wish to create a grid helper object so that you create splines in the rough position in 3D Space where they belong on the face. Then you will go into EditSpline2 and move the vertices forward and back in 3D Space until the spline follows the contour that the face does. This process involves a little artistic judgement. Use your referrence images and your own judgement to adjust the splines. One trick that Peter Watje recommends for beginners is to load a head mesh and use that as a reference. You can find head meshes 3D Café and Avalon. You will also need to adjust the Bezier tangents. For example, in the front viewport draw a line that follows the contour of the face from the nose over the eye brow and back to the end of the face. Then use a combination of the Top, Side and User views to manipulate the vertices until they create a contour line. The curve in figure 1.9 traces the contour of the face starting at the nose and following along the nose to the eye where it curves over the eye and finishes at the end of the face.
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Max3D - Tutorials
At the end points of the new spline there should be a corresponding vertex point on both the side and front splines. The end vertices of the new spline, and the vertex points on the side and front splines should be adjacent to each other in 3D space. At this point you can attach the splines together so that you only have one object. Using EditSpline2, you can now select and weld the coincident vertices on both the side and front splines of the head. Figure 1.9 illustrates where these points are. This is another reason to use EditSpline2, for it allows you to weld together any number of vertices. The Surface modifier will work even if the vertices are not welded together, but it is better to have one seemless object.
Repeat this process with the rest of the horizontal curves of the face, starting with the front viewport and then using a combination of views to arange the vertices and their tangents so that the splines follow the curvatures of the face. Welding the vertices should make it easier to manipulate the entire structure. You will probably need to increase the weld threshold to get vertices to weld.
Figure 2.0 shows the spline structure with all of the horizontal splines in place. You can see that the basic outline of the face is starting to take shape. At this point, you will begin creating your vertical splines. Remember that you want your splines to outline three or four sided areas so that the surface modifier will function properly. You may wish to hide the boxes at this point as well so that you can move around your geometry in the viewports without obstruction.
The figures above show the face after the vertical splines have been drawn. Notice that all areas defined by the splines have either three or four sides. Also notice that all the vertices serve to connect splines. In other words, vertices are not used to shape the splines, the tangents are. Once you have your face arranged in this manner, you can mirror the object. At this point you should attached the two sides together and weld the coincident vertices in the middle. You now should have a skeleton that you can apply the surface modifier to.
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Max3D - Tutorials
For this particular face I wanted a loose skin look, so after I applied the surface modifier I added a Relax modifier which helped smooth the whole object out.
Finally, add mapping coordinates and create a texture map for the face. The best way I have found to create a detailed texture map for the face is to use Peter Watje's unwrap utility to create a bitmap representing where the texture lies on the object. Then go into Fractal Painter and paint the face over the image that Unwrap creates.
The result is a 3D model surprisingly faithful to the original reference material. Written by Adam Silverthorne Morgan 3D
Tutorials are split up into these categories: Nature Modeling F/X Compositing Misc. Texturing Scripting Animation
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
3D TUTORIALS INTEGRATING 3D OBJECTS IN 2D IMAGES by Stefan Didak
Integrating 3D objects in 2D images The following small how-to tutorial assumes you have basic knowledge about 3D Studio MAX. Most everyone in the field of computer graphics and animation will remember the movies like Terminator 2 - Judgement day and Jurassic Park. The very realistic computer graphics were partly due to the integration of the 3D animated footage with the environment (ie. the background). The backgrounds used in the movies was simply the footage shot on the location. In this small how-to we will concentrate on just a single static background image. If you want matching shadows of 3D objects in a static background or if you want to add a form of layering in a 2D background image for 3D objects so they can pass in front or in the back, please read on. 3D Studio MAX offers a special material type, the Matte Material, that will allow you to combine 2D backgrounds with the 3D scene in a very efficient and flexible manner. The remainder of this page will show you how to use the Matte Material and how to setup a basic scene.
Selecting a background to work with The first thing we need is a background we can work with. In the sample on this page I have chosen for a photograph of an office building. The geometry of the building in the following image is pretty basic which is just what we needed for this example. Note that you can download the MAX file along with the background image on the bottom of the page as a ZIP file.
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
The original background image With the perspective viewport active, select a background using the Background Image function in the Views menu. Select the image you want to use as a background (building.jpg in our sample case) and don't forget to switch the Display Background option to ON. For the aspect ratio, select the Match Rendering Output option (since we want our final rendering to match). Next we also need to define an environment background so that it'll show up during rendering. Use theEnvironment function, located in the Render menu for this. In the background section of the environment dialog set the Use Map option to ON and assign a bitmap to it. The environment background will now be located in one of the material editor slots (usually slot 1 by default). Call up the material editor and for a bitmap select the same image you just selected for the background of the viewport. In the mapping list (under the Coordinates panel) select SCREEN as the mapping type. Now you have the right setup to work with, a background in the viewport we'll be working with as well as a background for rendering.
Creating a matching geometric scene The next thing we need to do is to recreate the basic geometry of the background in the 3D scene. This might sound harder than it actually is even though for large and complex images this can be a pretty time consuming task. First we need to setup a camera to work with. Create a camera in the scene which will be the camera we will be rendering from. This camera should be placed in such a way that the grid in the camera viewport (ie. change the perspective view to the camera view) acts as the 'floor' of our file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%2.../Integrating%203D%20in%20a%202D%20picture.htm (2 of 4) [29/07/2002 15:26:34]
3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
scene. This will help you position the matching geometry later on. Using nearly plannar boxes we will start to fit these boxes into the scene in such a way that the planes cover up the parts of the background image we want to be receiving shadows. The image below will give you the basic idea of what I have done to the original background image.
Background with matching geometry Note that the image also shows a spotlight that brightens up the geometry. It is advisable to create lightning conditions which match the general direction of the light in the original background for reality's sake. As you can see, all the parts of the original image are now blocked by a 3D construction of boxes, planes, cylinders, and shapes. You will need to check out the original MAX file (located below) to get a full view on the actual scene. It is best to try to create the 3D scene in such a way that it closely matches the depth of the background image. Use all features and resources to your availability for this.
Creating the Matte Material Call up the Material editor and select an unused slot to start a new material definition. For the type of material select the Matte/Shadow material, this will bring you into the Matte/Shadow parameters panel. Leave all the parameters at their default value, you can expiriment with those later on, but do switch the receive shadows to ON.
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
Assign this material to all the objects you have used to create the matching geometry. If you switch to shaded mode you will notice that the background image will be overlapped with the geometry (gray by default).
PLAY You are now ready to play around with your scene. Note that you shouldn't move the camera around because the geometry matching the background is directly related to your camera viewpoint. You can add lightsources and other objects into the scene to achieve effects like you can see in the image below.
A completely fake scene with correct shadows
Copyright © 1998 Platinum Pictures All rights reserved.
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
OLD MAN by Daniel Martinez Lara
Learn step by step how Daniel Martinez Lara created the Old Man! Follow along as you: ● ● ● ● ●
Create the Membrane, Make the Principal Facial Curves, Model the Facial Features, Add More Detail, Create Final Touches
Step 1: Creating the Membrane for the Head
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
The first step is to create a membrane which will serve us as the base to create the head of our model, so we go to the Create tab. Once there, we click on the Geometry icon and select daVinci3D Membranes from the display list.
We have various types of membranes to choose from. We choose Ellipse and create a vertical elliptical membrane. We then go to the Modify tab with the ellipse selected and notice that the parameters and tools to work on the membrane appear. The objective is to inflate the surface of the membrane to achieve a somewhat hemispherical shape. To do this, we go to Sub-Object and choose Curve.
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
We select the curve which bounds the membrane and choose, under Curve Type, the Clamp option and check the Tan Strip Visible checkbox. This will allow us to see handles with control the curve tangent which will help us inflate the membrane. We go back to Sub-Object and choose Tangent Point, where we disable the Magnitude Fixed option and then click on any Tangent Point (blue) and we move it until we achieve our "inflated" shape (all of the Tangent Points move automatically). Afterwards, we disable the Move All option to put finishing touches on each individual Tangent Point to get the desire shape.
Finally, we move the points of the boundary curve of the membrane to give it curvature, entering in the Curve Point option under Sub-Object.
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
OLD MAN by Daniel Martinez Lara Learn step by step how Daniel Martinez Lara created the Old Man! Follow along as you: ● ● ● ● ●
Create the Membrane, Make the Principal Facial Curves, Model the Facial Features, Add More Detail, Create Final Touches
Step 2: Make the Principal Facial Curves The next step is to draw the principal curves that will define the face. In this case, they are the curve for the eyebrows, the eye curves, the curve for the base of the nose, the curve for the profile of the nose, the cheekbone curves, and the mouth curves. To begin drawing the curves, we go to SubObject and choose Curves, clicking on the Add Curve button to draw, for example, the curve for the eyebrows. In this manner, we draw each of the curve necessary for the creation of the face.
We can edit the position of the curves, moving, rotating, or scaling the curves with the 3D Studio MAX tools, or by editing the defining curve points in Curve Point mode under the Sub-Object list (which we can alternatively get to by clicking the right menu button on the mouse over the surface, displaying the different selection levels.)
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
OLD MAN by Daniel Martinez Lara Learn step by step how Daniel Martinez Lara created the Old Man! Follow along as you: ● ● ● ● ●
Create the Membrane, Make the Principal Facial Curves, Model the Facial Features, Add More Detail, Create Final Touches
Step 3: Model the Facial Features Once we have defined what will become the principal curves of the face, we proceed to use these curves to model the principal features of the face. To do this, we begin by converting the curves which are Free to Pivot or Clamp. This makes it so that when you move the curves or the curve control points, the surface is modified.
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
Forehead, Nose, and Cheekbones We select the forehead, nose and cheeckbone curves, making sure that we have only those curves selected, and convert them to Pivot curves. The curves will change color from yellow to blue (to see this, deselect the curves).
Eyes and Mouth We select the eye and mouth curves and convert them to Clamp mode.
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
Editing Once we are done with this, we can edit the curves and curve control points. In Curve mode, we choose the forehead curve and move it foreward, to bring out the forehead. We then choose the eye curves and push them back a little. It is probable that we will get a few small spikes in the mesh in the region between the eyes; to fix this, we move the start and end points of the nose curve inward. We bring the interior curves of the eyes a little in and choose the Hole option to create holes for the eyes.
To model the nose, we go to Curve Point and pull out the points of the nose profile curve until we get the desired shape.
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
We move the inner curve of the mouth toward the back of the head to create a hole for the mouth.
Previous Step | Next Step Home | Products | Demos | News and Reviews | Tutorials | Gallery | Contact Us | Online Store | Site Map Please contact our Webmaster with questions or comments. © Copyright 1999 New Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
OLD MAN by Daniel Martinez Lara
Learn step by step how Daniel Martinez Lara created the Old Man! Follow along as you: ● ● ● ● ●
Create the Membrane, Make the Principal Facial Curves, Model the Facial Features, Add More Detail, Create Final Touches
Step 4: Add More Detail Now we start the most time-consuming task-- improving and adding details. We will concentrate on the forehead, eye wrinkles, the ears and the nose. The procedure is easy since we basically try to add new curves where convenient to obtain the desired shapes.
Forehead, Eyes, and Ears First, we add two Clamp curves on the upper part of the head, to give curvature to the skull. We move the Curve Points of the curves to obtain the desired shape.
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
After that, we add two curves on top of the forehead curve, one a Pivot just on top of it, which will be in charge of modeling the eyebrow area. We move the Curve Points as shown below. The second curve is a Clamp which will put the forehead a little more inside also using the Curve Points.
Now we will add the forehead wrinkles. We will use as an example how to model one wrinkle, and use the same technique for the rest. We will create two Clamp Curves between the two previous curves.
We select curve "B" and activate the Tan Strip Visible option. This will show us the curve tangent strip, which will help us create the wrinkles. To edit the tangent strip, we go to Tangent Point in Sub-Object mode. Once there, we deactivate the Move All and Magnitude Fixed options, and, in turn, move each of the Tangent Points minus the end points as shown below.
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
The result is as follows:
We repeat these steps with curve "A" and all of the curves we add to make wrinkles as above. For example, we show the eye and ear wrinkles below.
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
Nose We add two Pivot curves on each side of the nose for better control of the model; we move their Curve Points.
For the nostrils, we use two Clamp curves, one inside the other, moving the inside one up the nose.
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
Ear First, we will create a hole in the interior of the ear. To do this, we make three curves, one of them a Clamp curve (curve "A") around an exterior Clamp curve (curve "B"), and the other an interior Pivot curve (curve "C"). We move curve "C" towards the center of the head.
Then, using another membrane, we model the ear using the techniques we have already learned.
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
Once we have placed the ear, we add a curve here and there to make tiny touch-ups in the model. The model ends up as follows.
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daVinci3D Tutorials: Old Man
Previous Step | Next Step Home | Products | Demos | News and Reviews | Tutorials | Gallery | Contact Us | Online Store | Site Map Please contact our Webmaster with questions or comments. © Copyright 1999 New Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Tutorial 4: Template for a Head
Tutorial 4: Make a Face! This tutorial has multiple steps-- everything from building the basic head to adding facial features. By creating and editing the sub-objects for a daVinici3D membrane, you can create a simple face! The sections of this tutorial include: ● ● ● ●
Building the Head Shape, Adding the Eyes and Eyebrows, Making the Nose, Using Forces to Create Cheeks.
Step 1: Building the Head Shape
1. Create an elliptical membrane in the Top viewport.
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Tutorial 4: Template for a Head
2. In Curve sub-object mode, select the bounding curve and make it a Clamp curve. Check the Tan Strip Visible checkbox.
3. Select Tangent Points sub-object mode. Make sure that the Move All checkbox is selected. In the side view, move the tangent points so the green tangent strip appears like a fence around the boundary curve of the membrane.
4. Go back to Curve sub-object mode. Select the bounding curve of the membrane and turn off the tangent strips. With the bounding curve of the membrane still selected, click on the Add Surf button. You should know have a closed shape.
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Tutorial 4: Template for a Head
5. In a shaded view, you'll notice that the new surface may be "reversed." To "flip" the surface, go to Surface sub-object mode. Click and drag to select the "flipped" surface. Then press the Flip Selected button. The surface normals should be flipped.
6. Switch out of Sub-Object mode and rotate the camera or membrane so you're looking at the membrane "face on." Now you're ready to add facial features.
Step 2: Adding the Eyes and Eyebrows
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Tutorial 4: Template for a Head
1. Turn on Curve sub-object mode. Click on the Add Curve button. Create a curve on the right side of the face. This is going to be an eye.
2. Select the curve by clicking and dragging. Press the Clone Curve button. Then right click on the Rotate button to pop up the dialog box. In the Offset Screen column, enter 180 for a Y value. The cloned curve should be rotated to the other side of the face, so it's mirroring the original eye curve.
3. Now select these two eye curves. Under Curve Type, select curve type Pivot. Then under Region Type, select the Hole radio button. The regions inside the eye curves should now be holes. Now add a pair of eyebrows using the same "mirroring" technique as you used when you created the eyes. Make the eyebrow curves Pivot curves as well. In the side view, you can push the eye curves back into the head and move the eyebrow curves out of the head to create a facial contouring effect in the eye area.
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Tutorial 4: Template for a Head
Step 3: Making the Nose
1. To start adding the nose, first use Add Curve to add a curve around the nose area on the face. Make this curve a Clamp curve.
2. Go to Point sub-object mode. Add two points within this curve (where you might imagine nostrils to appear). Then in the side view, pull these points away from the head. You'll notice that moving the points causes the surface to deform, creating a shape for the nose.
3. Go to Curve sub-object mode and add a curve down the middle of the nose. Make this curve a Pivot curve. Turn on Curve Point sub-object mode and in the side view, modify the curve until you get the bridge shape that you'd want
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Tutorial 4: Template for a Head
Almost done! Now you just have to add a mouth and cheeks!
Using Forces to Create Cheeks
1. First use the Add Curve and Hole radio button under the Curve sub-object mode to create a mouth. Then go to Point sub-object mode to add a point where the cheeks are going to be. Uncheck the Add Active box. You want to add two inactive points.
2. Under the Sub-Object menu, select Forces. You'll notice that the inactive points now have force vectors protruding out from them. Click and drag on the force vector handles to apply a force on the membrane, which will create the face cheeks.
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Tutorial 4: Template for a Head
Now you're done with your first basic face shape! You can use other shapes to add eyes and other embellishments! The rest is up to you!
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3DS MAX Tutorial - Animation with Booleans
Home Page | Free Stuff | Tutorials | Animation with Booleans Animation with Booleans Consider the following script. An object in a scene is to move towards another object. Perhaps a character is moving towards a wall. The moving object is to slowly become invisible. After reaching complete transparency, it 'moves through' the stationary object. The stationary object appears to have the intersecting portion of the moving object 'cut out' of it. Note: This tutorial assumes you are using MAX 2.5. Small differences for MAX 2.0 will be noted. This tutorial is intended for intermediate users of MAX's modeling capability and is suitable for beginning animators. You should understand how to set keyframes. This tutorial builds on the information provided in the track view tutorial. Booleans MAX provides the capability to create compound objects, such as Booleans. A Boolean object is formed from two overlapping objects by performing simple Boolean operations on each object. Note: When a Boolean object is created, the two source objects will no longer be accessible. Make copies if you intend to use these objects again. While a Boolean object appears to solve the problem of 'cutting' one object out of another, the animation posed in the script appears to conflict with the creation of a compound object. If both objects cease to exist in their original state after a Boolean operation, how does one animate the passage of one object through another? Modifier Stack While the two original objects are not directly accessible after performing a Boolean operation, they are available as sub-objects of the new compound object. Operands may be animated from the Modify command panel since that is the mode where sub-objects are available. You will not be able to edit Boolean operands from the Create command panel. The remainder of this tutorial is directed towards creation of a simple animation where a section of a cylinder disappears and then 'cuts through' a sphere. Creating the Objects
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3DS MAX Tutorial - Animation with Booleans
Open MAX and create a sphere and cylinder. Orient both objects so there is no overlap between them. Make sure that Generate Mapping Coordinates is checked for both objects (at the bottom of the Create rollout). Open the material editor. Create two slots with black diffuse/ambient and a reflection map. Assign bitmap for the type of reflection. Assign CHRMWARP.JPG to the first slot and METAL7.JPG to the second slot. Both images should be in the MAX default maps directory. For the reflection map using METAL7.JPG, apply a spherical environment map. A test render is illustrated in the adjacent image. Save your current work. Move the cylinder until it partially intersects with the sphere, similar to a finger-hole in a bowling ball. Since you moved the cylinder, it will probably still be selected. Before continuing, make sure the sphere is selected. In the Create panel, click on Compound Objects. Click on the Boolean 2 button (Boolean for MAX 2.0). Scroll down and notice that Subtraction (A-B) is selected under Operation. Since the sphere (operand A) is already selected, click on the Pick Operand B button. Select the cylinder and the compound object will be created. The section of the cylinder that intersects with the sphere will be subtracted from the sphere to create the new object. Render the new scene and note the effect of the material mapping. Next, recreate the same sequence of steps, but do not select the sphere before creating the compound object. In this instance, operand A is the cylinder and operand B is the sphere. Instead of Subtract (A-B), click on Subtract (B-A). Theoretically, you might expect to see the same result, but note the material assigned to the compound object. These steps illustrate a good principle. Before creating a complex animation, experiment with individual operations called for in the script. Make sure you understand what results are created from various actions and that all material properties behave as desired. Before continuing, execute the original sequence of operations, but vary the material mapping for the bitmap assigned to the sphere. Notice the effect on the 'cutout' section after creating the compound object. When you are satisfied with the result of a single Boolean operation, make note of the settings. Reload the original MAX file with the two objects separated and apply desired settings. Save once again, and you are ready to continue. Creating the Basic Animation
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3DS MAX Tutorial - Animation with Booleans
Position the cylinder in the middle of the sphere. Adjust the size so that when the cylinder is moved through the sphere, it cuts a significant amount of the sphere. Move the cylinder to a desired initial position and set a keyframe at frame 0. You may wish to experiment with initial and terminal positions before setting keyframes. Move the cylinder to the desired terminal position, making sure is passes through the sphere. Set a new keyframe at frame 100. Move the slider back to frame 0 to test the path. Use track view to delete keyframes and repeat the process until you have a desirable path. To make the entire process easier to visualize, change the rendering environment to a white background. Next, move the slider back and forth to determine the frame just before the cylinder touches the sphere. Record this information. Open Track View and add a visibility track to the cylinder. Add three keyframes: 0, the recorded frame, and 100. Adjust function curves so that the cylinder is completely visible at frame 0 and completely transparent at your recorded frame. If you need help on how to do this, please study the track view tutorial. The function curves (Bezier float controller) used in our version are illustrated in the adjacent image. Save your current work. Creating the Compound Object When the compound object (sphere - cylinder) is created, the cylinder will be part of the new object and not directly accessible. We can create the desired effect by means of a simple trick. Select the cylinder and click Edit | Clone . When prompted, select instance. Make sure you set up the animation before performing this operation and do not select and modify either cylinder. Move the animation slider back and forth. Notice that both cylinders appear to move as a single object. Now, we will use one cylinder for the basic animation and the other to create the compound object. Move the animation slider to frame 0. This is not absolutely necessary, but illustrates that you can define a compound object even when there is no current overlap between objects. Select the sphere. This is your 'object A.' Click Create | Compound Objects | Boolean 2 . We want to subtract one of
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3DS MAX Tutorial - Animation with Booleans
the cylinders from the sphere. Subtraction (A-B) should be selected under Operation. Click on the Pick Operand B button and then Select by Name . Select the first cylinder. Move the animation slider and observe the top viewport. Notice how the cylinder fades to completely transparent. The invisible cylinder appears to 'cut' a path through the sphere. Render some test frames before, during, and after the cylinder touches the sphere. Three sample frames are illustrated in the adjacent, low-resolution composition. When applied to more complex objects, you can create an illusion of an object disappearing, followed by its 'ghost' moving through a structure such as a wall. More Complex Animation In some instances, you may wish to modify one of the components of a Boolean after a compound object has been created. For example, suppose we wanted to accentuate the 'fade effect' by having the cylinder decrease in size as it moved through the sphere. In order to animate elements of a compound object, it is necessary to enter Sub-Object mode. Save your existing work to a new file. Select the sphere and click the Modify button to open the modify command panel. Boolean 2 should be visible in the modify stack. Click on the Sub-Object button and select the cylinder used to create the compound object. The cylinder name should now be highlighted under Operands. Click on the Lock Selection Set button (underneath the animation slider). Set a keyframe just before the cylinder intersects with the sphere. Move the animation slider to frame 100 and click on the animate button to set another keyframe. Scale the cylinder down in size and then click the animate button to exit animation mode. As you mode the slider back and forth, the cylinder appears to cut into the sphere and decrease in size as it moves. There are numerous variations on this method and you are encouraged to experiment.
