3d studio max tutorials collection

Modeling Small House in 3ds max

2010-03-05T20:04:00.001-08:00

Hello. This is a tutorial for creating buildings in 3ds max and only applies to version 6. In this tutorial I will show you how to create a simple building. Using the tools covered in this tutorial, you will be able to easily animate a maze type game environment.

To get started, go to "file" and "reset".

Creating the Floor

You might know a simpler method for doing this, but I find, the following method works well. The measurements are in inches, so keep this in mind when you make the floor (as well as the other parts). Also, by making the floor in one piece, you can only add one material to the floor surface. If you want to apply different floor materials to different rooms, experiment with different shapes and place the floor pieces where you want them.

Make a box with height = 288, width = 196, height = 4 and length and width segments = 16, height = 1.

Convert to editable mesh: Click on the arrow on the task bar, select the box, right click, go to properties, slide right and convert to editable mesh.

You should see this image. Click on the little red dots. To centre the image in each of the viewports, click on the icon in the bottom right of the screen.

Take your cursor and draw a box around a selection of the dots in the top view, as follows. This section of the floor will be deleted, thus determining your floor plan.

Hit the "delete" button. You can also select other areas of the floor to delete to make your floor plan more interesting. Once you are satisfied with your floor plan, we have to click on the little red dots again. This is very important.

Building the Walls

Go to "create", "AEC objects" and choose "walls".

The width of the walls defaults to 5 inches thick and 96 inches tall. These are standard dimensions so leave it as is. You can change it in game environments to create more interesting spaces. In top view, select one of the corners of your building and draw the walls around the exterior of your floor plan. Click on each corner. You want to build the exterior walls in one controlled motion. Interior walls can be added later. I haven't found an "orthogonal" button so I just eyeball it to get the walls straight. Your drawing should look like this. Say "yes" to welding the walls and right click to complete the wall.

Adding Windows and Doors

Again in the top view, draw the door and click three times (once for each of height, width and depth) and set the door dimensions to height = 80, width = 36 and depth = 5. Move the door into the wall where you want it. I'm going to rotate "perspective view" so the door is in the front of the building.

Now I'm going to add details to my door. I changed the horizontal panels to 3, vertical panels to 4 and changed PANEL type to glass. I left everything else the same, but you can play with the features such as double doors, et cetera when you are comfortable with the tutorial contents.

Adding Material to the Door (or Window)

Press "M" for materials, choose "standard", go to "Mtl Library", click "open" and when a new window pops open, choose "AEC Templates".

...and then choose the following

A new window will ask if you want to discard old material and click "discard old material" and "ok". Apply the material.

Your perspective view should look like this. Now we need to apply materials to each of the door parts. I always choose the same material for front, back, frame and inner door.

To do this, click on "Front", go to "standard", go to "Mtl Library", go to "open" and another window opens. I'm going to make a wood door so scroll over to wood and double click.

You should see the following:

I'll use ash. Double click the material you want and then you need to return to the door template as follows:

I'm going to repeat the same steps with Back, Frame and Inner Door. Double click on the door part, choose the material and return to the door template.

Finally, we need to choose a material for the "inner bevel" (also known as the glass). For this part I will go to "Ray Traced 01" materials and choose "clear glass".

Now choose the door template and apply the material.

Adding Windows

In the top view, we will add a couple of windows. I'm going to make one and clone it just because it's faster.

Go to "create", "AEC objects", and choose "casement window". You can try other windows. Draw the window in the top view and again click 3 times for the height, width and depth of the window. Then, go to the panel on the left to set the dimensions. I will make a small window to place on either side of the door: height = 70, width = 10 and depth = 5. Use the move tool to put the window in the wall where you want it, including adjusting vertical placement.

I'm going to apply the same material that I used in the door, but you can use the same process that we used in making a door material to make a window material. Finally, I'm going to clone the window and place a number of them around the building. To clone the window, hold down the "shift" key and use the move tool to move the new window. This should be done in the top view. A clone options box will open up, select "copy" and click "ok". I cloned a whole bunch of windows and then modified the width of some of them. This can be done by clicking on the "modifier" tool in the top right of the screen and changing the width or height of the window.

Adding Material to the Building and Floor

Similar to the way we added materials to the doors and windows, we can use an "AEC Template" material and then choose "wall template". This will give us options as to the interior and exterior material on the building. Feel free to take this route (same as door and window materials), however for the purposes of this tutorial, I will not repeat the process but rather will add a neutral material that will be applied to both interior and exterior of the walls. Press "M" for materials, select "standard", "Mtl Library" and "concrete". In this case I will use stucco.

To see how your building looks, click your curser in the perspective box and press "F9".

Now, I will add a material to the floor and finish up the details. I chose wood: Oak for the floors.

There are no simple roof templates in Max 6 but you can create a roof using a Boolean on simple, or extended, primitives. Ask me if you don't know what this means. For now, I will create a ceiling/flat roof. The easiest thing to do is clone the floor so select the floor, click shift and move the cloned floor to the ceiling. I chose a neutral material for the ceiling.

Animating the Door

In the top view, select the door. Go to the modifier tool. The options are all in the right hand panel.

Click on the Auto Key on the bottom of your screen. The animation key-frames should highlight red. Drag the time slider from 0 to 100 frames. In the "parameters" box, change the "open" box to 90 degrees.

If you drag your time-slider back and forth between 0 and 100 the door should open and close. I'm going to add a some grass, a background and throw in a camera. If you want interior lighting, add an omni light and raise it to the height of about a foot below the ceiling. This is the result. I used an environment background rather than a gizmo to create the sky with the intention of keeping the file small.

Modeling a Flat Screen Monitor – 3d max

2010-03-05T19:55:00.001-08:00

In this exercise, you will create a model of a flat screen monitor from an ordinary Box object. Its low polygon count will make it suitable for use in a real-time 3D video game.

This tutorial assumes that the reader has a grasp of rudimentary procedures in 3ds max. You should know basic things such as how to move and rotate using the Transform Gizmos, and how to select Sub-object types in the Modify panel.

The Monitor Stand

1. Reset 3ds max.

2. Press the <S> key to activate 3D Snap. This causes the cursor to snap to Grid Points.

3. In the Top viewport, create a Box at the origin. Use 3D Snap to place the corners of the Box directly on Grid Points. Make the Box 80 units long, 80 units wide, and 5 units tall. The Box should have just one Segment in all axes.

Figure 3-166: Flat Box

4. Right-click the Box and choose Convert to Editable Poly from the Quad Menu.

5. Press the <A> key to activate Angle Snap.

6. Now you will slice the top polygon of the box so you can extrude it later. Enter Polygon sub-object mode. In the Perspective view, select the polygon on the top of the box.

7. In the Edit Geometry rollout, activate the Slice Plane. In the Left view, rotate the Slice Plane 90 degrees, so it is at right angles to the selected polygon.

8. The Transform Gizmo can interfere with Snaps, so we'll turn it off for now. Press the <X> key to disable the Transform Gizmo.

9. Press the <F5> key to activate the X axis. Move the Slice Plane -30 units in the X axis, so it is on the left side of the Left viewport. Your screen should look like the following illustration.

Figure 3-167: Rotate and position the Slice Plane

10. Click Slice to perform the operation. Then click the Slice Plane button again to exit the tool. Click anywhere outside the object to deselect all polygons.

11. Press the <S> key to exit Snaps. Press the <A> key to exit Angle Snaps. Then press the <X> key to enable the Transform Gizmo.

12. Click the Extrude button in the Edit Polygons rollout. In the Perspective view, select the new polygon that you have just created, and drag upward. Release the mouse when the extrusion is about the same height as the width of the box.

Figure 3-168: Extrude the new polygon

13. With the extruded polygon still selected, right-click in the Left viewport. Press the <W> key to activate the Move tool. Move the polygon in the viewport's XY plane, to angle the extrusion so it looks like the following illustration.

Figure 3-169: Move the selected polygon

The Screen Mounting Hardware

1. With the polygon at the top of the object still selected, click the Extrude Options button . In the pop-up dialog, enter a value of 5 units for the Extrusion Height. Click the Apply button three times, then click OK. You have now made four identical extrusions on the top of the object.