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3DS MAX Tutorial - Animation with Booleans
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
3D TUTORIALS Modeling with NURBS on 3D Studio Max r2 by Fernando Koyanagi
In the moment that I write this article, there is very little documentation about NURBS modeling on Max r2. The manual has few examples and it destines little page for NURBS. When introduced the Beta release, Kinetix it created a documentation with examples that unhappily didn't do part of the manual, leaving, like this, that gap and avid of information many user. The tutorial described presupposes a medium knowledge of 3D Studio Max and it should provide a more little of information for this new resource. Before beginning the tutorial it's interesting to illuminate some common doubts on NURBS on Max r2: file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...20Tutorials/NURBS/Nurbs%20Complex%20Bottle.htm (1 of 7) [29/07/2002 15:30:15]
3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
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It is possible to import curves from Autocad to convert them in NURBS The rendering is efficient, almost so fast as polygons. In the current implementação it is not still possible to use Blend object nor Trim, wherefore, it is not possilvel to cut an object NURBS and to weld it in other, maintaining the surface smooth. Bones (Phisique) it can be used with object NURBS. The resource native loft also works and it can generate a editable surface NURBS. Primitive standard can just be transformed into NURBS.
Tutorial: Plastic recipient The example to follow cover two very important commands: Create ULoft Surface and Create Blend Surface. For who already knows NURBS in programs like Rhino and Softimage it is important to know that the command Create Blend Surface from Max r2 just works with surfaces NURBS. Therefore, when it models an object that it should be taken into account and to plan the model with loft or starting from a primitive standard. Step 1) Creating shapes
figure 1
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
figure 2 Starting from the menu CREATE -> SHAPE chooses NURBS you Curve -> Point Curves. You should draw 2 basic shapes with the opening in ellipse form. The internal shape should be attached to the external shape. For that, enter in MODIFY PANEL to tie the two shapes (figure 1) that will just form a curved NURBS. Soon after, click in EDIT STACK and choose convert to: NURBS surface, and again use attach to tie all the lines. Type
to turn on Snap, because it is important that the distance among the shapes is the same, it will maintain the symmetry of the object and its control vertexes ( figure 2). Step 2) Using Create Uloft Surface
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
figure 3 With the selected shapes it calls Mofify Panel -> NURBS CREATION TOOLBOX ( figure 3) and click in the icon ULoft. Click in the first shape (the sharpener of the mouse becomes a cross) and soon after in the next corresponding shape. You should make this for external and internal shapes, that later help to form the hole. Step 3) Using Create Blend Surface
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
Still in NURBS CREATION TOOLBOX, click in Blend Surface. You will notice that should just apply Blend in the lateral shapes. Give the first click in the external ellipse from shape and the second in the ellipse it interns, creating the faces and closing the object as showed the ( figure 4 ). In the Viewport configuration, choice force 2-sided, because the normal can be inverted, harming the visualization. Step 4) Moving points
figure 5
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
figure 6 There is two ways to edit object: 1. 1) to move the points corresponding to the curves, choosing Sub-Object -> Point as exhibition the ( figure5 ). This edition type is quite efficient because it maintains few points, what provides it good clarity for edition - in the illustration 5 the points were selected for if they turn visible. In this object this resource was only used, but if it is necessary some fine adjustment, the next method can be more suitable. 2. 2) in Modify Panel it chooses Sub-Object -> Surface and soon after click in the object, (the lines turn red). You selected. Now, it should click in MAKE INDEPENDENT. Return to menu Roll-out at Sub-Object and choose Surface-CV. The figure 6 shows the control vertexes in green color. Attention: Surface-CV will only be available in the menu roll-out after the procedure MAKE INDEPENDENT. Step 5) Creating the screw-cap
figure 7
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
figure 8 In the menu CREATE -> Standard Primitives creates a cylinder and transform it in NURBS for MODIFY -> Edit Stack. Soon after, edit control vertexes as shown in the ( figure 7 ) and position the Cylinder (screw-cap) in the superior position, centralizing it. The grooves of the cover and the label are textures with bump map. I hope to have collaborated so that the subject NURBS is better understood. mailto:[email protected]
Copyright © 1997 Platinum Pictures All rights reserved.
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Chainlink Fencing Tutorial - By Colin Perry In this tutorial u will learn how to creating chainlink fence in two method, using opacity map rather than using renderable spline. (I would prefer use an opacity map for fence because spline use system memory more than opacity map) OK, now lets start create two pipes use a set of cylinder and a large thin box for fence (don't worry, your fence will be visible) like this one below:
The next step open the material editor, I assume you have used material editor, otherwise read on that one in the manual. (Its located under "Tools" on the toolbar) And you will need to select see sphere like this :
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Now, you will see "map" below the table of 6 sphere and check the opacity and click on "NONE" right beside the checked Opacity like this :
The next step is easy.. select "bitmap" smash on "OK" and you will see the bitmap parameters and click on box beside "Bitmap:" where u can select your own opacity map :
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I used the on I made, and you can use it..
It is tileable..
After u has chosen the map u wish to apply as an opacity map you will see the sphere like this :
Drag the material into viewpoint and drop it on the box, and render the scene... you will see like this..
OOPS, You are supposed to apply UVW Map in the modifier. How do I apply them ? OK here, Its located in the modifier and select "UVW Map" and now you will need to modify the map setting by change the width, length, and height. Set width to 7.0, length to 5.0, and height to 5.0 like this image below :
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Now you can render again to make sure if its satisfied you, if its not satisfied you at all then play with UVW Map modifier parameters setting (reset the Width, Length, and Height). The final image will look like this if you have followed the tutorial in right direction...
© 1998-99 MaxGuy. All rights reserved. Duplication strictly prohibited.
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Hey, hey, hey! Look at what we have here. At last I get around to doing the second part of the Alien Fekka! tutorial. This part deals with mapping and texturing of the lil guy, and the application of a slightly new slant on the unwrap technique I developed some time ago. A long time ago, if a galaxy far, far away.....
O.k, so you've done the first part of the series and now you wanna get some textures on the guy. You've got this elaborate pattern all figured out, it wraps itself all around your model. But how the hell do you map it? Well in the normal Max way of doing things you don't. Max has no way to apply complex mapping co-ords to organically shaped meshes. So normally you would find it very hard to map such a character as the lil alien fekka!. In the perfect world you would draw your texture flat on one bitmap and let the program wrap it around your model. Well it's not quite a perfect world, but with this method of mapping it's at least one step closer. BE WARNED this is a slow process, especially if you have a very complex mesh. But at least it requires no plugins and is guaranteed to work on all versions of Max (and probably most other 3d programs as well)
This is the sort of thing we're aiming for, now the texture may not be to your liking but that's not the point. You're supposed to be looking at how it moulds itself around the mesh. This texture is one bitmap. Step one, you kiss and hold her tightly.....?
The first thing you need to do is to take your mesh and cut it up - yeah! you heard me right cut it up! You need to split you mesh into areas that can be basically mapped flat. I.e. the side of the head, the top of the hand, the bottom of the foot etc. Go over the whole mesh and split it in to chunks. file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...Texturing/Multi%20Face%20Texturing%20Alien.htm (1 of 5) [29/07/2002 15:32:02]
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With my model, it looked like this after it was chopped (no mercy!). This is the first slow process. The more complex the model, the longer it takes. Move and stretch and lift and relax....
OK now your ready for the next bit. Stick it all back together again - "WHAT!, you've gotta be kidding. I just spent five hours chopping it all up, and you want me to stick it back together!!!!" Uhuh! Now the reason you split the faces off is so you create extra verts at all the seams. Max - being a clever sort of program - knows where the edges of all collected faces are.
You can see the edges of the faces on the mesh. The smoothing does not cross unconnected face boundaries so they show up as hard edges. So even if you re-attach all the bits together it knows where the edges are, so all your hard work has not been undone. What it does mean is that you can select the shapes again - by cunningly using the file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...Texturing/Multi%20Face%20Texturing%20Alien.htm (2 of 5) [29/07/2002 15:32:03]
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connected edges option in edit mesh. The button looks a bit like this - (well not a bit like this, EXACTLY like this) IMPORTANT BIT!:- Right now, before anything, make a clone of your mesh and hide it. Your going to need it later on. You need to now move the groups of faces into a position that would be good to draw on. You must have a plan in your head as to how your going to lay this whole thing out. If you built the mesh and are going to be doing the bitmap then this will be pretty logical.
This is the way I laid out the head of my fella. You will notice that there are lots of gaps between the face groups. This is no good! it needs fixing. This new method of unwrapping you can move verts around and not pay the price - Hoorar!. You should be able to see the line of edges and the pairs of verts that need to meet up. It sometimes takes a while to spot them but it must be done. select the pair of verts that need to be together and do a nonuniform scale in X/Y
(from the top, I always lay my meshes out from the top - but you could choose another plane if you like).
Scale the verts until they meet, and because you scale around a common centre they end up exactly in the middle of the old positions. A good half way house. file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...Texturing/Multi%20Face%20Texturing%20Alien.htm (3 of 5) [29/07/2002 15:32:03]
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This is the final layout of the head, do the same to the rest of the mesh. Welcome to hell!, the second longest part of the job. The owls are not what they seem........
When the whole model is laid out then you need to map it. Just use planar mapping.
You will see on the top left of this pic, that there is a clump of faces that seem not to be laid out. This is the left arm and leg. Because my pattern is the same on both sides I am going to clone these parts after I have mapped them, saves time on lay out.
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And this here's the map that is applied to the model. One map that's all, of course bump and specula maps can also be applied. It's the end of the world as we know it....
The next bit is the stroke of cunning (that, in my UTTER stupidity,, forgot in the first draft of this tut). Remember that copy of the wee fella that we made at the start of the tut? good..... unhide it now and....wait for it....... morph the flat fella to the one you just unhid! The flat guy keeps all his mapping co-ords but forms back in to the shape he was before we squished him. The final thing to do is, when your sure that your don't need to alter the mapping again, select all the verts in your mesh and weld them. If you leave the threshold at 0.1 the all verts that are in the same space will be welded together. The reason that you need to weld verts is because Max won't smooth across non-welded verts - but now your free to re-smooth your mesh and get it lookin' all spangly again. :o) And that's about it, it's a painstaking process but worth that wait in the end. I can't imagine doing it any other way. For low poly models it's really good, quick even! People who have upgraded to Max2 already might be saying, "But there's an unwrap modifier with Max2. We don't need your childish meddlings! Away with you". But to you I will say this, "have you tried using it???". It's good for just adjusting texture verts after applying the mapping but not much else - not yet anyway. Oh well, have fun (yeah right!) and do send in any creations that you make to me for display and fame (well no fame, just display)
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Hand-On With SurfaceSuite Pro
Hands On With SurfaceSuite Pro by Shawn Lewis 3D Texture Mapping Just Got A Whole Lot Better History 101 Three of the most important aspects of any good 3D image are the modeling, the lighting and the texturing. Over the years, 3D packages have gotten progressively better at modeling and lighting while texturing has remained fairly primitive. 3D paint programs have helped some, but they have their own limitations. While they allow the user to paint directly on a 3D model, painting in 3D isn’t a very intuitive process. Because of this, painting in 2D (or even by hand and scanning in the texture) is usually much easier. But it is difficult, if not impossible, to accurately place the 2D texture on the model. That is until now. Enter SurfaceSuite™ Pro. What it is SurfaceSuite™ Pro is a texture mapping application that allows the user to precisely place a map onto a 3D object. With SurfaceSuite™ Pro images are placed by choosing the projection type and moving the projection gizmo into the correct orientation. Sounds pretty straightforward, so far. Well, here’s were the revolution begins: SurfaceSuite™ Pro allows the user to stretch and warp the applied image to precisely control where on the model various aspects of the texture go. This is accomplished through the use of Adaptive Image-based Surface Technology (AIST). With AIST, you can set a series of points on a texture map and then by assigning corresponding points to your model, control the exact placement and warping of the applied textures. (See Figure 1, the control points are the orange and yellow tick marks.)
Figure 1
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Hand-On With SurfaceSuite Pro
With SurfaceSuite™ Pro, you can also composite multiple maps (called layers) onto a surface while giving each layer it’s own mapping gizmo. This capability is facilitated through the use of: 1) layer opacity; 2) layer affectation (selecting which faces a layer affects); and 3) layer specific alpha channels. Figure 2, for example, shows an alpha channel layer applied to a model. By changing this layer’s opacity to 86%, and using it to overlay a layer of scales, the right-side of Figure 1 is created.
Figure 2 What it isn’t It isn’t a 3D paint package. SurfaceSuite™ Pro doesn’t have any drawing tools (not even simple lines, boxes, gradients). As such, to use SurfaceSuite™ Pro you need to couple it with a good a paint program, scanning software, and/or stock images. If you’ve been doing any 3D work, you probably already have these items in your arsenal. What do I need SurfaceSuite™ Pro requires Windows 9X/NT, 32MB of RAM, and an SVGA Graphics card. It is also recommended that you have a video card with OpenGL acceleration. What’s the use As is evidenced by the tutorials that ship with SurfaceSuite™ Pro, the package is ideally suited for mapping real-world images (such as pictures of people’s faces) onto 3D objects. Among other things, this could be used to create realistic faces, to precisely place image maps over terrain, and to bring 3D objects to life with real-world textures. In addition to the use of real-world images, you can also create a 2D image in your favorite paint program and then use SurfaceSuite™ Pro to place it on your 3D model. This would be especially valuable in the 3D gaming industry, for example, where custom textures need to be accurately placed on low-polygon count models. Since, creating a texture in 2D (or even by hand) is more natural then trying to create it on a 3D model, using SurfaceSuite™ Pro opens up a whole new level of sophistication and workflow. Supports and will support Supported image types are: BMP, TGA (with or without alpha channels), JPG, TIFF (with or without alpha channels), and SoftImage PIC. Supported model types are: 3D Studio MAX (3DS), AutoCad (DXF), LightWave Object (LWO), and WaveFront (OBJ). Supported image mapping projections are planar, flashlight (basically the same as planar, but only affects the front of an object), cylindrical, spherical, shrink wrap (a modified version of spherical which replaces bipolar pinching with monopolar pinching), and UV (which is used for NURBS!). Support for other applications is (or soon will be) available through Sven Technologies’ LiveLinks. LiveLinks are extensions which enable SurfaceSuite™ Pro to easily (usually through a keyboard sequence) exchange data back and forth with other applications. They must (unfortunately) be purchased separately and range in price from $100 to $400, file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20T...erial%20Editor_Texturing/SurfaceSuite%20Pro.htm (2 of 10) [29/07/2002 15:32:27]
Hand-On With SurfaceSuite Pro
depending on the application being linked to SurfaceSuite™ Pro. LiveLinks are currently planned for Photoshop, SoftImage, 3D Studio MAX, Maya, and LightWave. As another note, there is also a version of SurfaceSuite™ Pro which is a 3D Studio MAX (version 1.x or 2.x) plug-in. Actually, SurfaceSuite™ Pro started out as a MAX plug-in and has only recently been reworked to be a standalone application. So, if MAX is your package of choice, you might want to check out the plug-in version which would avoid the need for LiveLinks. Diamonds or Talc So, how easy is the package to use? Very! Within the 15 minutes I had worked through the first tutorial (again see Figure 1) and felt very comfortable with the application. That is one of the beauties of SurfaceSuite™ Pro: the interface is simple and elegant and because of this, the package is very easy to learn. (Refer to Figure 3 for an example of the user interface).
Figure 3 The second tutorial (and there are only two) goes into a bit more depth and shows you how to texture with two or more alpha channeled layers. This tutorial took about 10 minutes and the results can be seen in Figure 4. Granted, creating it completely from scratch (including the alpha channels and original texture scans) would have taken a bit longer, but the ease of use is still pretty impressive. (Author’s note: the seam along the top of the head in Figure 4 results from discontinuities in the model’s geometry not from texturing (whoever originally created the mesh didn’t weld the vertices in the model before saving it, so the scalp and the face are two separate meshes).)
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Hand-On With SurfaceSuite Pro
Figure 4 What now OK, so now you have your texture what do you do with it? You have several choices. If you have the appropriate LiveLink, you simply export the fully textured and still layered textures back to your 3D application. If you don’t have the appropriate LiveLink, you can collapse the maps down into a single map (through a process called Global Map Generation) and export the map. The Global Map generated for the project seen in Figure 4 is shown in Figure 5. This map was generated for use with cylindrical mapping gizmos (you can choose the mapping type for the generated Global Map).
Figure 5 Welcome to Missouri Let’s walk through a quick tutorial of how to use SurfaceSuite™ Pro. (Author’s note: the model and textures for this tutorial are modified versions of content that shipped with the MAX version of SurfaceSuite™ Pro.)
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Hand-On With SurfaceSuite Pro
Figure 6 In this tutorial, I’ll be texturing the banana seen in Figure 6. I’ll be applying the images seen in Figures 7, 8, 9, and 10. To Figures 7 and 8 the alpha channels seen in Figures 11 and 12, respectively, will be applied. These alpha channels are necessary because they help the sides blend in with the front and back of the banana. They were created by opening up Figures 7 and 8 in Photoshop, using the magic wand tool (with a tolerance value of 64) to select the white area surrounding the banana, creating a new layer, inverting the selection, contracting the selection 5 pixels, feathering the selection 4 pixels, filling the selection with white, selecting the original layer, and filling this entire layer with black.
Figures 7 & 8
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Hand-On With SurfaceSuite Pro
Figures 9, 10, 11 & 12 Next, I created the appropriate layers within SurfaceSuite™ Pro (see Figure 13). Since the top and bottom layers (Figures 9 and 10) don’t have associated alpha channels, I placed them first in the layers list. I did this because layers are applied in the same order that they exist within the layer list; as such, Figures 7 and 8 which have alpha masks (so you can see through parts of them) should be applied AFTER Figures 9 and 10 which are completely opaque.
Figure 13 Once you’ve set everything up, select a layer, rotate the model until it is in the same position as the image in the layer you’re applying, create the appropriate gizmo type (I’m using the flashlight gizmo for each layer), press the view align button, press the fit to object button, then create control points until the map lines up in the desired manner (see Figures 14 and 15 for examples). I started with the alpha channel layers first, because I like to spin the model around and make sure that I’ve correctly applied the alpha channel (i.e., there are no hard edges in the textured areas) before applying the underlying areas.
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Hand-On With SurfaceSuite Pro
Figure 14
Figure 15
Figure 16
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Hand-On With SurfaceSuite Pro
Figure 17 Now, do the same thing to each layer. Once you have done all four layers (see Figure 16), you’re ready to collapse these four layers into one new layer and create a global map. To do this create a new layer (call it target), check Tiling U and Tiling V (otherwise the resulting global map will not be seamless), apply a cylindrical gizmo to the object, align the gizmo to the banana (see Figure 17), go to Action->Generate Global Map, select target as the mapping target, select the appropriate size and name for the output image, check collapse layers, click OK. The model is now textured using the cylindrical gizmo and the four layers have been saved as a single image map (see Figure 18). You can now export the model for use in the 3D package of your choice.
Figure 18 Hits and misses ● ● ●
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Hit: it works and it is very easy to learn! Hit: The manual is well laid out and easy to read. Miss: The manual is in black and white and is NOT spiral bound. Color plates would help to show off differences in the pre- and post-textured models; spiral binding would allow the manual to lie flat on the desk and make it easier to work through the tutorials and to leave it open while working. Miss: There are too few keyboard shortcuts so you are forced to use the mouse for almost everything. While the use of keyboard shortcuts tends to be a matter of personal taste, for those people who do use them (like me :>), they are a real time saver. Ideally, the shortcuts would also be customizable. Hit/Miss: There are tooltips for the main tool bar, but none of the buttons on any of the other windows seem to have any. Tooltips are valuable when you’re first learning to use an application because they help to reduce the learning curve by reinforcing the button shapes/colors with their names/actions. While SurfaceSuite™ Pro doesn’t have that large a learning curve to begin with, it would be smaller still with more Tooltips. Miss: While the toolbar is moveable, successive runs of SurfaceSuite™ Pro don’t remember where the toolbar was last placed. Instead, each time you launch SurfaceSuite™ Pro the toolbar starts in the default position.
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Hand-On With SurfaceSuite Pro
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Furthermore, the toolbar position isn’t saved with the project files either; however, the positions of the various windows are saved with the project files. Along the same lines, when launched, SurfaceSuite™ Pro always comes up in the same sized window. Granted, neither of these is crucial, but they are nice-to-haves that I have grown accustomed to with other packages. Hit: Right click cancels an action. Since I routinely use 3D Studio MAX, I have gotten used to right-click cancels. It was nice to see it included. Hit: Flashlight projection. Flashlight projection works the same way that planar projection works, BUT it only maps one side of the object. Miss: You can not repeatedly tile a texture over an object. Hit: Can use the alpha channel stored within an TGA or TIFF image to control the region of the model affected by the texture. Hit: Updates occur quickly and in general, the program seems very responsive (I’m running NT 4.0 on a dual PPro 200 with 160MB). Miss: As may be expected in version 1.0 of any new software, SurfaceSuite™ Pro has some bugs and quirks. The quirkiest feature is Dual Create Control Points, which seldom worked past the placement of the first point. There were other times when I couldn’t get the mesh to show up in the image window (although when I exited and started the program again, it worked just fine). I’ve also experienced intermittent bugs with zooming in the model window. Hit: You can view your model in wireframe, shaded, or a combination called shaded+wireframe which shows the texture with the wireframe overlayed. Shaded+wireframe is extremely helpful when trying to align image control points. An example of shaded+wireframe (using orthographic projection instead of perspective) can be seen in Figure 19. Hit: Both orthographic and perspective viewports are supported. You can also truck and zoom the camera to change the amount of perspective. Hit: Multiple undos and redos. Miss: Currently, SurfaceSuite™ Pro doesn’t support any type of surface texturing other than diffuse mapping. So you can’t use it to interactively apply bump maps, specularity maps, or the like. Instead, you must create the diffuse texture and then use your primary 3D package to create the necessary bump, specularity, etc. Since bump-maps and specularity are often tied to the diffuse channel, this isn’t overly evil, but it would be nicer to be able to use SurfaceSuite™ Pro to completely texture my object. Miss: There are no controls for the lights used in the model window. Miss: Imported models don’t seem to maintain the same concept of Front/Left/etc. that they had when they were exported from 3D Studio MAX (I haven’t tested any other 3D package). Miss: There is no way to align the camera to a gizmo. You can align the gizmo to the camera (which aids in gizmo creation); however, if your model imports and doesn’t align with any of the viewports, you’ll find yourself constantly adjusting the camera. It would also be nice to be able to save specific "user" view settings to come back to them later.