Figure 3-170: Four identical extrusions

2. On the Main Toolbar, click the Window/Crossing Selection button to switch it to the Window state. Now, when you make a Region Selection, only objects or sub-objects completely within the Region will be selected.

3. Now you will create some simple curvature. In the Left view, zoom in on the top of the object. Click and drag to create a window around the two extruded segments near the top of the object as shown in the following illustration.

Figure 3-171: Select extruded polygons

4. In the Left view, move the selected polygons slightly to the right.

Figure 3-172: Move selected polygons

5. Switch to Vertex sub-object mode. In the Left view, draw a selection region around the vertices shown in the following illustration. Move the two vertices slightly to the right, to create a smooth curve.

Figure 3-173: Move two vertices to create curvature

6. On the Main Toolbar, switch back to Crossing Selection mode . Enter Edge sub-object mode. In the Left view, select all of the horizontal edges on the interior of the object. The edges on the side facing toward you and the edges facing away from you are selected. If necessary, use the <CTRL> key to add to the selection until all the edges shown in the following illustration are selected. Remember to select the edges near the bottom of the object also.

Figure 3-174: Select interior edges

7. Press the <BACKSPACE> key on the keyboard. This is the same as the Remove tool on the Edit Edges rollout. The extra edges are removed. Now each side of the object is a single polygon instead of six.

Figure 3-175: Remove the selected edges with the <BACKSPACE> key

WARNING: Do not press the <DELETE> key! If you delete edges, you also delete the polygons that share those edges. The <BACKSPACE> key, however, will Remove edges and keep the polygons.

8. Select the edge on the front of the object, in the center of the curved area, as shown in the following illustration. Press the <BACKSPACE> key to Remove it.

Figure 3-176: Before and after removal of edge

9. Enter Polygon sub-object mode. Select the large polygon in the center of the curved area on the front of the object. Extrude the polygon by about 5 units.

Figure 3-177: Extrude the center polygon

10. Notice that there is an extra, unexpected edge on each side of the extrusion. This is because when you Remove edges, the vertices are not necessarily removed. There was an extra vertex left over on each side, and when you extruded the center polygon, new edges sprouted from those leftover vertices.

Go back into Edge sub-object mode and select the interior edges again. Press the <BACKSPACE> key to Remove them.

Figure 3-178: Before and after removing extra edges

11. Enter Vertex sub-object mode and check to make sure the leftover vertices have been removed. In this case they have been, because you Removed the edges all around the leftover vertices.

Figure 3-179: Some vertices removed automatically

12. There are still two vertices left over after deleting the edges. Enter Vertex sub-object mode, draw a selection region around the extra vertices.

Figure 3-180: Select the remaining extra vertices

13. Press the <BACKSPACE> key to remove the extra vertices. The model is now clean, with no extra edges or vertices.

Figure 3-181: Extra vertices removed

The Screen

1. Switch to the Perspective view. Activate Polygon sub-object mode. Press the Bevel button in the Edit Polygons rollout. Click and drag the center polygon at the cap of the most recent extrusion. This creates a new extrusion. Release the mouse, drag to create the bevel, and click again to finish the operation. This creates a large, shallow Bevel as shown in the following image.

Figure 3-182: Create a large, shallow Bevel

2. At this stage, the model should look something like the following illustration.

Figure 3-183: Monitor screen created by Bevel

Look in the Front viewport; does the monitor screen have the correct proportions? The height of the screen should be about three-fourths of its width. The aspect ratio (proportion of screen width to screen height) of a computer monitor is 4 to 3.

3. If the polygon at the end of the Bevel isn't still selected, select it. Activate the Front view. Select the Scale tool from the Main toolbar. Scale the polygon non-uniformly in the X or Y axes of the viewport to achieve the approximate proportions of a computer monitor.

Figure 3-184: Non-uniform Scale in the viewport X axis

4. With the big polygon still selected, extrude it by about 10 units to create some thickness for the screen.

5. Activate the Inset tool. Click and drag on the big polygon to create an inset. Make the inset about 10 units. Your model should look something like the illustration that follows.