Figure 19 Worthy of fame or worthy of flame? So, this is what it comes down to: does SurfaceSuite™ Pro do all that it claims? Yes. file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20T...erial%20Editor_Texturing/SurfaceSuite%20Pro.htm (9 of 10) [29/07/2002 15:32:27]
Hand-On With SurfaceSuite Pro
Is it the end all be all package? Probably not; but if some of the misses listed above are addressed, it will get much closer. Do you need it? That depends, do you plan on doing any 3D images/animation? If so, I would say, Yes! you most definitely need it. With it’s ability to combine multiple maps while allowing for exact placement of each map, SurfaceSuite™ Pro brings texturing 3D objects into a whole new era. By the numbers On a scale from 1 (the CD will make a wonderful coaster) to 10 (using this product is a life altering experience), I give SurfaceSuite™ Pro: Features: 8 Ease of Use: 9 Performance: 9 Documentation: 7 Overall rating: 8.25 Shawn Lewis Visual Scream Gallery For other examples of the work of Shawn Lewis, see DPM's Gallery page here
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Tips! 3d graphics, animation, film, web, and special effects tips.
Tutorial - Texturing Starships There are many ways to texture map a starship. I will show you one way that is very quick and produces good results. The only catch with this technique is that it will only work with relatively flat vessels. You can however modify this technique to accommodate blockier designs. Lets use my
02-24-98 Return to Tips
Tutorial Images
enforcer model as a demonstration.
another example of this technique
By: Richard D. Green Software: 3D Studio R4 or MAX. Techniques discussed here can be altered to fit many of the other 3D packages.
Step 1 One way to create a quick and dirty ship is to start with a box and extrude faces, and manipulate vertices until you have designed a simple blocky object that resembles a spacecraft. This was done in 3D Studio MAX using the box create tool, edit mesh, and finally the meshsmooth modifier at level 2 detail with smoothing on. You now have a slick organic design. Step 2 Now that you have your vessel, it's time to add textures. On a relatively flat design like this one, all you need is one map for the main hull. I rendered the ship's top view with no antialias, no textures, and no shadows. You can also render alpha. Once you do this, then you use a 2D paint program, such as Paint Shop Pro, and increase the contrast until you get a solid alpha map like the one to the side. You can also just fill in the off-white area with a solid white. There's several ways to get this result. Next you use a magic wand selection tool to select just the white portion then paste as new image and save. This makes it easier to apply precise mapping coordinates on your model to match the map. When you apply mapping coordinates just use the fit option with planer mapping or in R4 you can draw your planer mapping box to just touch the edges of your object.
Enforcer after using the Meshsmooth modifier
Step 3 Now you have a template. Make sure you keep the template. Very important! Now make a copy of your template to use as your actual map. The best way to start texturing is to use a texture fill tool like the one in Paint Shop Pro and fill it in with a texture map similar to the one to the side. Use whatever seamless hull style you like. It's important that the texture be seamless. You will have to experiment with this a bit to get the desired effect. If you don't
Template
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Tips! 3d graphics, animation, film, web, and special effects tips.
have a texture fill tool, then you can still draw a texture over a copy of your template. Next you will want to add details, like exhaust vents, stripes, and decals. For stripes I like to select a rectangular area and apply a color change so that you get a stripe, but the hull texture still shows through. All your doing is changing the hull color in the selected area. Take a close look at the picture labeled "Final texture map" to see the results of this effect. An example of a hull texture tile.
Step 4 You'll want to weather your hull a little. There are several ways to approach this. I like to select a hull texture tile the same size as my map and apply 50% opacity. This will make the hull tile transparent. I copy the selected area then repaste the transparent map onto my ship's hull map giving it more detail. You can also use software like Meshpaint to paint blast marks directly to your texture in 3D. Then you will want to recopy the template selecting only the black portion. You then re-paste this over your ship's hull map to erase the excess coloring. In some cases you might want to leave the excess there. Lastly you fill in the black with the base color of your ship. In the case of the enforcer, it's gray. You can click on the finished map to the side to view it up close. Step 5 Simply apply your image map to your 3D model and your all set to start adding more detail, guns, and torpedoes. This is just one of many techniques to texturing starships. The Enforcer model doesn't look great from all angles, but I have made much more impressive use of this technique on other 3D models. I used the enforcer for this tutorial because I still had all the source material.
Final texture map
This technique can be used in many ways and on many types of models. Have fun!
Download the Enforcer model
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
3D TUTORIALS Animatable sky backgrounds by Pål Vågsæther Karlsen This is a quick tutorial on how to make sky backgrounds in 3D Studio MAX. As standard, MAX has the possibility to add environmental maps, meaning the move and roate as the camera moves and rotates. This is however not a very impressive effect, since making a background with this is very hard to look real. Very often, you get seems where them map's borders meet, and the map also needs to be huge to not look fuzzy, unless you use some kind of tiling, which isn't good for much more than star backgrounds. This tutorial will show you how to make skies in 3D Studio MAX that not only look good, they can also easily animated. You can make the clouds change shape, move, rotate, change size or almost anything you want. I will take a step back in technology however, since this technique does not work with environmental maps. For that reason, I will use a mesh for the clouds, the mesh being a large object.
The landscape First of all, we need a landscape or something. If you haven't already done so, read the landscape tutorial I wrote, available on this site. Here is the landscape I made:
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
It doesn't have to be very detailed for this tutorial. I used 50x50 steps in the box.
The background The background also needs a colour. This colour should be the SKY colour, not the cloud colour. I use a light blue colour here:
Set the background colour in the Environment control box. You know where it is.......
The clouds Of course, since this tutorial is about clouds, I should get around to that. Now we have a landscape and a sky colour. Now we need to add the clouds. First of all, we need a large dome. Make this by substracting (boolean......I know....) a large hemisphere (geosphere, check "Hemisphere") from a file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...rials/FX/2D%20Animated%20clouds%20(simple).htm (2 of 5) [29/07/2002 15:33:57]
3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
slightly larger one:
The two hemispheres. Substract the smaller one from the largest. A small note on this. When performing a boolean operation, you might get your mesh screwed up, so go to the Edit menu and click "Hold", so you can get it back if it get's hairy. Now we need the clouds themselves. We make those in material editor. Pick one of the standard materials, and turn Shin. Strength to zero. You can also set some self illumination. I use 100 fir this tutorial. You don't have to bother with the colours for this but you can if you want. In the Diffuse slot, put a Noise map. The noise will be the clouds. Enter the values in the screenshot below:
Enter these values. Make sure you have coordinate type UVW checked. Also, set the tiling to 2 and 8, and leave the last one at 1. The noise size should be 0.1. These values are of course just an example, so use the values file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...rials/FX/2D%20Animated%20clouds%20(simple).htm (3 of 5) [29/07/2002 15:33:57]
3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
you find useful. Now......copy the Noise map into the Opacity slot, and make sure you copy it as an instance. This way, the black areas in the noise will be transparent, so we can see the blue colour we behind. You're probably wondering why I'm not using blue instead of black and skip the opacity alltogether. I will explain that later. Now apply the material to the dome. Also, add mapping coordinates to the dome. Use spherical mapping, and move the gizmo so the top of it sits right on top of the dome. Now we can render a test:
A nice sky. And there is the map itself. Now we should take a look at animaition. As you know, animation in MAX is easy. You just turn on animation and do the changes you want. In this case, we should mess with the material itself. You can animate almost any parametre in MAX, including the parameters for the noise here. Let's take a look at the parametres again:
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
The parametres for the noise. Offset: will move the noise along the specified axis. Tiling: will specify the repetition of the noise. Angle: will rotate the noise around the specified axis. Size: the noise size. Phase: course of animation. As you can see, a lot of parametres define the noise. When we also know that we can animate any of them in MAX, we have endless possibilities. Phase will change the look of the noise, while the coordinates will change the position of it. Play around with these parametres to see what they do. Now you have the material for it at least. I said I would explain why I used opacity instead of just a blue/white noise. That would work too, but you will also be a bit limited. When using opacity, you have the possibility of adding several layers of clouds, just by adding more domes. You can also use gradients on the outer dome to make a sunset or whatever you want. With a blue/white noise, this would be difficult. Anyway, now you have the start of it. Do some experimenting to see what you can make of it. This page was created by Pål Vågsæther Karlsen June 20th 1998.
Copyright © 1998 Platinum Pictures All rights reserved.
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2112 F/X - 3DS MAX Track View Tutorial
Home Page | Free Stuff | Tutorials | Track View Transparency via Track View One of the trademark features of MAX is that practically anything can be animated. A simple way to change transparency of an object over time is to animate the opacity of that object's material (including applicable maps). Suppose the same material is applied to two different objects. The script calls for only one object to have its transparency adjusted. This tutorial illustrates how to animate transparency of an object using a controller applied via Track View. The tutorial is provided in one contiguous page to accommodate the numerous viewers who wish to print this information for later reference.
Tutorial Files Before starting the tutorial, load MAX and download the Windows box1.zip file (6K). Unzip the file and load box1.max into 3DS MAX. Your expectations of marvelously complex scene will be shattered upon viewing the simple little box. Notice, however, that the simple little box is transparent. Open the material editor to verify that no material has been assigned to the box. Now, drag the animation bar slowly to the right until frame 100 has been reached. Notice that the box rotates and becomes opaque. Presumably, you know how to animate the rotation. Normally, we would transform the box from fully transparent to opaque by animating the opacity of the material assigned to the box. This tutorial illustrates a different approach to animating transparency via controllers assigned in Track View. It is quite common to learn a lot about animation in MAX without ever being exposed to Track View. If you fall into this category, then read the next section for a brief review. Otherwise, scroll down to the Adding a Visibility Track section. 3DS MAX Track View
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2112 F/X - 3DS MAX Track View Tutorial
Remain in MAX with the box1.max scene loaded. In the upper right-hand corner of the display, click on the Open Track View button. The button is highlighed with a red circle in the adjacent picture. A window will appear listing elements of the scene. Expand Objects and then Box01. A portion of the resulting window is shown in the following graphic.
Practically any introduction to animation begins with keyframes. MAX provides a simple and powerful way to add keyframes to a scene. In the event that your initial keyframe selections do not produce the anticipated result, the next question is 'how does one edit and modify keyframes?' The answer is Track View. This powerful dialog box provides time-based editing of all keyframes in a scene. The tree hierarchy displayed at the left side of the dialog box indicates all elements currently present in the scene. One of the first observations you will make is that even a simple object such as a box might have several animatable parameters associated with it. The most common mode to begin with is Edit Keys, which is highlighted in red in the adjacent image. Successive buttons represent Edit Time, Edit Ranges, Position Ranges, and Edit Function Curves. Each horizontal row of the box represents a track in which parameters may be animated. Keyframes are represented by white boxes and the range of animated frames is denoted by the range bar (heavy black line). The most fundamental operations are those of adding and deleting keys. While in Edit Keys mode, click on Add Keys. Then, click anywhere in the track file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20T...o%20Max%20Tutorials/FX/Animate%20Visibility.htm (2 of 5) [29/07/2002 15:34:55]
2112 F/X - 3DS MAX Track View Tutorial
to add a keyframe. The value for the track parameter will be interpolated from previous values or remain static if the parameter is not currently animated. Next, try clicking on Move Keys and shift one of the keys left or right. Moving does not affect keys that are not currently selected. Now that you understand the simplest basics of Track View, the next section introduces you to the concept of controllers and a special track that provides opacity control. Adding a Visibility Track Look at the track view window for the box1.max scene one last time. Notice the track labeled visibility. The visibility track has keyframes assigned to the initial and terminal frames of the animation. In this stage of the tutorial, we will re-create the opacity animation effect with a new object so that you obtain a better feel for the steps involved. Reset MAX and create a sphere of arbitrary size in the perspective window. Open track view and expand Objects. Next, expand Sphere01. Notice that the current animatable parameters are Transform and Sphere. Each category has additional parameters that may be animated such as radius, segments, smooth, and hemisphere (under Sphere). There is no visibility track, as opacity is not normally an animatable parameter associated with an object. We may, however, add such a track. Select Sphere01 and click on the Add Visibility Track button (the one with the cool 'eye' icon). A new visibility track should appear with a blue bar indicating the range of the track. At this point, the animation has no keyframes, so add one at frame 0 and one at frame 100. This is performed by clicking on Add Keys, followed by clicking under frame 0 and 100 in the visibility track. The blue bar should disappear, indicating that visibility is turned off. By default, visibility in track view is binary. Verify this by moving the animation bar from frame 0 to frame 100. The sphere should remain invisible until the last frame. At frame 100, the sphere is completely opaque. By clicking on the keyframes at either 0 or 100, visibility is toggled on or off. Experiment with this by making the sphere completely visible at frame 0, but disappear at frame 100. Adding a Controller
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2112 F/X - 3DS MAX Track View Tutorial
A visibility track with binary control is partially useful, but does not solve the problem of a smooth 'fade-in'. To achieve such an effect, we must turn to a powerful feature in 3DS MAX, namely, controllers. MAX has numerous controllers, each of which could occupy an entire set of tutorials. For the problem at hand, we will use a common one -- the Bezier controller. A controller produces a single value or set of values at each animation frame. Values may be assigned to individual parameters such as length, width, height, etc. For purposes of visibility, controller values less than or equal to zero result in invisible objects. Controller values greater than zero are progressively more visible until reaching 1.0 at which complete visibility is achieved. Controller values greater than 1.0 have no additional effect on visibility. To add a controller to the visibility track, make sure the current keyframe settings have the sphere invisible at frame zero and visible at frame 100. Select the visibility track and click on the Assign Controller button (we'll make you find this one ... all right, it's the green triangle with the black arrow at the bottom). When the dialog box appears, select Bezier Float and click on OK. To see what values the controller has assigned, click on the Function Curves button. The display now illustrates the keyframes with a dashed line that indicates the controller value. At keyframe 0, the Bezier controller has a value of -1.0. At keyframe 100, the controller value is 1.0. You may adjust function curves at any keyframe. As an exercise, drag the curve at keyframe 0 from -1.0 to 0.0. Now, move the animation bar from 0 to 100 and watch the sphere gradually fade into visibility. Yes, that was cool. It wasn't sexy. It wasn't an awesome effect. Part of learning MAX is obtaining experience with the enormous functionality present in the package. A lot of that learning time is spent mastering the basics of key components such as Track View and Controllers. These are the elements we must eventually master to produce the stunning animations for which 3DS MAX is so aptly suited. Keep this information in mind the next time you need to exert more control over the behavior of an object's animation.
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2112 F/X - 3DS MAX Track View Tutorial
Comments on this web page are welcome Copyright 1998, 2112 F/X. Terms and conditions of use and disclaimer Third Party Trademarks
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3D Artists - Tutorials
Q:I am trying to create a page turn effect(animation) in 3D Studio Max. I'm not sure how to do it, any help would be appreciated. I have been to the tutorials page and found the Q and A's very interesting and helpful. Being a novice at email I hope I've sent this question to the right address. Thank you very much.
A:Here is how it works:
Create 2 boxes for the two parts of the open book (some segments to allow bend modifications), other 2 thin boxes bellow them. ● Apply a Skew Modifier to the first 2 boxes. ● Create a QuadPatch for the turning page over the right part of the book. ● Create a Dummy Helper in the middle of the book. ● Link the page to the Dummy and move the Dummy slightly up the turning page should not be coincident with the other pages... ● Animate the Dummy to rotate about Y - the page follows. ● Now, apply a Bend Modifier to the Page. ● On Sub-Object level, move the Center of the effect to the edge of the page (in the middle of the book, where the Dummy is). In this way the bend effect does not affect the edge the page rotates about. ● To bend only the corner of the page on start and end apply a Twist Modifier and move its Sub-Object Center to the upper left corner of the page - the lower right corner gets bent. ●
You can animate the settings of Bend and Twist to achieve the effect you want.
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3D Artists - Tutorials
After the animation is ready, apply a Bend Modifier to the Left & Right parts of the book to get rid of the stupid flat look - an open book is always bent. The animation of the Bend modifier for the page should start with the same value as the right-side Bend, and end with the negative value of the left-side bend. Materials: For the left & right parts of the book create two Multi/Sub materials. The first sub-material is for the edges, the second is for the page's face. Put a bitmap into the Diffuse channel of the second material. ● To display the Multi/Sub material, select the parts of the book, apply an EditMesh modifier, on Face level select the faces displaying the page image, and selected Mat.ID 2. You can use the automatic mapping coordinates of the box or apply an UVW-Modifier. ● For the turning page, create a Double-Sided material and put a bitmap to each side. (the one should be mirrored) ●
I know it is not perfect, but I did it in an hour, so you can play with the scene, change settings and pictures, until you get what you want... Here is the .MAX scene and some textures to download.
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3D Artists - Tutorials
Bubbles Tutorial Creating bubbles seems to be difficult but there is a very simple way to create them without having hundreds of small animated spheres in your scene. In this tutorial, I only use a particle system (spray) and a map applied to it.
Creating the Bubble MAP First, create a sphere in the center of the scene with the following parameters: X, Y, Z: 0, 0, 0 Radius: 100 Segments: 64 Now, add a spotlight to the scene with the following world coordinates: Spot: X, Y, Z: 400, - 200, 400 Spot Target: X, Y, Z: 0, 0, 0 Then, set its color to pure white.
Here is how your scene should be:
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3D Artists - Tutorials
The Scene Now, open the Material Editor. Activate the SLOT #1. Lock Ambient and Diffuse together and set the color to pure white. Set the shading to metal, and change the following parameters: Shininess: 70 Shininess Strength: 30 SelfIllumination: 0 Opacity: 50 Now, apply the material to the sphere. Render in the front view with the Force 2-Sided option set ON. Save the rendering. Start Photoshop, Photostyler, or anything else to crop the picture to make it square. Save it. Here is what you should have:
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3D Artists - Tutorials
The Bubble Map Now, you can close this scene.
Creating the Spray Emitter Now, it's time to create the particle system. all the values used in this tutorial for the spray are subjective. You must adjust these values to fit your scene requirements. Create a spray using the parameters as in this picture:
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3D Artists - Tutorials
Now, open the Material Editor. Set the Shading to Phong, Filter to light grey (R: 180, G: 180, B:180) and use the following values: Shininess: 0 Shininess Strength: 0 SelfIllumination: 100 Opacity: 100 Then, go to the Maps section. Load the bubble map you croped and saved as a Diffuse Map. Then, duplicate it to the Opacity Map. Go back to the Diffuse Map settings. Under Output, change the RGB Level to 2 (optional). Your map is ready !
The map as seen in the Material Editor
Assigning the Map to the Spray Select the spray and assign the map you've just created to it. Render with the Force 2-Sided option set ON. Voilà !
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3D Artists - Tutorials
The Final Rendering Of course, there are many other ways to create bubbles. I think this one is the easiest for those who don't have any special plug-ins. And don't forget that all the spray values used in this tutorial are subjective.
© Raphael Benedet
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3D Artists - Tutorials
Q: Hi ! I wonder if u could do tutorial on a match, that would ignite and burn. :) I need it to burn the fuse of my bomb. Thank you !
A: This is not a complete Tutorial, only a sketch describing the most basic steps to create the scene bellow. Please download the sample MAX file and explore it in detail. To redo this tutorial, you will need MAX 1.1 and higher, or MAX 1.0 with the freeware plug-in Combustion installed. The Tutorial for the Bomb Fuse is here.
Let's create the geometry first Create a Box with following Parameters: Length:40,0 Width:40,0 Height:500,0 Length Segs: 4 Width Segs: 4 Height Segs: 40 This will be the body of the match. The high Segment settings are because we are going to do Boolean Substraction and we need more detail to get better results. ●
file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...tudio%20Max%20Tutorials/FX/Burning%20Match.htm (1 of 4) [29/07/2002 15:38:04]
3D Artists - Tutorials ●
Apply a Material Modifier and set Mat.ID to 1
Create a Sphere with Radius 30 and use Scale to make it look like an ellipsoid. ●
●
Cretate a second Box (Cube) with size 600
●
Create a Cylinder with Radius 10, Height 800
●
Apply a Material Modifier to the Cylinder and set Mat.ID to 2.
Apply a Taper Modifier to the Cylinder with following Parameters: Amount:3,0 Curve:-5,0 Primary:Z Effect:XY ●
Create a Boolean Compound Object and substract the Cylinder from the Cube. We have a box with a cylindrical hole now. This hole will carve the match as it burns. ●
Create a second Boolean Compound Object and substract the first Boolean from the first Box. ●
Animate the Position of the first Boolean Compound Object to "burn out" the Box. ●
Select the Sphere and the Box, and apply a Bend Modifier to both objects with following Parameters: Angle:0,0 Direction:90,0 Axis: Y Limit Effect: ON Upper Limit: 400,0 Lower Limit:0,0 ●
Animate the Bend Angle settings from 0 to 40 to bend the match as it burns out. ●
Now for some materials: ●
Create a Multi/Sub Material.
●
In slot 1, create the wood material for the match.
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3D Artists - Tutorials
In slot 2, create a black material. You can use a gradient map and a red map in a Mask to simulate the glow. As the Boolean moves, the "burning" part of the match receives Mat.ID 2 and shows the second material. ●
Create a new Material for the match head. Use a Noise Procedural shader in the Diffuse channel for the burning phase, and animate the Diffuse color. ●
Light my Fire! Create a Combustion Atmospheric Apparatus with Hemi turned ON. ●
Animate Position, Rotation and Scale of the Apparatus for the Flame to move. ●
●
Open "Environment..." and add a Combustion Effect to the list.
●
Set the Combustion as bellow:
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3D Artists - Tutorials
What else? Be sure to explore the animation settings for every object in the scene using the TrackView. There are many parameters that can be animated, and there is not enough place in this tutorial to describe all of them... ●
All 3 objects should be linked together so you can animate the whole match as one. ●
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RFAQ: Carving a Stone in MAX
Q:I wonder if there is an effective methode to create the effect of "stone-engravering" - i want to animate that a tool "scratch" my name into a stone block with smashing stones with more... I have thought about making subtract text from the block at different stadies - then morphing them afterward, but it seems to take long time... thanks in advance..
A:I decided not to respond to the Question until I find a good Answer :o) Here is a tutorial for carving an "M" into a marble block and the resulting MAX scene. It uses standard functions of MAX and the FREEWARE SpaceWarp BOMB2 by Johnny Ow, but it would work with the regular Bomb of MAX, too. Note that it DOESN'T MAKE ANY USAGE OF BOOLEANS! I did it in about 1 hour (including figuring it out :o), it should take less to recreate...
The Animated GIF shows only a part of the animation, and includes just every 2nd frame.
The first step will be: Creating a carved Marble Block. ● ● ● ● ●
Start a new scene in MAX. Turn SNAP (S) on. Go to Create/Shapes/Text, enter the text ("M"), select the font "Times New Roman Bold" Click in the Front viewport to create the Letter. Use SHIFT+Move to create a Copy of the Letter. file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...torials/FX/Carving%20a%20Stone%20to%20text.htm (1 of 3) [29/07/2002 15:41:12]
RFAQ: Carving a Stone in MAX
Using Create/Shape/Line draw the Block Contour around the First Letter. ● Use SHIFT+Move to create a Copy of the Block Contour spline. ● Go to Modify and apply an EditSpline modifier to the First Letter. Turn Sub-Object OFF and Attach the Block Contour. ● Apply a Bevel modifier to the shape with [Height 3, Outline -3]. ● Select the Copy of the Letter and turn Optimize OFF. ● Apply the Bevel modifier to the Copy of the Letter with [Height 3, Outline 3] ● Apply the Bevel modifier to the Copy of the Contour with 2 levels: Level 1: [Height -20, Outline 0], Level 2: [Height -3, Outline -3] ● Select all objects, apply an UVW Modifier, turn Sub-Object ON and allign the Gizmo to the front side of the Block. ● Open the Material Editor, load or create a marble material, and assign to all objects. ●
Now you have a beveled marble block with an exisitng beveled letter-shaped hole in the front, and the same beveled letter filling this hole.You might want to save this state to a separate file because the letter shape is still editable. The next step will be: Detaching portions of the Letter to separate mesh objects. ● ●
Select the Letter, apply an EditMesh modifier. Turn Sub-Object ON, go to Face level. Turn Crossing Selection OFF - Window Selection ON (last line, left-most button) ●
Using Single Face mode, select parts of the Letter you want to carve with one "hit". Press Detach to create a new object.
Repeat this step until you break the whole letter into small pieces. Go to Create/Space Warps, find the Johnny Ow entry in the rollout and create a Bomb2 right behind the first piece of letter. ● Set the Bomb2 properties to [1,0] [5,0] [1,0] [5] [5,0] [2,0] [90,0] [120,0] [1,0] ● Bind the first piece of letter to the Bomb2 using the Bind to Space Warp icon. ●
● ●
Use SHIFT+Move to create a copy of the Bomb2 behind the next piece of letter. Set the Detonation time to [25] and bind.
Repeat the last two steps for each piece and add 20 to the last detonation time (e.g. 45,65,85,105...) If you play the animation now, a part of the block will break away each 20 frames. The next step will be: Creating and animating the Carving Tool. ● ● ● ●
Create a spline with the desired cross-section of the tool Apply Extrude or Bevel for the 3rd dimension Use Scale to make it fit the size of the letter parts it will be carving. Assign a Metal material of your choice to the tool. file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...torials/FX/Carving%20a%20Stone%20to%20text.htm (2 of 3) [29/07/2002 15:41:12]
RFAQ: Carving a Stone in MAX ● ● ● ● ●
Hit Spacebar to lock the selection of the Tool. Allign the Tool in the Front viewport to the first piece of letter. Place the Tool in the Left viewport to be at the initial distance to the block. Go to the Display tab and in the Display Optimizations rollout, check Trajectory. Press the Animate button ● ●
●
Enter 5 in the frame counter and move the Tool to hit the block in the Left viewport. Enter frame 10 in the counter, and move the Tool back to the initial position. In the Front viewport, move it up to allign to the next piece. Enter frame 20, right-click the Time Slider, uncheck Scale & Rotation, and create a Position key.
Repeat these steps for the next hits, adding 20 to all frame entries (25,30,40...45,50,60...65,70,80...) ● ● ● ●
Turn Animate off. Open TrackView, find the Tool object, expand the tracks. Replace the Default Position Controller (Bezier Position) with a TCB Position Controller. Right-click the first position key on frame 0. ● ●
Set [Ease From: 50] in all "starting" keys (0,20,40,60,80 ...) Set [Ease To: 50] in all "returning" Keys (10,30,50,70,90 ...)
This will make the tool speed up before the hit and slow down after it. You can animate the rotation of the Tool,too, if you want to allign it to the carved lines. The next step will be: Creating sparks for the hits of the Carving Tool. Go to Create/Geometry, select Particle Systems, create a Spray with [50] [50] [2,0] [40,0] [20,0] [Drops] [Tetrahedron] ● In the Timing field, uncheck Constant and enter [4] [20] [40] ● Set the Emitter size to [10],[10] ● Allign the Spray to the hitting edge of the Tool, pointing back. ● Link the Spray to the Tool. ● Go to Create/Space Warps, create Gravity, set it to [10] [0] [Planar] ● Bind the Spray to Gravity. ● Select Spray, go in the stack to the Particle System, hit the Animate button, go to frame 19, in the Modify Tab enter 0,5 for Drop size. Go to frame 20 and enter 2 for Drop Size. ● In the TrackView, find and select the Drop Size track for the Spray, hit the Out-Of-Range button (6th from the left)and select Cycle for both sides of the curve. This will make the sparks appear with a Size of about 1,5 and almost disappear before the next hit. ●
Now you can create a Spotlight and a Camera to finish the scene.
file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...torials/FX/Carving%20a%20Stone%20to%20text.htm (3 of 3) [29/07/2002 15:41:12]
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Tutorials section - Animation
Chain Link Tutorial By John Larsen
Tutorial requirements: 3D Studio Max R2 or higher. No plug-ins needed. You may download the .MAX file ChainLinkTUTa.max In this tutorial you will learn the basic functions of the dynamics utility that is built into MAX R2. In the process, I used a loft to get the shape of the link. However, using the loft proved too time consuming with the dynamic calculations even though the lowest level of detail was used in the loft for the simulation. You can use a simple torus with 8 segments and 4 sides. This runs the caculations very quickly, which allows you to experiment more.
Step One: Either create a torus with 8 segments and 4 sides, or create a spline the shape of a link and loft it as I have done shown below.
Step Two: With the loft, keep the Shape Steps and Path Steps at 1.(Options in the Skin Parameters under Loft) After we run the dynamic calculations, we will increase the detail of the loft or torus.
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Max3D - Tutorials
Step Three: Instance the link once and rotate it 90 degrees on the X axis. Then make instances with those two links until you have about 9 links. It is important to make them instances so that you only have to fiddle with one link to increase the detail later. Important: After instancing the links, make sure you have the right naming order: Link01, Link02, Link03, Link04 etc. So that you will know which Link is next to which. Because when you instance twos the numbering falls out of order.
Step Four: Under Create/SpaceWarps/Particles & Dynamics, apply wind to your scene as I have done in the right. Do not Bind to Space Warp.
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Next page
Tutorials are split up into these categories: Nature Modeling F/X Compositing Misc. Texturing Scripting Animation
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Tutorials section - Animation
Step Five: Go to Utilities/Dynamics. The utility will appear below. Now you need to enter what objects will be involved in the Dynamics00 simulation. Under Simulation Name, click on the new button. Then under Objects in Simulation click on the Edit Object List button.
Step Six: The Edit Object List will appear. This operation is simply Including or Excluding objects from the simulation. Originally the object names will appear in the left box, you select the ones you want and use the arrow buttons to move them to the box on the right. Just like Include/Excluding objects from lights. When done click OK button. Now click on the Edit Object button.
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Max3D - Tutorials
Step Seven: Under OBJECT: is the list of all your objects that you entered in the Edit Object List. Under Collision Test select the Mesh radio button. You want to calculations to recognize the shape of the links. If the objects were solid and you were just going to bounce them off of each other than the other selections would be more appropriate. The allow for faster calculations. Under Assign Effects/Collisions is where you identify what effects will be used and which objects it will collide with.
Step Eight: Select the first Link under OBJECTS and then below under Misc Dynamic Controls make The Object is Immovable. Because you want the rest of the links to hang on to the first link. You could put in a nail or something that holds the first like, and make that Immovable. If you choose to do this, then apply that as if it were Link01 in this tutorial.
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Max3D - Tutorials
Step Nine: Select Link02 and under Assign Effects/Collisions select the Assign Object Effects... button. In this dialogue box, you can select which Space Warps that you want to effect your obect. Again this is same procedure as Include/Exclude. Move gravity to the box on the right to include the effect for Link02, then click OK Step Ten: Again, under Assign Effects/Collisions select the Assign Object Collisions... button. Since you are working with Link02, you will want it to collide with its neighboring links, Link01 and Link03. This will keeps the links attached so they do not break apart. Now follow steps Nine and Ten with Links 03 through 09. Step Eleven: Select all the Links int he viewport and go into Material Editor. Apply the material that you want, then go to the bottom of the rollout under Dynamic Properties.
Bounce Coeifficient: 0.75 Static Friction: 0.5 Sliding Friction: 0.0 Using the material as the dynamic settings seems more practical than appling these configurations to each object individually in the Dynamics Utility. Highest bounce is 1.0 which is too much for a metal chain. Bounce of 0.0 causes the chain to fall apart. It will still fall apart later in the animation using 0.5, so 0.75 seems to be the best bet. Static Friction was used to tone down the bouncing of the metal. But this caused it to move slow motion, so it might not be the appropriate setting. Experiment with it...
file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...Tutorials/FX/Chain%20Link%20Simulation%202.htm (3 of 4) [29/07/2002 15:42:00]
Max3D - Tutorials
Now back under the Dynamics Utility rollout, under Timing & Simulation, you need to set the start and end time of the calculation. I chose 400 to give the chain time to bounce around a bit. Though you would need more time for it to come to a complete stop. When it does the calculations, it put a key on everyframe unless you specify under Keys Every N Frames. Finally, just above Timing & Simulation click on Solve. This will start the calculations, so grab your self some coffee or a magazine cuz it may be a while depending on the complexity of your geometry.. When the calculations are finished, play it back to see the results. If you are happy with it, go ahead and increase the resolution of the Links or torus objects. Also, you may want to go into the Track View apply the Reduce Keys under Edit Time to reduce Track View clutter. Any comments or suggestions please don't hesitate to send E-Mail - [email protected] or [email protected] - THANKS!
Tutorials are split up into these categories: Nature Modeling F/X Compositing Misc. Texturing Scripting Animation
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Disco ball
A Discoball 3D Studio Max R2 You know that discoball (or what they are called) from the discos in the 70's. I was wondering the other day on how to make one of those in 3D Studio Max. And found out, with some help from the helpful people at the 3D Cafe.com mailing list, that with the new omnilight projection map feature and the raytracing map option in Max R2 this was an easy project to model out. As I don't have a image of a real discoball I have to do with my long, nearly lost, memory of the movie Saturday night Fever, where John Travolta once was a nice guy. So if my image of the discoball is untrue to the real life discoballs please inform me (and send me a image of one if you have!) so I can fix it. Objects: The ball is a unsmoothed sphere placed in the middle of a room; and for this short tutorial hanging there in a not to natural environment. No disco here!! I have placed four spot in the rooms corners target at the ball, and a fifth spot facing the same way as the camera and highlighting the sphere from the front. All the spots are multiplied to 3.0, fall off and hot spot the are same size and somewhat bigger than the sphere and they are excluding everything except the ball from illumination and shadow casting. And the shadow parameters are unchecked. One single weak omni is placed on the floor to give some light in the room. One omni is placed in the middle of the ball with an projector map and includes everything for illumination and shadow casting except the excluded sphere. The map is a black bitmap with a lot of whit spots on it and it will then give the illusion of reflecting light from the ball an onto the wall. I could have made the projector map in photoshop but instead I used the nice little shareware program, Universe Creator, from D2 Corporation. This little program make background star images with option for clusters, stars and nebulas, and I used it to make many with spots (stars) on a black background. Materials: file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...20Studio%20Max%20Tutorials/FX/Disco%20ball.htm (1 of 2) [29/07/2002 15:42:13]
Disco ball
I had problems with finding the right combination of reflection, ray tracing and materials to get the ball to look somewhat like a discoball, but after some fiddling this was what I come up with: Basic parameters: Constant Shading, Ambient and Diffuse is pure black, Specular is pure white, Shininess is 80, Shininess strength is 70, Maps: Diffuse map is default ray trace map with an amount of 15, Reflection map is the scenes images as it is shall be: Render the finished scene and use that image as the reflection map. This gives a reflection of the balls surrounding in the mirror like surfaces on the ball. Necessary and essentially when you are looking at it close up. Animation: It is quit easy to animate the discoball as it rotates. If you select the ball and the omni "with the projector map and use the normal "select and rotate" tool the projector map will follow and it looks like the ball is rotating while it reflects and rotate the reflection of the lights on the wall. View the effect: You can view a short animation of the effect (animated gif, 223 k) by clicking here
Harald J. Martinsen of TMP. 11.01.98
[email protected]
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Tutorials section - Animation
Rigid Body Dynamics Tutorial For MAX 2.0 By GuiLe
Introduction: In this tutorial, i will attempt to show you how to apply rigid body dynamics to the motion of a pair of dice, such as on a craps table in a casino.
Start or Reset Max and Turn on figure 1.
Angle and
2D snap, then, in the TOP viewport, Create a spline curve as shown in
Figure 1. ●
This will be our Table's Edges.
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Max3D - Tutorials
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Next, extrude this shape by using the extrude button under the Modify Tab (see figure 2.). Name this extruded shape "TableSide". and also add a box on the bottom of the shape, making it look like the one shown in Figure 2, Name this shape "TableBottom".
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Figure 2.
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Next thing to do is to create the two Dice (which are really just boxes) so from the create Tab , create 2 boxes and place them close to our table in the scene (figure 3.). Name these shapes Dice01 and Dice02 and animate these dice so that they are towards the end of the table by the time the frame counter hits 100 frames (see figure 3b)
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Max3D - Tutorials
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Figure 3a (Frame 1), 3b (Frame 100).
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Now we need to create Gravity ! look at figure 4a and create a gravity icon and then position it as shown in figure 4b
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Max3D - Tutorials
Figure 4a, 4b.
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Ok, Here comes the good part! The Rigid Body Dynamics section is found under the Utilities Tab (see figure 5) and under this tab we want to click the "Dynamics" button (figure 5)
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Max3D - Tutorials
Figure 5.
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Now, everything that will happen in the next section is related to the Dynamics rollout. Under "Simulation Name" click "new" and create a new simulation called "Dice". Then in the "Objects in Simulation" section click "Edit Object List" and the dialogue box you see in figure 6 will pop up ! The theory is that if you click on "exclude" in the top right corner of this dialogue box the simulation will exclude what is in the list just under it! so if nothing is under it then it will exclude nothing (and hence INCLUDE everything in the simulation!!, pretty smart huh :) heh, not good enough for ya yet ? well lets keep going eh !
Figure 6a, 6b.
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After Clicking OK, in the right hand panel again (under the dynamics rollout) click on "Edit Object" and the dialogue box in figure 7 will show up and this is where the good stuff really happens ;) under "OBJECT" in the drop down list click on TableSide and then just under that click on the check box "This object is immovable" (look for the red circle). Now this option is used to tell the simulation that this object cannot be moved and is fixed no matter what hits it :) Now you will also have to do the same thing to the TableBottom by clicking on the dropdown list under the "OBJECT" section and selecting it.
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Max3D - Tutorials
Figure 7.
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The next steps will apply the effects to the dice, While you are still in the dialogue box shown in figure 7, under the "Objects" dropdown list, select Dice01 and then click on "Assign Object Effects" in the top right corner, this will bring up the dialgoue box shown in figure 8 and as you can see the Gravity01 effect is on the left side, now move this to the right button and then click "OK". After assigning the Gravity01 to Dice01 go side by selecting it and then clicking on the ahead and assign the same effect to Dice02 (since it will also be affected by gravity).
Figure 8.
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Max3D - Tutorials
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The next step to apply is to tell the simulation which objects the Dice will be colliding with, and as you guessed it, this is done by clicking the "Assign Object Collisions" in the Top right of the dialogue box in figure 7. ok so make sure you have Dice01 selected in the drop down list under "OBJECTS" in the dialogue box in figure 7. after clicking this button, the dialogue box in figure 9 will come into existence and as you can see i have chosen to click on the "exclude" radio button so that NOTHING is excluded and Everything is included! do the same thing to Dice02. BUT.... this is not the end of the story here, we will have to also assign the collisions to the TableBottom and the TableSide objects so that they know that the dice will be colliding with them ! For those two objects you will not have to assign everything to collide with each other, rather you will only have to tell them that the Dice01 and Dice02 will be the only objects they have to worry about. (see figure 9b it will make more sense when you look at it). Make sure you do the same thing for TableBottom that you do to TableSide and before you close this dialogue box (the one shown in figure 7) click on "Move Pivot To Centroid" for Dice01 and Dice02 so that the calculation can be more accurate ! now the whole simulation is ready to be calculated (however there is some FineTuning that will be done later) for now, you may press solve and see what happens. The calculation for this particular simulation should not take more than a minute (of course depending on your system)
Figure 9a, 9b.
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Max3D - Tutorials ●
Ok, by now you would have noticed that the dice are not bouncing on the TableBottom, rather they are bouncing on TOP of the whole Table setup !! ok the reason for this is because of a particularly useful section in the dialogue box shown in figure 7 (see the BLUE circle) now a bit of an explanation of what actually happened in this simulation. The calculations used the BOX option under the "Collision Test" section so in effect what happened it used the BOUNDING BOX of the TableSide Object and hence the dice are bouncing on the Bounding box ! Now what we will have to do is change the value from BOX to MESH so that the simulation will use the actual MESH of the TableSide Object in the calculation of the dynamics ! as you use this feature of max more and more you will be able to decide which option is best to use for a particular simulation ! (see for speed of calculations, if you have an object that will behave like a sphere, then you would choose the SPHERE option etc etc ...) we are lucky in the fact that our dice are actually a BOX shape and hence the calculation is sped up considerably, note that if you have complex shapes and your calculations are based on the MESH these calculations can sometimes take hours ! :) anyway once you have changed the option to MESH for the TableSide object, click "solve" again and see what happens !
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"Well, thats more like it" i hear you say ! hehehe ok, but as you can see, the animation is over too quickly and the dice dont come to rest. On a real craps table, you would notice that there is felt on the table bottom, and this is where our has a small section down the bottom called "Dynamic Material editor comes in ! the material editor in MAX2.0 Properties" and when we create a material, we can actually assign it some dynamic properties of our own ! so, in the first material slot, give your felt the colour that you want it to be and then go down to the "Dynamic Properties" section and change the numbers to those shown in figure 10. Another neat trick is you can just Drag the material and drop it on the object ! so lets all do that now :). Presto ! your object is now a felt material ! :). ok Solve the simulation again and see what happens.
Figure 10.
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Ok, so you get the idea, you can play around with those numbers to get the best animation of the dice. sometimes it wont be so good, other times it will be just rediculous ! heh but i guess thats what it's all about ! experimentation ! Now, some refinments in the animation, Extend the number of frames to 200 and bring the dice closer together at the start of the animation, if you really want a chaotic dice roll, then animate each dice separately (you can do this by going into the trackview and deleting all the keys of the animation and starting from scratch. To make the dice go faster, make them travel the same distance as above but let it take them 50 frames to do it (not 100) that will speed them up to twice as fast ;) Make sure that if you change the number of frames, you must also change the number of frames the simulation goes for (see figure 11). you would have also noticed that the more refinements you make, the longer the simulation takes to calculate ( obviously )!.
Figure 11.
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Max3D - Tutorials
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One last hint of advice.... Open the Track View and click on the Filters button (Top Left corner) and then under the "Show Only" section (on the right) click "Animated Tracks"and press "OK". once you have done that click the "Edit Time" button then right click on "WORLD" and then select "Expand Tracks" and what you will see is a WHOLE LOTTA KEYS !!! heh now the aim of this final tip is to reduce those number of keys to the bare minimum ! ok .. now make sure you select the "position" and "rotation" transforms for each object (Use the CTRL button to add to the selections), next, make sure the "Select Time" button is selected and then drag a selection from just before frame 1 to just after the last frame in your animation.(see figure 12a). Now that you have all these keys selected ! click the and off it goes, you will see the keys being reduced (Figure 12b) and especially for the "Reduce Keys" Button TableBottom and TableSide objects, they will have no keys (obviously, since they are immovable !! :).
Figure 12a
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Max3D - Tutorials
Figure 12b. See the Difference !!
Well, thats it for the Rigid Body Dynamics Tutorial ! i Hope you learned something (cause i sure did !) and i hope you do go and experiment with your own values (especially if you are wanting to make the materials look and behave as much as possible to real life materials !! for example marbles bouncing on a marble floor would have high values for bounce and low values of friction (both static and dynamic) oh, that's something i forgot to explain ! the static friction is a material's resistance to movement while it is NOT moving, while the Dynamics friction is a material's resistance to movement while it IS moving (remember that) of course if you were good a physics you would know that already ;) hehehe. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and if there is anything in particular you would like to know or still have problems with this tutorial please dont hesitate to send Email. to me, or talk to me on #fx on the efnet iRC. Btw, Get The Max2.0 Scene File by Clicking Here. Cyas GuiLe.
Tutorials are split up into these categories: Nature Modeling F/X Compositing Misc. Texturing Scripting Animation
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digitalife - animation, 3d modelling, rendering, free models, tutorials, links
Current 3D Max Tutorial Exploding a car! This tutorial will take you through a procedure to create a car explosion, there is an animation at the bottom of this page if you wish to see the result of this tutorial. We will have new tutorials from time to time so check back here for new ones.
First Import the car object into Max. We are giving away this model for free. To download it, click here. As we will be using particle animation to break apart the car, you need to join all the car objects together to form one object. Click on a part of the car, go to the MODIFY tab and click ATTACH, click on one of the other pieces. Keep doing this until the car is just one object. Now you're ready to create the Particle System. Go to the CREATE tab and in the dropdown list choose Particle Systems. Select 'PArray' and drag the mouse in any viewport to place the icon. Click on the MODIFY tab. Press the PICK OBJECT button and pick the car. The car will now be used for our particles. Under 'Particle Generation', Set the LIFE to 70. In the 'Particle Type' roll out, select 'Object Fragments'. This will use the car object as particles instead of the defaults, so that our particles use the same geometry as the car. Set THICKNESS to equal 2. Click on 'Number of Chunks' and enter 50.