Figure 3-185: Inset

6. With the inset polygon selected, click the Options button for the Bevel tool. Enter a value of -5 for both the Extrusion Height and the Outline Amount. This creates a Bevel with sides at exactly 45 degrees.

Figure 3-186: Precision Bevel operation

Finishing Touches

The model is nearly complete. Now you will add a few details to make it more realistic.

1. The screen should be slightly tilted to make it look like it's being used. Using Window Selection mode , select the polygons of the screen in the Left viewport. Make sure you don't select any of the polygons that connect the monitor stand to the screen.

Figure 3-187: Select the polygons of the screen

2. Once the screen polygons have been selected, rotate them very slightly around the Z axis in the Left viewport.

Figure 3-188: Rotate the monitor screen

3. Zoom in on the polygons that connect the base to the monitor screen. Notice that they have become skewed. With the polygons of the monitor screen still selected, move them up slightly in the Left viewport, so the connecting polygons are once again parallel to the viewport's X axis.

Figure 3-189: Before and after moving the monitor screen

4. Enter Edge sub-object mode. Activate the Perspective view. In the Edit Edges rollout, press the Chamfer button. Click and drag on the edge at the inner joint of the monitor base. The edge is chamfered to create a new polygon.

Figure 3-190: Before and after using the Chamfer tool

5. Perform another Chamfer operation on the edge at the top rear of the monitor stand.

Figure 3-191: Before and after the second Chamfer operation

6. The model is finished. Maximize the Perspective view and Arc Rotate around the scene to admire your work. Press the <7> key on the keyboard to see a polygon count for the selected object in the top left of the active viewport.

The polygon counter reads only 36 Faces. The term "faces" used here is inconsistent; what it really means is there are 36 polygons. If we counted the number of triangles, there would be 100.

Figure 3-192: Completed model

Modeling GLASS WITH ICE CUBES

2010-03-04T03:52:00.001-08:00

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to make a drinking glass with ice cubes, and a materials for them.
The glass is made to look like glass with the use of refraction. Refraction is the bending of light as it passes through an object. The most visible refractors in life are glass and water.
You'll start out by making the table and wall, which are an important part of the scene. In order to look refractive, the glass has to refract something in the scene. In this case, the wall and table will be refracted when seen through the glass.

Set up a scene with a table and a wall beyond it. Use ordinary boxes for the table and wall.
Create a subdued checker material and apply it to the wall.
Create a wood material and apply it to the table. To make the tabletop a flat mirror, select the table and go to the Modify panel. Click More on the Modify panel and choose Material. Make sure Material ID is 1. Click Mesh Select. Select the top face of the table, the face where the glass will sit. Make sure the selected face is red. Apply the Material modifier, and change Material ID to 2. This assigns material ID #2 to the tabletop only.
On the Maps rollout for the wood material, click on the button labeled None across from Reflection. Choose Flat Mirror from the list that appears. When the Flat Mirror Parameters rollout appears, check the box next to Apply to Faces with ID, and change its value to 2.
Click Go to Parent . Change the Amount across from Reflection to 30.
The tabletop will now subtly reflect anything on top of it.
Next, you'll make the glass object itself. Draw a line for the profile of the glass, similar to the line shown below. Make the bottom part of the line sit on the table. Note that at the upper tip of the line, the line curves around to form a nearly closed circle.
With the line selected, go to the Modify panel. Click Lathe. Under the Align section, click Min to align the center of the lathe with the left side of the shape. Set Segments to 32.
Check the Weld Core checkbox. Checking Weld Core gets rid of the pinched star that sometimes appears at the center of a lathed object.

If the lathed object looks odd, as if it may be inside out, try checking the Flip Normals checkbox to see if that makes the object look better.