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TIP - Note that these operations a very mathematically intensive and may take a while to perform. If you wish to play around with the different values to get it right, it may be best to change the Type of Particles to 'Standard', instead of 'Object Fragments', until you get the particle movement just right. Then before you render you can change back to Object Fragments and all your setting will still be in place. Under the 'Particle Rotation' roll out, set 'Spin Time' to 100, and set 'Variation' to 75%. Under MATERIAL, click on 'Picked Emitter' then click on 'Get Material From'. This will assign the material to the particles. Ok, now we are going to add gravity to the scene to make the object fragments fall to the ground realistically. In the CREATE tab, go to Space Warps and select 'Particles & Dynamics'. Select GRAVITY and drag in the Top viewport to place the gravity space warp. On the Tool bar, click on 'Bind to Space Warp', and click and hold on the Gravity icon and drag on to the PArray. This will make the particles react to gravity. Go to the MODIFY tab and change the gravity STRENGTH to 0.25.
Now we want to create a Deflector to make sure the car pieces don't fall through the ground, but bounce off the surface in a realistic way. As you did before, go into 'Space Warps' and select 'Deflector'. Drag a large square out in the top view. This will act as the ground. Again, click 'Bind to Space Warp' and drag from the Deflector to PArray. On the MODIFY tab, change the Deflector BOUNCE setting to 0.3. Time to make an explosion. We will use the combustion effect for this purpose. In the CREATE tab go to HELPERS and select 'SphereGizmo'. Drag to make the gizmo and make it larger than the car. This is the size of the explosion. Position the Gizmo so that it is at the center of the car. Under the RENDER menu select ENVIRONMENT. Under 'Effects' click 'Add' and select 'Combustion'. Click on 'Pick Gizmo' and select the SphereGizmo. Click on 'Explosion'. Click file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%2...%20Max%20Tutorials/FX/Exploding%20a%20Car.htm (2 of 3) [29/07/2002 15:42:56]
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'Setup Explosion'. Change the Start Time to -10. As the car explodes immediately, we don't won't the explosion just heating up, after the car is already destroyed, so we did this to change the timing. That's about it! Now all we have to do is hide the original car. As the particles are now using the car geometry, if we leave the original car there, the particles will break up but the original car will remain intact. So go to the Display Floater and hide the original car. Voila! Have fun!
Here is the final result (please wait while GIF animation loads):
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
3D TUTORIALS FAIRY DUST by Erik Borzi
If you ever need to create fairy dust for an animation, and would like to do it without spending a fortune on a plug-in that will animate hundreds of custom polygons that are texture mapped - then this tutorial will be a sound solution. 3D Studio Max has many powerful tools, that when used correctly will give surprising results. For this tutorial, I'll show you how to use the snow particle generator and a simple texture map to create fairy dust. I am assuming that you know how to use particles, space warp modifiers, and the material editor, if not read those books, and do the basic tutorials!
In this tutorial you will need a spline, a dummy object, a box, a combustion object, a snow particle emitter, and a little magic. Lets begin by creating a Snow particle emitter. It would be best for this file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...Max%20Tutorials/FX/Fairy%20Dust%20(sparks).htm (1 of 4) [29/07/2002 15:43:19]
3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
example to copy the settings from the settings in (fig 1.). Set the emitter at the center of the world and point it upwards. Note that the "Render:" is set to "Facing" instead of the default "Six Point". This is where all the magic is. Facing particles work best when rendered with a Camera, or a Perspective viewport. Now create a dummy box, make it large enough to see on the screen. Now align it to be centered over the particle emitter. Use the align tool to accomplish this. Next, use the link tool to link the particle emitter to the dummy object. Create a spline. Be creative, let yourself go, and add some curves. Select the dummy object, and go to the motion control menu, click on the Assign Controller bar, now select Position, then click on to assign the Path controller type. Down below, click on Pick Path and select the path. Now when you play your animation back, you'll see the particle emitter moving along the path. You should rotate the dummy object at frame 0, so that when it moves along the path, the particles are aligned parallel to the path. Be sure to select Follow, and Bank under Path Parameters.
Figure 1
Next, you need to create a Combustion atmospheric apparatus, which can be found under the Create, Helpers icon. Create the apparatus and make it slightly larger than the particle emitter box. Use the align tool and center it to the dummy box, then link it to the dummy box. Go to Environment under the Rendering pulldown menu on the top of the screen. Click on Pick Object and select the apparatus. For the settings refer to (fig 2.) Animate the Phase Velocity, and Drift/Frame from 0 to 3 over 100 frames. Now we need to create our texture for the particles. Facing particles are basically a square shaped polygon. I created a 200 x 200 highlight map using a paint program. It's important that you have an alpha channel so that the edges are invisible when the texture is rendered, that way, all you see is the highlight. See (fig 3.) for the texture map, and the mask.
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
Figure 2
Figure 3 Once you have created the texture, go into the material editor and place the texture into Diffuse using a bitmap browser. Animate the Angle of the map from 0 to 90 over 100 frames. Copy this into Opacity by dragging and dropping into the Opacity [none] box. Be sure to set the mono-channel output to Alpha. This will ensure that the edges are invisible. Copy the Opacity settings into: Specular, Shininess, and Shininess Strength. Next we need to create our animated line, that will be revealed by the traveling fairy dust. To do this create a box that has the following parameters: height = 2, width = 2, length = 2. Set the height segments to equal 65 units. (You can adjust this later for a smoother or coarser line.) Now what you need is the Path Deform space warp modifier which can be found under the Create, Space Warp icon. Select the path by clicking on Pick Path. You will now see a modifier along the path. Use the Bind to Space Warp tool, to bind the box to the space warp. Depending on the original orientation of your box, you may need to rotate it to get it properly aligned with the path; the path deform parameters allows you to do this. Select the Move the object to path box, so that the box will be confined to the path. You may have to adjust the percentage of the position to get it aligned with the starting point of the path. For this tutorial, I simply animated the height of the box from frame 0 to 100. That means you have to step down in Modifier Stack, and animate the value for the height. As I mentioned before, you can increase the number of height segments if the line needs to be smoother.
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
Play the animation to make sure that everything is in order. You should see the dummy box with the particles moving with the box growing behind it. Look at (fig 4.) for reference.
Figure 4
Let's add a glow to the fairy dust. To do this, simply select the particles, right click on them, select properties, and change the value of the G-Buffer Object Channel to 1. This will give particles a unique ID number that Video Post will recognize. Go to Video Post, which can found by clicking on the Rendering pull-down menu. Click on and select either perspective, or camera (if you made a camera for this tutorial then select camera). Next click on to create a glow process for the particles. A dialog box will come up, select the pull-down menu under Filter Plug-In, and select Glow (frame only). Select Setup. Set the parameters as follows: select Object Channel, and make the value 1, select User for color, and set the RGB values as R = 239, G = 166, B = 52. Set the size for the Glow to be 6. Next, click the Output icon, and set the parameters for what type of output you want. Render away...
All rights reserved. No part of this tutorial may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from CELEFEX ANIMATION, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review with credit to CELEFEX ANIMATION, and respective authors. © 1998 CELEFEX
Copyright © 1998 Platinum Pictures All rights reserved.
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How to make fire hair
Ever had visions of spontaneous human combustion? The following will be a short discussion on how the images below were created. It is not intended as a tutorial but since I had numerous questions posed to me about the hair and if it would be possible to use the particles within 3D Studio MAX to create lifelike hair and haven't found a realistic solution for hair using particles I decided to explain how the image/animation was made and leave it up to y'all to determine for yourself if it is suited for the visual effects you are after. At the bottom of the page you can download the entire scene for the particles so you can examine closely the parameters and options.
Is it hair or is it fire? When I started out with the idea of HotHead I envisioned a short animation of a character that would look like it had hair when viewed from static shots only to realize when seeing the animation that it was actually fire that was flowing from his head. That said I started out with a 3D human head model and removed all the geometrical hair from it and replaced it by a number of Spray Particle emitters. There is a lot of variation used for these emitters since the hair wasn't supposed to be all that uniform. It took some fiddling around with positions and rotations for the emitters as well as some fiddling with the variation value of the emitters. The image below will show you the basic layout of the emitters that are going to form the hair for the character.
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How to make fire hair
The generic layout of emitters 21 Spray Particle emitters were used to design the basic coverage for the head to form the firey hair. Each of those particle emitters was set to generate 400 particles at rendertime so a mere 8400 particles were used. Variation levels were set to 2.0 to make sure that there was enough noise in there to have the particles of each emitter overlap eachother a little. I also wanted quite a temperamental fire so I set the speed of the emitters to 4.0 and used a lifetime for the particles of 6 frames. The material used for the firey hair was a simple phong shaded material that had a gradient map in the diffuse channel. The actual gradient consisted of Yellow, Orange, and Red for colors #1, #2, and #3, respectively. Additionally the VideoPost was used to add a glow filter to the particles. Particles were set to an object channel to match the glow and the glow itself was set to 12 pixels in radius. To bring a little more shape to the hair I needed to influence the particle's direction. I used a Gravity Spacewarp to give a 'pull' to the hair so it would move slightly downward. Additionally I used two Wind Spacewarps to shape the sides of the hair which were initially sticking out too much. The overall result of the effect can be seen in the image below.
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How to make fire hair
The animation file was rendered from frame 15 and up since I didn't want to start out with a bald head that grew hair and since the particles would start at some point I had to skip those initial frames. Now, it is up to you to look at the MAX file and play around with it yourself to figure out if using this trick for creating hair would be sufficiently realistic for the effect you are trying to achieve. I have included all the required parameters and emitters as well as the parameters for the Trackview for you to start off. You will have to create your own head geometry or check out some of the sites listed in our Jumping Platform to get a few freeware models. Download HOTHAIR.ZIP (6.5Kb)
Stefan's Homepage http://www.euronet.nl/users/sdidak/ All information and images are Copyright (C)1996 Animagic, All rights reserved. Facelift by Neil Marshall
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Fractal Terrains in Bryce 2
Fractal Terrains in Bryce 2 By Steve Lareau Hilltop Design
This tutorial is on how you can turn a fractal into a terrain in Bryce from Metatools, although this concept can be applied to most other graphics programs. I'm assuming that you've already spent time tinkering with Bryce, and if this is the case, this should be a snap. (By the way- this tutorial was created in Bryce 2 for Windows; this will work in Bryce 3D as well, you'll just have to adjust to the different interface.) I've included everything in this tutorial- the images found here, as well as the scene file I used for this tutorial in a ZIP file which you can open up in Bryce 2 and Bryce 3D so you can study it. Scroll to the bottom of this page and start your downloads, then come back here and start doing some reading. Before we do anything else, let's take a look at the basics of what file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...als/FX/Fractal%20Terrains%20in%20Bryce%202.htm (1 of 7) [29/07/2002 15:44:28]
Fractal Terrains in Bryce 2
we're working with, shall we?
The original fractal
The image above is a fractal I created, which I thought would look cool as a terrain. It's got all sorts of weird convolutions and spirals which should translate into something interesting when it's rendered out in 3D. You have to look at the image above the way that Bryce will look at it as a terrain. When you import an image into the terrain editor, Bryce turns an image into varying shades of gray, and anything that is light in color will be "high", and anything dark will be "low". Lets look at a potential problem with this image; on the sides of the image you see a turquoise indentation on all the sides, followed by a purple-blue indentation, then another purple band in the middle of it. There will be a "step" in the height where these three colors are if we leave it the way it is. Open this image up in PhotoShop or your favorite image editing program and try a few things. You can use your blur tool and smooth and blend these areas, which will make it a more gradual "gradient ramp" when it's imported. Or, since I'm more interested in the circular areas of the image, I want to get rid of anything that's not going to give me something to work with as far as height.
The doctored fractal
What I've done with the image above was simple- I opened the image up in PhotoShop, and selected a part of the file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...als/FX/Fractal%20Terrains%20in%20Bryce%202.htm (2 of 7) [29/07/2002 15:44:28]
Fractal Terrains in Bryce 2
turquoise area with the magic lasso tool, with the tolerance set to zero. I then went to menu bar and hit SELECT, then SIMILAR, which selected all 4 of the turquoise indentations. Use your fill bucket and pour the color black into each of these areas. Go through the same steps outlined above for the other problem colors. When you're all done, you should end up with an image that looks exactly like the one above. You can also hit the entire image with a gaussian blur with a radius of 0.5 pixels just to make things blend a little bit better. Save this image with a name that will make sense to you later.
Grayscale fractal
Now, convert the image you just modified into a grayscale for importing into Bryce's terrain editor. It's not really necessary, but do it so you can study how Bryce will read the information you're feeding it. Save what you've got on the screen after converting it to grayscale with a name that designates that it's a grayscale. I've already done that as you can see in the image above. The black areas will all be the lowest level of the 3D terrain, and everything that is white will be height. The thing that's more apparent when you see this image in grayscale is that each of the "cones" in the corners will have some really cool looking "ribs" on them when it's imported as a terrain.
The terrain editor Start Bryce, and go to EDIT, and create a terrain by clicking the mountain. Click on the wireframe mountain to select it, then hit the E next to it for EDIT , then you'll see the terrain editor screen as shown below. Click the tab for PICTURES and you'll see something like below.
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Fractal Terrains in Bryce 2
The first thing we need to do is set the grid resolution to the same size as our image, which in this instance is 512 by 512 pixels in size. Click the little grid as shown with step 1 above, and check 512 as shown. As illustrated with step 2 above, hit LOAD and select your grayscale image. It'll be in the first box as you can see here. Grab the little button to blend as shown as step 3, and drag it to the side until the third box looks like the first box. Look good? Cool- hit APPLY as shown in step 4, and your 3D preview terrain at the lower left should look like you see it above. If you'd like, you can go into the ELEVATION area by hitting the elevation tab and smooth it out. If you're happy with the way this looks so far, click the checkmark as shown in step 5 and exit this area.
The materials composer Next to the wireframe of the terrain, hit the M button for MATERIALS. This will pop up the window as shown below.
What we're about to do is to take our original fractal and plop it on top of the terrain you just created. As shown in step 1 above, we're going to turn channel A into a 2D texture by clicking the little arrow at the top as shown, and simply select 2D texture, which Bryce calls "Leo". It'll show a gold picture of Leonardo in the window. Click on file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...als/FX/Fractal%20Terrains%20in%20Bryce%202.htm (4 of 7) [29/07/2002 15:44:28]
Fractal Terrains in Bryce 2
the first square in that area and the window below will pop up.
Click LOAD as shown as step 1 above, select your colored (the cleaned up version) fractal, and it'll load into the first window. Now, as shown at step 2, click COPY, then click PASTE as shown in step 3. If the third window looks like the one above, click the check mark as shown as step 4 and close this window- you're done here!
Back to Materials Composer Click on the arrow as shown in step 2 in the picture below and select OBJECT TOP. What you've done is mapped the colored fractal to sit on top of the terrain. The channel with the texture is channel A. If you look at the A channel at step 3, you'll notice that some blue slider balls are in the default position, and others have been dragged into the A channel slot. Basically, when you drag a slider ball into different channels, the texture in that particular channel will affect the properties of the material. So go ahead and drag the ball for DIFFUSE COLOR, AMBIENT COLOR, and SPECULAR COLOR into the A channel. You can go back and experiment with the other settings another time, but let's get this scene ready to render. Now, to get the scale of the fractal to match the terrain perfectly, at step 3, you have to set the red bar sticking up above channel A to zero. Either click on the letter A and type in 0 (zero) , or just drag that red bar all the way down. Go ahead and set the other options like diffusion and so forth like I have them set here. When you're done with the settings, click on the arrow as shown at step 4 and exit back to the wireframe screen. Note- the preview window in the upper left hand corner won't display things exactly like it will once it's rendered. You're all done, now go to the main screen and render the example!
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Fractal Terrains in Bryce 2
DOWNLOADS To download the Bryce scene file in ZIP format that was used to create this tutorial, click HERE. 610 kb (The scene is both MAC AND PC compatible) To download all the fractal images used here, click for the ZIP file. PC VERSION 1,225kb MAC VERSION 884 kb Mac users can get a PKZIP compatible decompression program by clicking on the link below! ftp://ftp.inland.net/pub/apps/utils/mac/zipit/zipit.hqx
To see some more examples of Bryce Fractals, head over to my main website.
LINKS TO FRACTAL GENERATING PROGRAMS Flarium, a Windows based Fractal generating program. (This one is perfect for creating fractals for use as terrains for Bryce, since you can scale the fractal to match the size of the terrain resolution before you render it!) Make sure to download all the additional formulas there too! Link to Fractint, a DOS based Fractal generating program. This one has a ton of presets to get you started.
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Fractal Terrains in Bryce 2
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Shawn Lewis Max Tutorial
Lighting and Textures in 3D Max by Shawn Lewis Lighting and texturing a muppet-style character head. In this tutorial, we’ll cover some texturing and lighting techniques that I have found useful in my own work. Some of the techniques discussed come from various readings while others are the result of trial and error. As another note, this tutorial was written for Max 2.x, but most of it will also work with Max 1.x as well other packages. Ready? Here we go…
Figure 1 Meet the cast Figure 1 shows the model that we’ll be using (although any simple model (or even a scene with a strong focal point) would work fine). I chose a simple model because it is much easier to see changes from one rendering to the next in a simple model; as such, it’s hoped that by choosing a simple character you’ll be able to more readily see the desired changes from rendering to rendering. The character is currently illuminated with the default Max lighting and has no textures applied. Lets fix that now. The chicken and the egg
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Shawn Lewis Max Tutorial
Before we start we need to decide how to deal with the "chicken and egg" problem of texturing and lighting: the effectiveness of a texture is (unfortunately) dependent on the lighting in the scene; additionally, lighting a completely "blank" model doesn’t really give one a good feel for how effective the lighting is. Because of this dependent behavior, starting with texturing usually requires additional tweaking once the lighting has been added; conversely, starting with lighting usually means tweaking it after the texturing has been applied. Most of the dependency between lighting and texturing arises from how bump maps, specularity, reflectivity, etc. rely on the light source for their effectiveness. Therefore, it is usually best to add them after the lighting. So, in this tutorial we’re going to apply the diffuse coloring to the model, switch over to setting up the lights, and then switch back to assigning the appropriate specularity, bump maps, etc. Staying with in the lines (simple coloring) The first step is to decide what type of texturing you want: realistic, cartoonish, stylized, or other. We’ll try to create a more "realistic" looking texture with the goal of creating an image which looks like its a "muppet." As muppets tend to be a uniform color and bears tend to be brown, I’ve chosen a ruddy brown color (167, 91, 49) for the ears and face (I’ve also locked the ambient and the diffuse coloring together). The eyes are going to be white (255, 255, 255) with blue (90, 50, 220) colored pupils (technically, there should be blue irises with black pupils, but since this is a muppet, we can get away by having a pupil/iris complex) and the nose will be red (223, 49, 49). Figure 2 shows how the "colored" bear looks with the default lights.
Figure 2 Step into the light Once you’re happy with the coloring (including whatever bitmaps/noise/etc. you want to use for diffuse and/or ambient coloring), it’s time to light the model. We start by changing the ambient color from black to a dark violet color. In "the real world" pure black is a very rare color; as such, removing it from your 3D scenes helps to add to their realism. Since the main lights will be yellowish (218, 218, 192), I have chosen a complimentary purplish hue (18, 11, 25) for the ambient light. Choosing complimentary light and shadow colors in this manner helps to add "depth" (and hence realism) to your image. For lighting the character we’ll be using techniques borrowed from "standard" cinematography. We start with the key light. As this is the main light source for the model, great care should be taken in its placement. Place it below the character if you want him/her to seem large and imposing, place the light way above the character if you want to make him/her seem smaller and less imposing, place it a little above the camera to achieve a "neutral" amount of imposition. At this time you should also decide whether or not the light is "motivated" or "unmotivated." A motivated light has an
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Shawn Lewis Max Tutorial
apparent (or at least strong implied (such as the sun)) source in the scene. An unmotivated light simply exists. Use unmotivated lights carefully in "realistic" scenes because they can make your audience wonder (either consciously or unconsciously) where the light is coming from and therefore can break the viewer’s suspension of disbelief. In this scene, I’m using a motivated light which could either be the sun or a strong spot light. Because real world light is seldom white or a shade of gray, I’ve set the light’s color to a yellowish hue (218, 218, 192). As for light placement, I’ve placed it off to the right above the character (See figures 3a, 3b, and 3c). As you can tell from these figures, I’ve attenuated the key light. Real world lights do not go on forever, they all have finite ranges. Adding attenuation to your lights helps to produce more gradations of colors, which, in turn, make the images look more 3 dimensional. I have also turned on shadows for the light. The result of this light (and the change to the ambient light) can be seen in figure 3d.
Figures 3a, 3b & 3c
Figure 3d Filling out quite nicely As you might have noticed in figure 3d, even though the ambient light isn’t black, the left side of the model tends to blend into the background. To help address this issue, we add another light to the scene: the fill light. The fill light provides illumination to the model on the side "opposite" of the key light. If the key light is on the right, the fill light will be on the left; if the key light is above the model, the fill light will be below the model (see figures 4a, 4b, and 4c). Usually, the fill light is 1 / 2 to 1 / 5 the strength of the key light. In this case, I’ve set its multiplier to 0.22. For a bit of added color contrast and depth, I’ve also set the fill light to have a bluish/violet color (205, 192, 218). Just as I did with the key light, I have also attenuated the fill light (again, refer to figures 4a, 4b, and 4c). Figure 4d shows the affects of all of the lights we have added so far.
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Shawn Lewis Max Tutorial
Figure 4a, 4b & 4c
Figure 4d Backing it up Although we have filled out the model’s left side, it still tends to blend into the background. To help address this issue, we add another light to the scene: the back light. The primary purpose of the back light is to provide a small sliver of illumination along the back edge of the model to help separate it from the background. I usually create this light by cloning the key light and moving it around behind the model. Figures 5a, 5b, and 5c show the placement of the back light in the given scene. Since I based the back light on the key light, it has the same color, employs attenuation (which I have modified appropriately) and also casts shadows. Figure 5d shows the added illumination offered by the back light.
Figure 5a, 5b & 5c
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Shawn Lewis Max Tutorial
Figure 5d Kick it in the eye There are two more lights traditionally used in lighting characters: the kicker and the eye light. Much in the same way the back light is used, the kicker light is used to help pull the model out of the background by adding some more bright illumination to the side of the model currently in shadow. Traditionally it is placed low if the key light is placed high; however, I’m trying to achieve a "spot light" feel so I placed the kicker higher in the scene. Figures 6a, 6b and 6c show the placement of the kicker light for this scene. Figure 6d shows the resulting render.
The other light traditionally used with characters is the eye light. This light is used to make the character’s eyes "pop" thereby making the character’s emotions easier to read. It is especially important with characters that who have deep-set eyes. As our character has eyes which are flush with the face and we are going to apply a texturing trick to help make them pop, I’m leaving out the eye light. Note: if I were going to animate this scene, I would probably include the eye light and animate its values over time to make sure that the proper illumination was achieved through-out the course of the animation.
Figure 6a, 6b & 6c
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Shawn Lewis Max Tutorial
Figure 6d Play-time! Now that all of the lights have been added, take the time to move them around to try to find the best placement. For me, this meant moving the back light closer to the kicker light (thereby making it a back-kicker combo light (see figures 7a, 7b and 7c). The result can be seen in figure 7d.
Figure 7a, 7b & 7c
Surface texturing So now that we have a colored, lit model, it’s time to apply surface texturing to the model. Surface texturing is what makes the model stop looking so flat and uninteresting.
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Shawn Lewis Max Tutorial
Figure 8 Because they’re a key focal point, we’ll start texturing with the eyes. First, we want to make the iris/pupils look less flat. To do this, change the shading type to metal; make the ambient color (26, 26, 26) much darker than the diffuse color (90, 50, 220); make the shininess 90 and the Shin. Strength 100. Now the iris/pupils seem more lifelike, see figure 8. Next we do the sclera (whites of the eyes). First, make sure the whites are suitably shiny (Shininess 61 and Shin. Strength 90). Now comes the trick which should enable us to avoid using a key light: turn on reflection, select ray-tracing, and set the amount to 71%. The result is Figure 9.
Figure 9 You probably noticed that the ray-tracing caused the eyes to pop more, but now they look really bad. The problem lies in the fact that the rest of the face is being reflected in the eyes. What we really wanted was just the area around the eyes to be reflected. So go into the ray-tracing settings (click on material’s reflection map button (which should say raytrace)) and turn on attenuation setting it to exponential (start: 0 end: 100 exponent: 2). Now only a small portion of the face is reflected in the eyes and they still pop off of the head (see Figure 10).
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Shawn Lewis Max Tutorial
Figure 10 Now it’s time to texture the head and ears. I have chosen to apply a box coordinate system to the head (I then "acquire" it to apply it to the ears (this keeps the size of the texture the same on both parts)). I know that I want these parts to be textured like felt, so I look through my textures for an appropriate choice. For this image, I settled on using TREEZ86.JPG for the texture. This may seem like an odd choice, but TREEZ86.JPG is fairly noisy, very organic and has subtle changes in color which lend themselves well to the texturing we want (see Figure 11).
Figure 11 Since the model is using "box" coordinate system, we want to mix some noise (which is 3D and not dependent on the coordinate systems used) with the texture to break up the seams which would otherwise arise. This also helps to break up any noticeable tiling/mirroring artifacts that might occur. I mix the noise with the base texture using a uniform 40% mixture method. The result is shown in Figure 12.
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Shawn Lewis Max Tutorial
For more depth And we’re done! For further experimentation, you could try to increase the amount of realism in this scene through the use of gels. In cinematography, a gel is a lens or colored film added to a light to change it’s characteristics. In 3D work you can do this through the use of projection maps. For instance, use a noise-based projection map on a light to help break up the uniform flatness the 3D lights typically have and add even more depth/realism. Yet another way to increase realism is through the use of volumetric light. Real world light (especially spot lights) tend to illuminate the dust particles in the air. Adding a little bit of volumetric lighting to a scene can help to mimic this behavior and again increase a scene’s believability. Happy rendering! Shawn Lewis Visual Scream Gallery For other examples of the work of Shawn Lewis, see DPM's Gallery page here
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Sun
1- Creat a sphere with a Radius of 50 and Segments: 64 . Put it in the middle of the Front view port.
2-Creat one (1) omni parameters for the color.
found in the light
, and put it in the middle of the Sphere. Follow these
3- Use these for the Attenuation. In the view port you should see a globe surrounding the light. If done well it sould also cover the sphere equaly.(You'll see what i mean once you've renderd)
4- Creat a second omni light and put it in the middle of the Sphere. Give it the same color as #2. 5- Use this for it's attenuation.
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Sun
}"{ Part 2 }"{ 1- Go into the environment setting.
2- Click on the add button and select Volume Light. 3- Click Pick light
and select omni 1. Use these settings for onmi 1.
a) Set Density to 30 and Atten. Mult to 0 .
b) Set Filter Shadows to low c) Check the Noise on d) Set amount to 0.5 e) Set high: to 0 f) Set Size: to 20 4- Redo step 2 and Pick omni 2.Give these settings for omni 2.
a) Set Density to 30 and Atten. Mult to 0 .
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Sun
b) Set Filter Shadows to low c) Check the Noise on d) Set amount to 0.98 e) Set high: to 0 f) Set Size: to 10 g) Set Uniformity to -0.1
5- Render in the perspective view port. Starting to look good.
}"{ Part 3 }"{
1- Go into material
. Select the first ball. Give these parameters to the ball
the scare for a diffuse map
Push
.
2- Select the Noise map. 3- In Noise Type, select fractal 4- Set Noise Treshold to 0.71 5- Click on the Color box and give these numbers: Color #1: Red: 246 Green: 255 Blue: 0 Color #2: Red: 237 Green:255 Blue: 40----->Click on the word none and select noise
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Sun
6- Set Noise type to fractal 7- Set Noise Treshold: High: 1.0 Low:0.525 8- Set Size to 10 9- Click on the Color box and give these numbers: (/The colors shoould be brown) Color #1 Red: 255 Green: 174 Blue: 0 Color #2 Red: 59 Green: 44 Blue: 0
[email protected] December 13th 8:00 pm
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Tutorials section - Nature
Running Water Tutorial By Professor 3D
Have you ever wanted to make good looking running water? From a tap or from a waterfall? Without raytracing? Well, then this is your tutorial! This isn't the fastest way of making running water, but it's realistic! Note: To complete this tutorial, you will need Peter Watje's free Particles+ 2.0 plugin! Creating the particle system: 1. Go to Geometry/Particle Systems/Particles +. Click on the top viewport, and create the particle system with the following parameters:
Widht: 50,0 Lenght: 40,0 2. Go to modify tab, and adjust the following parameters on the particle system: (leave the others default)
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Max3D - Tutorials
Creating the materials: 1. Go to Material Editor and create a new material. Adjust the following parameters: (leave the others default)
Ambient: (RGB) 51, 89, 89
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Max3D - Tutorials
Diffuse: (RGB) 102, 178, 178 Specular: (RGB) 229, 229, 229 2. Assign the same Reflect/Refract map to both Reflection and Refraction map slots:
3. Use these values:
Finishing touches: At last, Goto Render/Enviroment and assign Cloud2.jpg as a bitmap to the Enviroment Map slot:
Now, click on render and save your animation as an *.avi! Click here to download the full, rendered animation of the water in a *.zip!
By Professor 3D
Tutorials are split up into these categories: Nature Modeling F/X Compositing
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Max3D - Tutorials
Misc. Texturing Scripting Animation
HTML is property of Max3D.com. Duplication is prohibited. Hosting by Neorealite.
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M3G Main Page
Tips&Tricks with 3D Studio MAX R2! VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1
By Robert Mikelson
VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2
MISC TUTORIALS
PLUGINS
MODELS
TEXTURES
Dog was made in Clay Studio Pro plugin for 3D Max it blobs Clay splines and spheres to gather. First create some splines as jaws and eye bravos.
Now cerate some more splines as muscles.
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M3G Main Page
Create Clay Surface and push Absorb Free Primetimes.
Clay Studio is calculating it`s surface before each rendering or after each modification. If you want to use Edit Mash (to detach some faces for example) or use FFD, I don`t suggest you to use Mash Smooth, If your PC isn`t REALLY powerful, then push
Use Edit Mash to detach some Faces around eyes.
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M3G Main Page
Use Shag: FUR on this faces (it`s a Atmospheric Effect to create hair).
I can group the head with the detach part, so that they will move together. Do it by selecting two objects and pushing Group.
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M3G Main Page
Flowers where created from spheres and cylinders. Edit Mash was used on cylinders and FUR applied on spheres. Color lights was also placed around the scene.
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M3G Main Page
First I created a Box.
And then used Edit Mash on it.
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M3G Main Page
Then I used also Mash Smooth on it, Created two more Boxes, a hill, tang, sun glasses and so on. I used Edit Mash to detach a band (1. totem) and hair (3. totem). Then I used Wave Space Warp and Bones Pro to animate them.
Robert Mikelson [email protected]
MEMBER LOGIN - MEMBERSHIP INFO - JOIN TODAY - FREE STUFF - GALLERY FAQ - CONTACT - NEWSLETTER - WRITERS GUIDELINES - CURRENT ISSUE
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
3D TUTORIALS SHOCKWAVE FOR A SPACE SCENE This tutorial shows how to make decent looking shockwave (I know that this isn't nothing if we compare this to some movie effects). I used three plugins: animated glow, superglow and particle+ (you can do it without any of those plugins, but it WILL look very bad). I assume that you know basics of 3D Studio MAX. Choose top view then greate torus.
It should look something like this. Choose front view and scale Y-axis.
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
Now right click torus and select properties set G-buffer to 1. This is because later we add animated glow.
TEXTURES First we do opacity map.
Opacity map. As we all know opacity map means that white color is visible and black invisible. Next we do a noise map. 1. Choose diffuse map 2. Then select noise I used following values.
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
It should look something like this now
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
Do a test render.
PARTICLES Now we put particle system to the scene. I used particle+ because it can do a radial emitter. Perfect for this one!
Put your particle+ just like above pic shows (USE radial emitter)
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
I used following values:
Right click on particle system and set G-buffer to 2.
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
Torus with particle+
Go to video post. Add scene event select perspective. Add image filtter event, select animated glow then goto setup. I used following values:
Add image filtter event, select super glow then goto setup.
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
Test render from frame 35
ANIMATING SHOCKWAVE:
First you have to link torus to particle system. use this button to link. Select torus then drag to particle system and release mouse button. Select motion
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
Press scale (Create Key) Time = 0 Set X,Y,Z to 0 Now go to frame 100 Press scale again Set X = 300 Y = 300 Z = 300 Go to frame 0 and press play. Now your shockwave (torus) should scale 0 to 300 in 100 frames. Now just add explosion (combustion, particle system etc...) and stars etc... Press here to see tutorial animation Here is another animation by me. I did it with Max 2.0 I used particle system for the explosion. Starfield plugin for stars Noise map for space background Blizzard particle system for flying rocks Glow plugin for shockwave glow And explosion sound that I found from the internet.
Copyright © 1998 Platinum Pictures All rights reserved.
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3D Artists - Tutorials
Q: Hello! I wonder if u could do a tutorial on skid marks after a car that spins away in 3dmax ?
A: The following Tutorial is about skid marks of a starting racecar. It uses only standard and freeware plug-ins. It was made using Particle Combustion and Particles+ by Peter Watje, but you could use the standard MAX particles instead. Particle Combustion is the only plug-in that is really required. Since the dawn of time I've rolled across the Earth Spinning in the dust Long before your birth Eatin' tar and gasoline Every light I see is green Open pipes' my machine's Triple plated chrome Spirit of the wheel Manowar, file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...20Studio%20Max%20Tutorials/FX/Skid%20marks.htm (1 of 4) [29/07/2002 15:46:56]
3D Artists - Tutorials
"Wheels Of Fire"
You can download the MAX scene to play with. For the car, I decided to go with a free Indy car model found on the World Creating Toolkit CD-ROM of 3DS Release 3 & 4. You can use any existing car model, or create your own.
Import or create the car model. Make sure all parts are linked together so you can move the whole model around. ● Create a large QuadPatch for the ground, move it slightly bellow the Constr. plane. ● Create a Dummy helper, center to the rear left wheel and link to the car. ● Create a rectangular Shape for the skid marks. ● Align the end of it to the rear left wheel. ● Apply an EditMesh modifier to the shape. ● Right-click the rectangle, and turn Shadow-casting OFF. ● Select the front vertices of the shape, and add a Linked Xform modifier to the selection. ● Move the car until the rear wheel resides at the end of the trail rectangle. ● Select the Dummy as the control object. If you move/animate the car now, the rectangle will be stretched. ●
Apply another EditMesh modifier, turn Sub-Object off. ● Apply a planar UVW Map modifier to the rectangle. ● Now you can move the car to the position where the skid marks should end, and press the "Fit" button of the UVW modifier - the map gizmo will be scalled to the current lenght of the skid mark. ● Now you can copy the rectangle for the right rear wheel. ●
Open the Material Editor. ● Create a material for the ground. I used the ASPHALT.JPG bitmap as Bump map, and a stretched Noise Diffuse map to give some dirt to the road. ●
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3D Artists - Tutorials
Create a material for the skid marks. ● Put a greyscale Noise procedural map into the Diffuse channel. ● Put a greyscale Gradient map into the Opacity map channel with following parameters: ●
In the Coordinates pannel of the Gradient map, turn "Tile" for both U and V off. Because Tile is off, the Gradient will show the Noise map just once where the UVW Map gizmo shows. The rest of the rectangle will be totally transparent (invisible). ●
Create a Particles+ system and align to the rear left tire. Rotate around Z at about 20 degrees to point slightly up. ● Set following Parameters: Count:80 Render: Tetrahedron Emitter shape: Rectabgular Speed: 10,0 Variation: 2,0 Tumble: 1,0 ●
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3D Artists - Tutorials
Tumble Rate: 2,0 Falloff: 1,0 Secondary: 1,0 Stream Motion: ON Start: 0 Life: 40 Copy the particle system for the right wheel. ● Link both Emitters to the car. ● Open the Environment pannel and add a Particle Combustion effect with all colors set to dark grey shades. ● Animate the Phase settings to get a smoke look. ● Select the two particle systems to be used with Particle Combustion. ● Create a Gravity Space Warp and bind to the particle systems. ● Create a Wind Space Warp and bind to blow the particles a bit to the side. Set the two Space Warps to get the desired smoke appearance. ●
For the white checkerboard create a rectangle, convert to Mesh, add UVW coordinates, and assign a white material with a B&W Checker Map in the Opacity channel. ● You can set a Camera and a Spot Light to finish the scene. ●
Note that the wheels of the car are still not animated. If you need a more realsitic look and you use wheels with more detail, you can animate their rotation, too... Have fun!
WHEELS OF FIRE 1997 (c) Copyright by Borislav "3DJ Bobo" Petrov All Rights Reserved.
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Extremely Explosive!
Extremely Explosive Want to create fantastic pyrotechnic effects? There are many ways to create just the right look-from a combination of particle effects and plugin routines to a mixture of computer graphics effects and pre-rendered sequences. Find out some explosive secrets from two 3D pros. by Jon A. Bell and Scot Tumlin Come and Get It. If you have 3DS MAX R2.x, you can download the Visual Concepts support file MAX_BOOM.ZIP, and examine the settings. If you have Alias v. 8.0, you can download the file ALIASBOOM.TAR.GZ. Both files contain Engineering 13300 Ralston Ave. geometry, maps, animation, and a movie of the completed effect. Sylmar, CA 91342 818-367-9187 From the beginning of cinema, effects artists have used an enormous bag of tricks www.vce.com to create the illusion of reality. Everything from stop-action, double-exposure, split-screen, foreground miniatures, glass and matte paintings, and traveling mattes to sophisticated digital imaging techniques have been used to create effects Rapid 3d No. 170 that are both subtle and spectacular. Many 3D designers and animators are initially drawn to the field of computer graphics imagery (CGI) through an interest in TV and cinematic special effects. When you get right down to it, any CG shot is basically a special effect: You're simulating events, both real and unreal, using 3D modeling, lighting, rendering, and compositing. It's this freedom to create, well, anything, that makes CG especially well-suited to fantasy and science-fiction-oriented effects. With CGI, you can bring dinosaurs to roaring life or fly spaceships through the cosmos-and then blow them up spectacularly in the comfort of your own desktop computer.
Artbeats Software Inc. Box 709 Myrtle Creek, OR 97457 541-863-4429 www.artbeats.com Rapid 3d No. 171
In this article, we'll concentrate on pyrotechnics, or plain and simple, blowing up stuff. We'll take a look at the basics for creating 3D explosion effects in virtually any 3D program. You'll then see how you can use prerendered, third-party explosion imagery to produce epic conflagrations of smoke and flame. Although the techniques described here can be applied to many popular 3D programs, you'll see examples of the final effects done in 3D Studio MAX (3DS MAX) 2.5 and Alias 8.0. Explosions 101: Breaking Down Your Scene Creating a complex special effects sequence for 3D involves careful planning and some basic proof-of-concept testing. Before you blow something up (even if it's only harmless pixels), ask yourself some important questions: What's the subject? Is it a condemned building being blown up with dynamite, an attacking spaceship getting file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20T...0Tutorials/FX/StarWars%20Style%20Explosions.htm (1 of 7) [29/07/2002 15:47:17]
Extremely Explosive!
whacked with a photon torpedo, or a distant nuclear blast set in the desert? In a 3D scene, each of these subjects will have its own special requirements. Each subject is going to react differently according to the laws of physics (and assumed physics for science-fiction subjects). If your subject is a building, then take a look at reference footage of buildings being demolished. (If you scan around cable TV long enough, you're bound to catch some special called something like Urban Terror IV: When Buildings Explode!!!, typically aired during ratings sweeps weeks on Fox or the WB network.) The look of this type of effect is very distinctive. Typically, demolition crews place charges in weakened areas of a building's foundation. The charges are then detonated sequentially so that the building collapses in a pile of dust. In cinematic pyrotechnics involving miniatures, the effects artists often pre-score the models-they cut or scribe stress or fracture lines in the back sides of the models. Then they fill the miniatures with convincing debris, such as tiny furnishings appropriate for a building, pack it with the required explosive charges, and then boom! In addition, the camera operator almost invariably will film the effect using a high-frame rate to slow down the explosion and make it appear larger. Producing this effect in 3D is a similar, two-fold process. You create the initial blast (which may consist of a bright flash, the windows blowing out, clouds of dust) followed by the physical effect, which is the actual collapse. You may want to have two different versions of your building: a before and an after (or a during). The before model is what you render to the point of the explosion, then you may have the explosion effect conceal a transition to a "breakaway" 3D version of the building. The latter might consist of your original 3D geometry that you've broken up into separate component pieces, perhaps with rough edges and "dirtied" versions of the original texture maps. You might also include jagged bits of generic debris to throw into the mix. The Right Tools for the Right Job Each explosive device, whether dynamite, a fantasy energy weapon, or a real-world atomic blast, has its own particular visual characteristics that should be taken into account. Was the explosion fueled by gasoline or gunpowder? Compressed air or a sun going nova? Will it produce flame, black smoke, or a rolling dust cloud? Does it erupt from a single point, or as a series of smaller detonations leading up to a big bang? All of these questions, in turn, affect how you set up your 3D animation, both in terms of staging (camera angles, lighting, scene choreography, and timing) and the 3D tools used. One of the most important considerations in creating your explosion is verisimilitude-that is, the appearance of being real. Interactive lighting is important here-if your scene has a bright gasoline bomb or a simulated nuke going off, you should also have intense, animated lighting cues to tie the explosion optical into the rest of the scene. Once you've answered the previous questions, there's one more you need to ask: What 3D tools do you have available to create the appropriate pyrotechnic effect? You don't necessarily need the latest custom plug-ins to create convincing pyrotechnics in your native 3D package (although they can definitely help). You may be able to use your 3D application's native particle systems, volumetric lights, post-processing optical effects (lens flares, highlights, and glows), pre-rendered image sequences, or a combination of all of these to produce the required effect. Let's say you're rendering a typical 3D subject: an outer-space dogfight sequence. You've been inspired to create this after watching Star Wars for the 20th time or seeing the current episode of Babylon 5 or the latest incarnation of Star Trek. A spaceship flies through the scene, gets hit by an off-screen missile on frame 100, file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20T...0Tutorials/FX/StarWars%20Style%20Explosions.htm (2 of 7) [29/07/2002 15:47:17]
Extremely Explosive!
and is blasted into atoms. You've got your spaceship model(s), your starfield backdrop, your scene lighting, and camera moves down pat-now you have to choreograph beautiful destruction. You look over your software's native tools and your current plug-ins-some commercial, some shareware-you figure out your options, then decide to use all or most of them. Bait-and-switch On frame 100, when the ship gets hit, you swap your "beauty" model for a trashed version, or big chunks of wreckage that follow some of the basic contours of your ship. You then hand-animate these flying willy-nilly through your scene. If your program lets you set visibility keys, such as in 3DS MAX, then you parent the wreckage to the beauty model, unhide the wreckage on frame 100 while simultaneously hiding the unblemished model. You then cover up the transition with other elements in your scene. Particle systems You decide that, at the moment the ship is hit, you want a burst of particles to erupt from the impact point. Typically, you would parent (or link) a particle system to your spaceship model and trigger a burst of particles right when the explosion is supposed to occur. The particles should be fairly numerous, erupt quickly, and dissipate in a chaotic manner. Since you're in space, there's no gravity; the particles should blast outwards in a rough sphere shape or perhaps be blown directly at the camera. (You might want to have a stream of particles spewing out in a particular direction to imply burning fuel being ejected from a fractured engine core.) Figure 1a. 3D Studio Max's Combustion- A volumetric effect that you can use to produce smoke What kinds of particles should you use? It depends on your 3D program. Many standard 3D particle flames, or explosions systems will render the particles at a user-definable size. By making them small (even single-pixelsize), you can create the illusion of glowing sparks being thrown off. Volumetric Effects If you have volumetric or atmospheric effects options, then you might be able to create a plasma cloud or fireball, either singly or in conjunction with your particle systems. 3DS MAX's native Combustion atmospheric apparatus can create beautiful fire, smoke, and fiery explosion effects, as can Peter Watje's shareware-Particle Combustion, Object Combustion, and Vertex Combustion plug-ins. Commercial 3DS MAX plugins, such as Animation Science's Outburst, Lumens' Figure 1b. A combustion frame. Afterburn, and Digimation's Ultrashock can produce photo-real effects, as can Dynamic Realities' Particle Storm for LightWave 3D. (An example of a 3DS MAX Combustion explosion is shown in Figure 1a and 1b.) An animated light with volumetric effects may also fit your needs. Alias PowerAnimator and 3DS MAX's file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20T...0Tutorials/FX/StarWars%20Style%20Explosions.htm (3 of 7) [29/07/2002 15:47:17]
Extremely Explosive!
Lens Effects features enable you to create complex explosion effects simply by applying animated volumetric effects to lights in your scene. By keyframing the lights' density, brightness, colors, and fractal noise settings, you can produce explosions ranging from electrical to gaseous. Animated Materials You have the particle systems set up but also want to animate your material settings for both the particle systems and perhaps the textures on the ship fragments. You decide that at the moment of explosion, you want the particles to be white-hot, so you need to keyframe their material settings to pure white. As the particles dissipate through the scene, animate their colors from, for example, white to yellow to orange to red, then finally to black. For the spaceship textures, you may want to add a self-illuminated material and/or mask to your Diffuse map (implying that the metal hull itself is burning away). Post-processing Optical Effects To create additional visual "oomph" in your scene, you decide to incorporate some optical effects. For the initial blast, you can augment your particles with animated glows and sparkling highlights. Again, 3DS MAX's Lens Effects Video Post plug-in enables you to add these effects to elements in your scene, whether they be lights, particles, or mesh geometry. Finally, if your software has built-in physical dynamics or is available as a plug-in, you could take advantage of this feature for added realism. If the object in your scene is blown into big chunks, hand-animate the pieces flying by the camera and/or bouncing off the ground. However, if you can run an effective collision/physics simulation in a program, such as 3DS MAX, LightWave, Alias/Maya, or Softimage, it can save you a lot of hand keyframing (although you may experience some increased rendering time due to the complex calculations of the simulation). Using Pre-Rendered Sequences Using procedural effects such as volumetric lights and complex particle systems in an elaborate 3D scene may increase your rendering times to an unacceptable level. However, there's another alternative, which is to use pre-rendered imagery. Since many 3D artists enjoy creating pyrotechnic effects, a couple of companies have actually capitalized on this to provide cinematic spectacle to your 3D scenes. These two companies are Visual Concepts Engineering (VCE) in Sylmar, CA, and Artbeats Software, in Myrtle Creek, OR. VCE, formed by special effects expert Peter Kuran (Star Wars, Conan The Barbarian, Dragonslayer), started the trend by digitizing 35mm film of real explosion elements used in his Hollywood effects work. VCE offers these sequences, along with digitized shots of fire, smoke, and electrical effects on its Pyromania series of CD-ROMs, now in three volumes, for Macintosh and PC. The animations consist of separate image sequences rendered as sequentially-numbered, 24-bit .tif or .tga files, mostly at 640 x 480 resolution. Figure 2. A sample image from the "Ares" explosion sequence found in Artbeats ReelExplosions Volume Artbeats Software offers two sets of pyrotechnic wonders: the ReelFire and ReelExplosion series of 2. CD-ROMs. Both ReelFire and ReelExplosions are file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20T...0Tutorials/FX/StarWars%20Style%20Explosions.htm (4 of 7) [29/07/2002 15:47:17]
Extremely Explosive!
available in two volumes. The sequences consist mostly of 720 x 486 resolution Quicktime .mov files, readable by both Macintosh and PC. Some sequences include alpha mattes and high-resolution versions over 1,024 pixels wide. Like the Pyromania CD-ROMs, the Artbeats offerings include numerous explosion sequences, including ground bursts, air bursts (affected by gravity), and zero-g bursts (unaffected by gravity). A sample frame from one of the Artbeats explosions is shown in Figure 2.
Figure 3. A flat piece of 2D geometry parented to the spaceship subject serves as the source for the explosion effect.
The zero-g sequences are probably of most interest to those wanting to create Star Wars-style explosive effects. If you want to incorporate these effects in a space battle, here's what you do: In your 3D program, create a flat (2D) piece of planar geometry, either polygonal, patch, or NURBS-based, and make it the same proportions as the bitmap image sequence you're going to use. Apply planar mapping coordinates to it, then place this geometry in your scene where you want the explosion to occur. It should face perpendicular to your camera view, as shown in Figure 3.
Figure 4. An explosion image sequence loaded into 3DS MAX's Material Editor.
The size of the plane determines how large your explosion will be, of course. You can place the planar geometry in front of, behind, or smack in the middle of your subject. To make it look as if the explosion is instantly engulfing your spaceship, first place the planar geometry slightly behind the spaceship (relative to the camera view). At the time of detonation, keyframe the planar geometry so that
it makes a quick move-occurring on only five or six frames-towards the camera, sliding "through" the spaceship. This will help offset the 2D nature of the explosion effect. It also helps you make the swap from the intact spaceship model to a damaged one or a cloud of expanding debris. Next, go into your Material or Surfaces editor, load your explosion bitmap sequence into a material slot (usually the Diffuse), and load this same sequence as an Opacity or alpha mask. Although some of the explosion sequences on the Artbeats ReelExplosion CD-ROMs include separate alpha channel masks, you can usually use the same Diffuse sequence to force a transparency effect-so you see only the explosion. (If you see an opaque black rectangle where your planar geometry is, it'll spoil the effect, of course. You might also create your own alpha masks by processing the original Diffuse bitmaps in a program such as Photoshop or DeBabelizer.) You should set this Explosion Material to be constant, or self-illuminating, with additive transparency, if your program allows it. Then, apply it to the planar geometry. An example of an explosion bitmap sequence in 3DS MAX's Material Editor is shown in Figure 4.
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Extremely Explosive!
To make the explosion occur on a particular frame, add an offset to your image sequence using your program's native tools. A crude (and memory-inefficient) way to do this is to simply re-number your original sequence. You make the first frame number of the actual explosion bitmap sequence the same number as when you want the explosion to occur in your animation. Then add X numbers of black frames, numbered sequentially, before and after the actual explosion bitmap series. A better way to do this is to use your 3D program's image offset tools, such as 3DS MAX's Start Frame feature in the Materials Editor (under the Diffuse Map/Time rollout), or an image file list (.ifl) for the bitmaps. With the latter, you can have the Materials Editor load the same black frame for X number of animation frames, then on frame 100, it begins loading the actual explosion bitmaps. (Note that the Start Frame feature in 3DS MAX will "freeze" the bitmap sequence in your scene until the specified frame. To keep a still image of the first explosion frame from floating in your scene, set Visibility keys at the appropriate times for the planar geometry. You could also keyframe the Diffuse and Opacity components of the material so that they're at zero until frame 100, then they instantly pop up to 100 percent at the appropriate time.) If you've set up this effect correctly, then the explosion should appear to blow apart the subject with fire and fury. Explosions on Many Levels One problem you might encounter with this flat planar technique is that some of your favorite explosion bitmap sequences have imagery that goes to the edges of their frames. Both VCE and Artbeats offer explosion sequences that stay "in frame" throughout the sequence. However, some of their best sequences have fire, smoke, or sparks that fly beyond the edges of the frame. If you use these sequences on your planar geometry, the explosion will appear to be cut off as it hits the edges of an invisible rectangle. One way to fix this is to scale up the plane so that your 3D camera simply doesn't see the boundaries of the object. However, this may make the initial explosion effect too large or make the bitmap sequence too grainylooking or fuzzy to be appropriate in the scene.
Here's a better suggestion that enables you to use almost any pre-rendered explosion sequence, including full-frame versions: Instead of using a piece of planar geometry, create a large, openended cone of medium complexity, and center its apex in the middle of your subject. The edges of the cone should extend beyond the visual field of the camera. Apply planar-not cylindrical-mapping coordinates to the open end of the cone so that the bitmap sequence is stretched down the length of the cone. The planar map should be the size of the cone's open end, and the center of the texture should be at the apex of the cone, as shown in Figure 5. Figure 5. An open-ended planar texture coordinates If you render this sequence with the texture settings applied to the open end. given earlier, the explosion will appear to stretch file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20T...0Tutorials/FX/StarWars%20Style%20Explosions.htm (6 of 7) [29/07/2002 15:47:17]
Extremely Explosive!
along the Z-axis towards the camera, heightening the 3D effect dramatically. Sparks or fire elements that go beyond the edges of the frame in the original texture sequence will appear to fly behind the camera and not off the edges of a rectangular shape. Figure 6 shows a still frame example. To make this effect even more spectacular, create multiple cones of the same length, but of varying end sizes, all with their apexes in the same spot. (Ideally, the camera should still be able to move inside the mouth of the smallest cone, or else you should animate the cones so they always face the camera.) The thinner the cone, the more the Figure 6. A still frame from the explosion sequence. explosion bitmap will appear to stretch towards the camera. If there are sparks in the original bitmap imagery, they will appear to elongate into fast-moving streaks of light that whip by the camera, producing a spectacular 3D effect. By using multiple cones of varying widths, you can produce complex multi-planar effects with sparks appearing to move at different rates of expansion-even if you're using the same bitmap sequence on all the cones! (Be sure you rotate the texture coordinates or the cones to help conceal the maps' similarity, though.) All blown up With a little bit of experimentation, all of these techniques can help you achieve the pyrotechnic effects you want. Whether you're collapsing a building for an industrial video or creating a frenetic homage to Star Wars, the wide variety of 3D tools at your disposal gives you Vishnu-like power. With them, you can be both the creator-and destroyerof worlds. Jon A. Bell is a writer and 3D computer graphics artist who designs for television, films, computer games, multimedia, and print. E-mail Jon at [email protected]. Scot Tumlin is a 3D artist and animator and frequent contributor to 3D Design with more than seven years' experience creating digital content. E-mail Scot at [email protected].
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RFAQ:TBT - Text around a Sphere
Q1: Is it possible to wrap text around a sphere and animate it spinning? Q2: I need to make text around a sphere i mean, the text is straight usually.. A: Receiving 2 messages about this on the same day means this is a real FAQ :o) It works in both MAX 1.x and MAX 2. There are some small differences though. The following TBT is for MAX 2 with some additional descriptions for MAX 1.x users. ●
In the Top Viewport, create a Sphere Primitive with Radius 180 and 32 segments. ● In the Top Viewport, create a Circle Shape with Radius 200. In case the Circle is not centered to the Sphere, use the Align tool to center it. ●
In the Top Viewport, create a Text Shape and enter the desired text. ● Go to the Modify tab, add an Extrude Modifier with Amount 10. ● Add a PathDeform WorldSpaceModifier (WSM) modifier and select the Circle for path. MAX 1.x Users please go to the Create/Space Warps rollout and select PathDeform. Then Select the Circle Shape - a Spqce Warp will be genarated. Select the text again. Note that all settings for the PathDeform are done in the SpaceWarp Binding in the modifier stack. This is why in R2, PathDeform is a special kind of Modifier-like Space Warp and is found in the Modifier list instead under Space Warps. ●
Check the "Move to Path" button and in Deform Axis select X - the text should be deformed around the sphere, but in the XY plane. ● To rotate it, enter -90 into the Rotation field. ● Press the Animate button, go to the last frame, and enter 100% into the Percent field. The Percent field describes the position of the object along the spline. In our case, we will get a full turn for 0 to 100%. ●
●
You can assign some materials to the objects (this is not covered by this Tutorial ;o)
The whole shouldn't take more than 5 minutes...
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RFAQ:TBT - Text around a Sphere
Text Around a Sphere Totally Basic Tutorial (c) 1998 by Borislav "3DJ Bobo" Petrov
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file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20Tutoriales%20Com...20+%203D%20Studio%20Max%20Tutorials/FX/Tornado%20(twister).htm
I've received several requests for information in how the tornado in "TWISTED" was executed, so rather than try to answer all the E-mail posts, I've created this page as a FAQ of sorts to answer these requests. I've also unfortunately lost several requests in a recent mail disaster, so if you've asked and haven't received a reply, I apologize. Hopefully the information on this page will make up for the delay.
I started with stacked particle emitters spraying particles around spherical wind warp objects. Using a negative wind strength value, I saw that the particles could be held in a circular pattern. I used 8 or 9 sets of these for the narrow portion of the funnel. Ten more were used for the wide upper portion. Where possible, I arranged the emitters in adjacent pairs at 180 degrees from each other. This is to hide the particle origin and make the particle flow appear continuous. For a more varied particle flow, I linked the spray emitters to the wind objects both above and below the nearest wind objects in addition to the adjacent warp. This forces the particles to take a wider vertical path around the wind objects, helping to eliminate the "hoop" effect. It also helps to use a reasonable "variation" setting. The wind strength and particle speeds must be reconciled or the particles will travel in an elliptical path. The higher the particle speed, the stronger the wind strength.
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The size and type of particle is also important. I used the facing particle type, and picked a size that would close the open spaces between particles where I wanted the funnel to appear opaque. These places are at the top and bottom of the funnel. Down the narrower portion of the funnel, this was not a big worry since I decided to use smaller, fewer particles in this area, exposing the textured, lofted funnel body.
At the base of my tornado is a dust cloud which is formed in the same way, using a couple of different material colors. I also used the triangular facing type to add fury and texture at the core. I used six emitters with a particle count varying from 200-350 particles each. Here is where the higher number of particles were used. Finally, as if this was rendering much to quickly, motion blur was applied to the particle emitters. This makes the moving particles appear longer and softer. It also greatly lengthens rendering time. For compositing, a ground plane with a matte/shadow object was placed to receive shadows.
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The material for the particles is an important step to creating the soft cloudy effect. I used an opacity map that is essentially a radial gradient. This produces a soft-edged round shape. One key to this is to use the face-map feature which centers the opacity map on the particle. Keep in mind that rendering time is adversely affected by using an opacity map in this material. You may wish to test the rendering time and appearance of the particles without the opacity map and decide whether or not to use it. The material for the funnel consists of an animated texture and bump map.
The silo was modelled in pieces which were animated and attached to a noise space warp to add a waving effect as the twister hits. Since my background plate was a still photo, I added some foliage objects in the foreground. I then bound them to a wave warp object which had an animated noise transform attached. I animated the amplitude values on the wave warp so that the effect of the wind blowing the plants would gradually increase, corresponding with the approach of the twister.The funnel animation was accomplished by morphing, moving and rotating the main funnel loft. The emitters were linked to the wind objects which were keyed to mach the position of the loft object every ten frames. As the funnel bends and twists, the attitude of each emitter is animated to maintain a parallel position with the funnel.
In the end, I rendered the animation in two layers. First the upper clouds, and funnel object along with the silo and foreground plants. In the second layer, I rendered the outer particles of the narrow main funnel midsection, and the lower debris cloud. I used matte materials in the second pass which were applied to the objects rendered in the first rendering pass (with the exception of the particles in the upper cloud), to assure a good final composite. The frames from the first pass were used as a background for the second layer. The rendering took ten days on a 200mhz Pentium Pro with 128mb file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20...o%20Max%20Tutorials/FX/Tornado%20(twister).htm (3 of 4) [29/07/2002 15:48:02]
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RAM. The bulk of the rendering time was used to render the final 200 frames where the twister nears the camera and gradually fills the screen as it hits the silo, and leaves the screen. The entire animation is 650 frames long. It was originally rendered for PAR output at 752x480.
Obviously it has been done to perfection by ILM in TWISTER, using the ubiquitous "in house software" solution that the big houses use. What I set out to do was see what I could push MAX to do without using a 3rd party plugin. I learned quite a bit by working through it and was very happy with the result.
E-mail questions or comments regarding my website to [email protected]. © Copyright 1997 Boyd Lake All Rights Reserved. Last update: April 15, 1997
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
UNDERWATER SCENE TUTORIAL Let's start creating our underwater scene. The first thing is the bottom. The easiest way of creating it is nurbs surface with noise modifier or displacement map, but it is not the matter of this tutorial. First thing to do when you have the bottom is setting up the main light. Good choice here is directional light with large radius. Use white color for this light. As you know light refracts on water surface. Unfortunatelly MAX (and other programs) can't simulate this effect even using raytracing. So we have to fake this effect using projector map for the light. MAX 2 has procedural Water texture and we will use it. MAX 1 users can play with noise texture and achieve similar effect. Sample settings for the water projector map are below:
Depending on scale of your scene you will have to adjust Wave Len Max and Min settings. When the map is ready you can just drag&drop it from material editor to Projector map button in light's properties. When you have the projector applied your test render should be similar to the one below (the bottom on that picture has only white diffuse color, no texture, and the blue waves are caused by light and projector):
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
The blue background color you set up in Rendering/Environment. Use color with RGB values about 0, 96, 102. Use darker color for deeper water effect. Water is not 100% transparent, even very clear water. Objects that are far are less visible than those close to the camera. The best way of simulating this effect is using Fog. You can add fog in Environment menu. Below you can see settings for the fog:
Most important settings are Fog color (use blue similar to background color) and Near% and Far% values. These two parameters define how dense your fog is in near range and far range of your camera. This is a good moment to set these values for camera too. When camera is close to water surface you often can see light beams in water. You can simulate this effect in MAX using volumetric lights. First you have to add new light to your scene, with much smaller radius than the main light. Here also we will use projector map but this time it won't be water waves. We need black and white irregular dots - such projector map will produce many light beams from single spot light. Below you can see (condensed) settings of noise texture that will be used for this projector:
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
Depending on your scene's scale you will have to adjust noise Size. RGB Level increased to 4 produce more contrast, brighter spots. Now apply this map as projector. When the light is ready go to Environment again and add Volume Light effect. Use setting similar to these below:
With all projectors, fog and volume lights your test rendering should look like this one:
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
To add a little more realism to your scene you can make some bubbles or alga floating in the water using simple particle system. Snow emitter is enough for this, use very slow particle speed (important if you want to animate your scene) and facing particles. Suitable Particle Size you have to find yourself. Material for particles: Standard, white (or bright blue), 100% self illumination, and circular gradient for opacity map. This will produce fast and nice effect of bubbles in the water. Underwater scene makes no sense when there are no object in the water. With only one light from top your objects will be too dark, so you can add some fill light from one or two sides. You can exclude the bottom from this light if it is too bright. Also, if you want your main top light to cast shadows, they may be too dark (almost black) - shadows in water are never completely black. Solution is very easy: just clone your main top light and decrease multiplier to 1/2 for both lights. Now turn Cast Shadows on for only one light. Remember that for lights with large radius you will probably have to increase Shadow Map Size and Sample Range. Your scene is ready :)
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3D CAFE(tm) by Platinum Pictures
You can also see better quality rendering from my picture gallery.
Sample MAX 2 scene ~44 KB Copyright © 1998 Platinum Pictures All Rights Reserved. 3D Cafe, 3DCafe, 3D-Cafe are trademarks of Platinum Pictures
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SWMA Tutorials - 3D Studio MAX - Creating Exploding TIEs
How to create exploding TIE Fighters in 3D Studio Max 2.x by Alex Lukachuk aka Chimaera
For many months I was searching for a tutorial that explains how to make a spaceship flying in the air and burning because it was blasted by a laser or any other projectile. And I finally decided to do this effect myself. I'll explain you how to proceed in 2 phases. In fact, there are many methods to do exactly the same thing as I did and my method is far from being perfect, but the effect you get at the end is pretty good and it can be used in animations as well as in simple scenes. I want also to precise that this Tutorial can be used in MAX R1.x. I deliberately used MAX2's tools that also exist in MAX1.x. For example, I used Spray and not ParticleArray or SuperSpray because these two last tools doesn't exist in MAX1.x. You'll need to add the Combustion plugin (for MAX1.x users) and the Glow plugin (for MAX2 users). They are all free ( they are included in the Blur Pack 1 plugin ) and can be found at Trinity Effects: http://www.trinity.com/ The First Part : Building the Scene. The first thing to do is to load the object we will "explode". I've chosen the Al Meerow Tie Fighter which is one of the best meshes I've ever seen (if you have loaded the 3DS scene, clean it up: delete all the lights and cameras ). Group the objects together. Center the Pivot. Call the Group "Tie Fighter". Put it at the center of the scene. Now, create a Target Camera and make it looking in the Tie Fighter's direction. The ship must occupy about 1/4 of the viewport, not more. Create a Spray. Place it as shown below.
Now we will setup the parameters of this Spray. Go to Modify and select the Spray you've just created. Now you will change the parameters : Viewport Count : 500 Render Count : 500 Speed : depends on the speed you want to give to the flames (my settings are 800) Variation: 6 Timing: Start: -35 Life: 35 Now you will create 3 more Sprays and place them as it shown on the picture below:
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SWMA Tutorials - 3D Studio MAX - Creating Exploding TIEs
You can turn the Sprays in different ways, I've chosen the easiest way : to turn them respectively at 90°, 180° and 270°. (the picture isn't exact about positions of the sprays) To give more realism to the fire you'll add Space Warps to make these particles more chaotic. It will add more realism to the scene. Accuracy isn't the most important factor when you create an effect because nature isn't precise so you must do the same thing. The Space Warp I've used to do my scene is Wind. So you must create 4 Wind Space Warps and bind (with the Space Warp binding function not simple bind as for meshes) them to the Sprays (each Space Warp to a different Spray) and place them as shown below and change the parameters of the Space Warps (Strengh:50 and Turbulence:5) :
The next step is to add an Athmospheric Apparatus. I've added an hemisphere and placed it as show below :
The first part of the tutorial is finished. Now we will setup environmental settings and work with the Vpost. Second Part : Setting Up Rendering
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SWMA Tutorials - 3D Studio MAX - Creating Exploding TIEs
This part is shown as an example and can be changed depending on the effect you want to give. You can change ALL the parameters if you want. Go to Environment and add Combustion. Modify the parameters as show below: Tendril Strech: 5 Flame Size: depend on the size of the Apparatus ( mine was pretty big, the grid was 1.000, so I used 200 ) Flame Density : 1.0 After that, go to the Vpost. Add a scene event (the camera you've created). Deselect the camera event and add 4 Image Filter Events ( at each time you must deselect the precedent event, they must all be in column, see the joined *.VPX file ). These events must be "Glow (frame only)" events. In each one you must select an Object Channel from one to 4 ( for example the first one is 1 the second Glow event is 2 ect... ) You must choose a color for each glow. One more time it depends on the effect you want to obtain. Come back to the scene. Now you'll select the Sprays one by one and go to Propreties ( rightclick on the Spray ). You must choose a channel from one to 4 for each of the Sprays. So they must all have a different Object Channel (from 1 to 4). Return to the Vpost. Deselect Antialiasing in the Camera propreties. You're ready to render!!!
Softer effect
Stronger effect Comments? Suggestions? Send e-mail to Alex Lukachuk
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SWMA Tutorials - 3D Studio MAX - Creating Lasers (I)
How to create Lasers in 3D Studio Max 2.x (I) by Jon Stefansson
There are of course many different ways to create a laser, but this one is fairly easy to implement. I will use 3 patch grids for the mesh and the material will be a bitmap for the opacity and a self-illuminated diffuse. I use 3D Studio Max 2.0 but this tutorial should be almost identical for older versions of Max, and the method could apply for more 3D programs. Step 1. Create opacity map To create a bitmap, I use Photoshop, but you should be able to use any decent paint program. Since the bitmap will be used as opacity map I use a grayscale image, and it should be shaped as a laser. I create a bitmap that is 320 x 30 points, and paint it like this:
You can of course shape the laser to your likings. I save the bitmap as laserop.gif. Step 2. Create the laser mesh Start up 3D Studio Max. Go to the Create panel, Geometry, select Patch Grids and Quad Patch. In the Top viewport, draw a quad patch of width 5 and height 200 and check Generate Mapping Coords. Go to the Modify panel and select UVW Map. Set Angle Snap to On, select Front viewport, select Rotate and while holding the Shift button down, rotate the quad patch 60°. Select Number of Copies = 2 in the Clone Options window. Now the Front and Perspective panels should look something like this:
Front panel
Perspective panel (after a zoom and a rotate)
Step 3. Create the material Go to the Material Editor. Select the first slot and rename the material to Laser. Go to the Maps rollout and click the button next to Opacity. From the Material / Maps browser, select Browse from New and then Bitmap. Under the Bitmap Parameters, click the Bitmap button and select the bitmap you just created (laserop.gif). Under the Coordinates rollout, set Angle W to -90. Click the Go To Parent button. Click on the Diffuse color, and select the color you want for your laser (I use RGB=255 0 0 for a red laser). Then click on the Diffuse color, hold down the mouse button and drag it over the Ambient color and select Copy. Set Shininess and Shin. Strength to 0 and Self-Illumination to 100. Finally check 2-Sided. Step 4. Assign material to mesh Select the three quad patches and click Assign Material to Selection button in the Material Editor. Render, and your laser should look something like this: file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20T...0Tutorials/StarWars/Creating%20Lasers%20(I).htm (1 of 2) [29/07/2002 15:51:13]
SWMA Tutorials - 3D Studio MAX - Creating Lasers (I)
Tips: If you want a hotter core (i.e. you want the laser to be a bit white in the middle) you can use a bitmap in the Diffuse material. Just take the original laserop.gif and paint it like you wish, and assign it to Laser material. Try it! Comments? Suggestions? Send e-mail to [email protected]
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SWMA Tutorials - 3D Studio MAX - Creating Nebulae
How to create Nebulae in 3D Studio Max 2.x by Ben Ellerin a.k.a. Ertai
3D Studio MAX is such a flexible tool that there are probably as many ways of creating nebulae as there are cooking a microwave dinner. (e.g. microwave, oven, campfire, blowtorch, et. al.) Some of them may be a bit extreme while others may produce less than satisfactory results. The following is a method that I stumbled upon one morning while looking for an alternative to the plain old star field background. I hope you find this method as easy and eye appealing as I do. Under the rendering pulldown choose environment. Click the bar under where it says Environment Map and choose Noise. Now close the Environment panel and open up the Material Editor. Click on a free space and click the Get Material button. Choose scene on the left and choose noise on the right.
Close the Material/Map Browser. Leave the coordinates alone for now, you can always go back and adjust that stuff later. Now, leave the noise type at regular and change the levels to 10. Set the low to 0.7 and the size to 0.2. Under Maps click where it says None next to Color #1. Choose noise and then close the browser. In the Material Editor change the noise type to fractal and the size to 15. Set the low to 0.45 and the phase to 2. Click on the white next to Color #2 and choose a nice deep purple.
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SWMA Tutorials - 3D Studio MAX - Creating Nebulae
Now go up to the parent directory (if you cant find the right button you can always hold your pointer over random buttons and the name will pop up.) Once in the parent directory, go to the rendering menu bar and choose render. Of course you certainly don't need to pick purple and there are many other colors that work well too so don't hesitate to play around with the colors. If you want to change the look of the nebulae just play around with the XYZ offset on the parent level. Your results should look something like this:
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SWMA Tutorials - 3D Studio MAX - Creating Nebulae
Comments? Suggestions? Send e-mail to [email protected]
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SWMA Tutorials - 3D Studio MAX - Creating Planetary Rings
How to create planetary rings in 3D Studio Max 2.x by Jim Herring
There are other ways to make planetary rings as I'm sure you know, but I've found this to be the easiest and fastest way to make realistic planetary rings. I came up with the technique one day while experimenting with Photoshop note that if you aren't using Photoshop you won't be able to make rings with this technique.
Step 1. Create the textures Diffuse map
This whole technique is based around textures so this is the important part. Open up Photoshop and lets create a new 1200x600 image, with black as the background color. Here's where you'll be deciding on ring colors and widths. Click on the airbrush or paintbrush tool and right click, then select Dissolve as your brush type. Now draw lines across the image of varying widths and colors - be sure to space them with varying widths as well for full effect. Try to keep the colors dark and relatively dull, but varied colors. Keep in mind real rings are a mixture of gas, ice particles, rocks and other floating debri of different densities, so create colors accordingnly. Below is an example diffuse map I made for a ring shrunk to about 20 or 30 percent its original size, 1200x600.
Opacity map
Rings aren't solid sheets, so you're going to need an opacity map. Simply take the diffuse map you just made and colorize it 100% white, and voila, opacity map. Below is a thumbnail example.
Specular map
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SWMA Tutorials - 3D Studio MAX - Creating Planetary Rings
This map is optional, so you can skip this part if you want. Since I'm not all that fluent in Photoshop 5 yet, I used Microsoft Image Composer for this one. In MIC open up the original diffuse map and apply a chrome effect from the art effects tab in the exotic section. When you apply the chrome bring the detail up to full and smoothness almost down to zero. Below is a thumbnail example.
Bump map Once again open up the original diffuse map in Photoshop and just apply a bas releif effect to it. bring the detail up really high and keep the smoothness down almost to zero or zero. I did it with the light in the upper right corner, but anything works. Below is a thumbnail example.
Step 2. Create object and place textures Open up 3D Studio and create a tube. Use Center as the creation method and just draw it out and make it as wide as you want, but make sure its height is 0.1. Select it and go to the modifiers tab and set its number of sides to somewhere around 45-60. I went ahead and used 81, but some machines may not take that too well. Take a minute to go ahead and make a planet in the center of the rings and apply a texture to it if you want to. Now open up the material editor. Make a material with the diffuse, bump, specular and opacity maps you just created. Set it's shininess to about 74, shininess strength should be around 57 and opacity at 100. Set the diffuse map to show in the viewport. Usually its a good idea to tile your ring texture about four or five times, so do that to all maps when you add them to the material. Also when you add the bump map, put it's value (the field right labeled "Bump" just before the rollout button that selects the map type) up to 100. Now apply the material to the ring you made. Since you set the diffuse map to be visible in the viewport, you'll notice seams where the texture isn't straight along the ring. Rotate the diffuse map from the material editor until it looks aligned best along the ring. Do the same for the rest of the maps - make them viewable in the viewport, then rotate them so that they're aligned on the ring. Your all finished! Now render the scene with a stars or black background and see how it looks. If you want add some lights and toy around with the scene. If you rendered with a stars background you'll notice how the stars show through the rings as if it were a collection of particles. Below is a thumbnail of a ring created with the above maps, click on it to view it full size.
Questions? Comments? Send them to [email protected] file:///D|/Julian/Datos%20JULIAN/Libros%20y%20T...rials/StarWars/Creating%20Planetary%20Rings.htm (2 of 3) [29/07/2002 15:51:48]
SWMA Tutorials - 3D Studio MAX - Creating Planetary Rings
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SWMA Tutorials - 3D Studio MAX - Lighting Considerations 1
Lighting Considerations for 3D Studio Max 2.x (Part 1) by Ian Palmer
Imagine the scene - you've spent two weeks building the most detailed model ever. The mapping is perfect, the textures add that realism you've only dreamed of, the detail of the mesh is going to make people go "WOW!!" You put your model into a scene - set the camera up, add a planet, some laser blasts. It's going well. Then you come to light it... 15 Omni lights later the scene looks awful. The model is so over exposed that there are no shadows, the image is flat, lacks any depth or dynamic and in no way does it justify all that time spent modelling and mapping. You're stunning Star Wars image will never see the light of day. It just looks awful! I despair sometimes when I see a perfectly good image ruined by poor lighting. Whilst some consider the use of light and shadow to be the least important detail of a long and lengthy process, I on the other hand consider it to be one of the most important. Good lighting can make the most rudimentary of models look far more detailed than it really is, as well as adding mood and dynamism to an otherwise static 2d image. Take the following images as an example:
Most impressive...
You are not a Jedi yet...
Example 1 uses one Omni light, with shadow casting applied. Example 2 also uses an Omni light with shadow mapping applied. The difference is the positioning of the light. The first X-wing has a 3 dimensional depth about it. The second is flat and lets face it, boring! One of the first things to remember when generating 2d imagery is that you have to work so much harder than in 3d animation. You don't have the ability with a 2d artwork to make the ship fly overhead, or spin around or explode into a million pieces. All that we can do is imply that the subject of our image is in the process of doing something. Dynamic lighting and to a lesser extent camera positioning will help transform your image, and add that sense of movement that's required.
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SWMA Tutorials - 3D Studio MAX - Lighting Considerations 1
Let's get out of here... Right, let's get down to some numbers. One of the first considerations of any scene is: how many light sources do I have? You have to be aware of what objects in your scene will be emitting any kind of light. That could be anything from a sun, an explosion, and a nebula right down to lasers and even planetary glows. Once you've got a handle on this, lighting the scene will become much easier. For sun's I usually use an Omni light. I set the Multiplier to 1.5, crank the color up to white and turn the "cast shadows" on. Shadow mapping is down to your own personal preference. I generally use Shadow Maps as opposed to Raytracing. I find the shadows produced using Raytracing are sometimes too "hard" for the scene. Shadow maps generate a softer feel. But hey, that's my preference. You're best off experimenting. Incidentally, for those of you who want sharper shadows, but don't want to tie your machine up Raytracing, increase the size of you shadow maps from the default 256 to 1024 and the Sample Range (SmpRange) to 6. Crisp shadows without the rendering time. As for other lighting, it depends on how subtle you want it to be. Nebula effects in the background require only a Multiplier of around 0.6 - though it does depend on how vibrant the nebula is. There's no point in having a faint nebula cloud in the background and sticking in a really bright Omni light. Examine the scene and determine the relative strength of the extra lighting.
Hmm...Subtle lighting - Hmm...Too much!! Planetary backlighting can add more sense of realism. Create another Omni light but set it up to ignore the planet mesh that the light is supposedly coming from. Use the include/exclude menu at the top of general parameters. Look at the example below, and read on for further explanations.
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SWMA Tutorials - 3D Studio MAX - Lighting Considerations 1
Planetary backlighting
Where to place the light...
The Omni is placed behind and under the X-Wing, in the same direction as the planet. I set the light to ignore the planet, mainly because I don't want the light flooding the planet from close range (you end up with all sorts of horrible highlights - if you don't believe me, try it yourself). I set the Multiplier to approx. 0.8 and make small positional changes until I've achieved optimum effect. There you have it. My first instalment of lighting considerations. In the next thrilling episode I'll move onto lighting tricks and f/x using MAX. Happy rendering... Ian Palmer - Virtual Image Design
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SWMA Tutorials - Photoshop - Creating 3D Planets
Creating 3D Planets using Photoshop by Bryan "Grand Admiral" Carvajal The Star Wars Animation Center
You will need a picture of a sky in order to do this. This can be done in many ways including through the use of programs like Bryce 2/3D. If you don't have access to Bryce, that's not a problem so don't worry about it. What you can do is look for pictures of the sky on the net or on some image cd's you can get for really cheap in some computer stores. If you are really good you can make the the sky in photoshop with no problems. Step I: Color Adjustment: (Optional) Once you have acquired a sky image, bring it into Photoshop and press Ctrl+B and adjust the colors to create the planet of your choice. Step II: Creating the planet. Use the marquee circle tool to get the outline shape of your planet. Open up the Marquee Options tab (Windows, show options, click Marquee Options) and set the Feather between 4-7(play around with it for the desired effect). Also make sure that the Anti-Alias option is on. Once that is completed, open up a starfield background or the space background of your choice or create your own(which is very easy to do). In the starfield background, paste the planet into the desired position. You should now see the planet with a haze or atmosphere around it. Step III: Making the planet more realistic. Once your planet is in position, go to the Filters options, Render, Lighting effects and adjust the lighting to give the planet a more realistic look with a dark sided and a light side. It's up to you on how much of the planet will be lighted and how much won't be. Play with it until it looks satisfying to you. Well that is it. I don't know if this technique works for other programs like Photopaint, or another paint program, but you are welcome to try. This is only to create planetary backgrounds for still images only. It is not recommend that you map this method to a surrounding sphere in your animated scene, but you can try anyway. I will continue to play around with this and if I come up with more realistic stuff, I will update this section. Bryan "Grand Admiral" Carvajal
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SWMA Tutorials - Photoshop - Creating 3D Planets
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Light* Tutorial by Tony Quach
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This is a tutorial in Light* (formerly Lightscape), the best radiosity rendering application in the market today. Keep in mind this is not a tutorial for beginners. You are expected to have basic knowledge of Light* before the starting this exercise. I will not go through the modeling process of the project. It is up to your own discretion as to what package you use for modeling. For architectural projects, I normally use AutoCAD r14. A. Importing the model ●
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As preparation for importing your model into Light*, during the modeling process, try to spread out your objects in many layers rather than grouping everything into a few layers. This will reduce the processing time in the SOLUTION stage. Light* ‘s radiosity calculation is based on each physical lights. So put each type of lights on a separate layer. For example, I usually follow this naming convention for my projects:
All my downlights are named: LT-DN-## All uplights are named: LT-UP-## You can use whatever system that is more comfortable to you. The key point I’m trying to make is ORGANIZATION. You will import your lights separately after all your other layers are imported. ●
When importing your objects, try to do only a few layers at a time. This will minimize errors that might occurs when you have a lot of complex objects.
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Figure a shows the dialog box for DXF import in Light*. Take notice of the File Units box. I see a lot of people forgetting to set the right units and their model gets import as the wrong size. Don’t worry about the Block Creation pull-down at this time. I will go into that later.
Figure b shows the dialog box for 3DS import for Light*. It is very similar to the DXF import box. As in the DXF import, ignore the Block Creation pull-down at this time. ●
Continue importing all the DXF files until the entire project (with the exception of the light layers) are in Light*.
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Now all is left to import are the lights. Follow the same import procedures as above. But this time, you are going to fill out the Block Creation informations. Note: Since we’re creating a block & defining the photometrics of each light (luminaire) in Light*, you only have to export one of each lights from your modeling application. Also when exporting those lights from your application, export only one light at a time.
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Pick As One Block in the Block Creation pull-down and name the block the same name with the same layering system for each luminaire.
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Light* Tutorial by Tony Quach
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B. Preparing the model
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This is how my model looks like after all the layers are imported.
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Next to do is to check to make sure all the normals of the surfaces are facing the right way.
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The best way to do this is to isolate each layers and check them one at a time.
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Click on one or more surfaces to select them, then right click with your mouse and choose Orientation.
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You may see some surfaces will turn green at time. This means that those surfaces are oriented the wrong way.
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From the Surface Orientation (Figure e) dialog, click Reverse to flip these surfaces. From this dialog, you can keep selecting other surfaces and flip them. Orbit around your model to see other surfaces that might be hidden in the current view. Another option you have is to the Auto Orient button. As this button denotes, Light* will automatically flip the normals of the entire model for you to face the right direction. But I only use this sparingly because it is not very accurate if your view is not close enough to the model.
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Keep flipping the normals for all your layers until everything is oriented the right direction.
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Note: If you’re planning to do a scene with daylight, select all your window surfaces. Right-click on them and choose Process Control. From there you can choose to check Window or Opening, depending on your scene. Another thing you should keep in mind is when modeling glass panes for a window. You should model the glass with an actual thickness rather than keeping it to a single line. This will allow Light* to do a more accurate processing.
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Light* Tutorial by Tony Quach
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Defining Luminaires
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Now that you have all your lights in the imported as blocks, you are going to define Luminaires from each block.
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Highlight a block from the list and right-click on the name. Choose Define as Luminaire…, Pick yes when prompted if you’re sure if you want to continue.
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Light* will then take you into the photometrics properties dialog. From here, you are going to define the characteristics of each luminaires, including the type of lamp, color, intensiy, and beam & field angle. NOTE: Since Light* uses real photometric data of lamps, you can usually browse through different lamp manufacturers’ catalog to obtain the exact lamp you plan to use. Some manufacturers even have IES data of their lamps that they can send to you for free. A starting point to search for lamps might be looking at manufacturers like Sylvannia, GE, Litholier, etc…
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The first thing you should do is to place your luminaire icon to the right spot on your light. If you don’t see it on your screen at this time, just click on the Zoom Extent button at the top of the screen. After locating the icon, you can either manually move it or have Light* snap it to a certain vertex on the light automatically.
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Next thing to do is to define the type and color of the lamp you’re using.
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Finally, pick an intensity value for the luminaire and adjust its beam & field angle. Remember, you can input IES photometric data from lamp manufacturers if you have them.
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After you define all of the luminaires, you can begin placing them in your scene. Highlight one luminaire, rightclick on it and choose Create Single Instance.
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If you have more than one instances of a certain luminaire in you scene, you need to copy them now. Click on the new luminaire to hightlighted. Then right-click it and pick either Duplicate or Multiple Duplicate. If you chose Duplicate, you will have to move the newly created luminaire by right-clicking on it and pick Transformation.
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Light* Tutorial by Tony Quach
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Defining Materials
Note: Light* does not have a powerful material editor nor does it come with an extensive material library. So for those of you whose also using MAX or Lightwave, I suggest after you process the solution in Light*, import the scene back into your application and assign the materials from there.
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As you can see, the materials dialog in Light* is fairly straightforward. One particular feature I like is the Templates pull-down window. It allows you to select pre-defined material properties easily.
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If you need to assign a map to your material, click on the Texture tab and pick Browse to find the map you need. (see below)
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To assign a material to an object, highlight the surfaces, right-click on them and choose Assign Material
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After assigning the material, you can again right-click on the surfaces and choose Texture Alignment to correctly align the texture to each individual surface. Turn on you hardware texture display by clicking on its button to help you see the orientation of the textures.
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For the luminaires material, I usually creating a white color material with a Luminance (Self-illuminating) value at about 1000 cd/m2.
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Light* Tutorial by Tony Quach
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View Setup
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To set up your views, you can either go View ® Setup or click on the View Setup icon.
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From the View Setup dialog box, you can pick the Viewer Position and the Focus Point. Be sure to drag the Near Clip Plane slider all the way to the left to avoid any unexpected camera clipping.
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Light* Tutorial by Tony Quach
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Radiosity Calculation
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After all the surfaces are oriented in the right direction, the materials are assigned and the luminaires are defined, the scene is finally ready for radiosity calculation.
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But don’t jump out of your seat just yet. You still have to set a few parameters before Light* can calculate the solution. Luckily, Light* comes with a Process Parameters Wizard to aid you. This is recommended for initial testing of a scene. When doing a final render, it is recommended that you manually set the various parameters to fine tune the solution.
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When you’re ready, go to Process ® Parameters… , here you’ll see this dialog:
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Click on the Wizard button to let Light* take you through a series of parameters. Just follow the on-screen instructions, it’s pretty self-explanatory.
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After clicking Finish, go to Process ® Initiate or click on:
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At this point, Light* will prompt you if you want to save the current .LP (preparation) file. Choose yes and let Light* initialize your scene. After initialization is finished, you’ll notice your most of the surfaces are now subdivided. Go to File ® Save again. This time Light* will prompt you for another file name. Notice the extension at the bottom of the dialog. It is now .LS (solution file). Save it again with the same file name.
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Click on the shaded mode button to view your model in shaded view:
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Now go to Process ® Go to began calculation. Light* will start to calculate the light distribution of each luminaire and the light reflection of all the surfaces. If you’re fairly new to Light*, it is very neat to watch this process. It looks like each luminaire is being turned on, one at a time.
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Notice the status line at the bottom of the screen. This tells you how many percent of light has been distributed. Allow Light* to continue its calculation until 85% of the lights are distributed. It is not necessary to go all the way to 100%. 85% will give you a fairly accurate representation of the final scene.
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If at any time during the calculation you’re not happy with the lighting in the scene, go to Process ® Stop to interrupt the process. Next, you can double-click on whatever luminaire that needs changing and adjust its photometric setting.
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At this time you can also change the materials of the surfaces if necessary. But it is advisable to reset & reprocess (Go) the solution if you’re changing the materials because the reflected color of the new material won’t be updated at this point. Note: When in the Solution stage, you can no longer move any objects in the scene because the meshing has already been processed. If you decide to move anything, you have to go back to the .LP file and move them there and re-initialize the solution.
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When you’re done making the changes, click on Go button again to continue the calculation:
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Here is an example of what my scene looks like at 54% completion:
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At 83% completion this is how it look:
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I am satisfied with the solution at this point. ●
If you like at this point, you can orbit / zoom around your model to check your model without having Light* recalculating everything. This is truly the beauty of radiosity processing. Since the light data is stored in the meshes themselves, you are free to move about the scene without having to re-render the scene.
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You can also click on the Ambient button to turn on the rest of the ambient lighting in the scene:
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Also, click on the Textures button to see how the textures look in your processed scene
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When you’re satisfied, you’re are ready to raytrace the scene. Go to File ® Render
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Here, you’re presented with a rendering dialog. I usually set my Antialiasing Samples to 5. Set the desired output resolution and name your image. Be sure you check the Ray Tracing option. Leave the default Ray
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Bounces value at 10. When you’re ready, click on Ok. Depending on what Antialiasing value you’ve set, the time it takes Light* to render each image will vary. ●
Although this is an easy way to raytrace an image, it is also very slow, because the image is being displayed on the screen as it’s being raytraced. The faster and more efficient way to do this is through the command line with LSRAY.EXE. This is the raytracing executable of Light* that comes with the program. This is only recommended for those who are familiar with command line driven operations.
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