This lathed object will become a drinking glass. A shiny, transparent material will be put on it later.
Next you'll set up the camera and lights. Place a Target camera in the Top viewport, starting at the bottom center of the viewport and going to the center of the glass. In the Left viewport, move the camera upward until it looks down on the glass at approximately a 20-degree angle.
Place a target spot in the Top viewport, starting at the lower right corner and going to the center of the glass. In the Left viewport, move the light up until it shines down on the glass at approximately a 45-degree angle. The light and camera positions in the Top and Left viewports should be similar to those shown below.
Create an omni light at the lower left corner of the Top viewport. Move the light upward in the Left viewport until it is nearly level with the spotlight. Change the V value to 110.
For the target spot, set the following parameters:
- V: 255
- Hotspot: 50
- Falloff: 75
- Cast Shadows: On
- On the Shadow Parameters rollout, open the pulldown list and choose Ray traced Shadows.
For shadows from transparent objects, the raytrace method works better than the shadow map method (the default method). The raytrace method makes transparent shadows for transparent objects, while the shadow-map method makes solid shadows no matter how transparent the object is.
Activate the Perspective view, then press c to change it to the camera view. If necesary, use the Dolly Camera and Truck Camera tools (like the Zoom and Pan tools) to move the camera into position, then render the camera view. Check that the shadow and reflection are appearing on the table. If not, look back through the previous steps and correct the scene.
Next you'll make the material for the glass. This material is the most important part of this tutorial. It is made up of shininess, transparency, and both a Reflection and Refraction map. A variation of the glass material will be used on the ice cubes.
Make a material with the following attributes:
- 2-Sided: On
- RGB: 135, 135, 135 (medium gray)
- Glossiness: 60
- Specular Level: 80
- Opacity: 50
Assign the material to the glass. Render the camera view. The glass is transparent and shiny, but the material still has a long way to go.
To make the bitmap to be used as a Reflection map, open a paint program such as Photoshop. Create a new picture with the dimensions 400x400 and a black background. With a white brush, draw thick, smeared vertical lines. Draw a few white blobs as well. Your drawing should look something like the following picture.

Save the drawing as a JPG file in the \3DSMAX4\MAPS directory with the name GLASSREF.JPG.
Return to the Material Editor. Expand the Maps rollout. Across from Reflection, click on the box labeled None and pick Bitmap from the list that appears. Pick GLASSREF.JPG from the list that appears.
Click Go to Parent to return to the parent level of the material. Next to Reflection, change Amount to 50.
Render the glass. It looks better, but it's not refracting light, which prevents the glass from looking like glass and makes it look like plastic.
On the Maps rollout, click on the box labeled None across from Refraction. Choose Raytrace from the list. Click Go to Parent and change the Amount next to Refraction to 50.
By using the Raytrace map type for refractions, the refractions in the glass will be raytraced, which is one way to get somewhat accurate refraction in MAX.
Expand the Extended Parameters rollout. Change Index of Refraction to 1.1. This IOR (Index of Refraction) will lend a slight refraction to the glass.
Render the camera view. The glass is looking pretty good, but could stand a few finishing touches.
On the Maps rollout, click on None across from Opacity. Choose Falloff as the map type. Render the camera view.
This map type will cause faces facing the camera to render as more transparent than those facing perpendicular to the camera. In this case, the center of the glass will appear more transparent than the outer edge. The effect is subtle, but does make the glass look a little better.
Across from Diffuse, click on the box labeled None and pick Noise from the list that appears. When the rollout with the Noise parameters appears, change Size to 0.5. Click Go to Parent. Next to Diffuse, change Amount to 50.
This change will make very slight spots and irregularities on the glass, making it more realistic.
Render the camera view. The opacity on the glass has changed, and it also has subtle specks on it from the noisy Diffuse map.
Now for the ice cubes. Make a small ChamferBox with the same Length, Width and Height, and with 5 segments along each dimension. Give the ChamferBox 2 Fillet Segments. Make two copies of the box.
Apply a Noise modifier to each box, giving each slightly different parameters. You should have three bumpy cubes when finished.
Create a copy of the glass material in the Material Editor. Give the new material another name so it won't overwrite the glass material when applied to the scene.
On the new material, add a Noise map for the Bump map. Set the parameters so lots of small bumps appear on the sample sphere. Apply the material to the ice cubes.
Put the ice cubes in the glass and render the camera view.
There are a number of ways to make different kinds of glass and ice effects. Experiment with this tutorial to familiarize yourself with refraction and how it works.

Creating explosions in 3ds max

2010-03-04T03:49:00.001-08:00

Hello. This is a tutorial for creating explosions in 3ds max. In this tutorial I will show you how to blow up a planet by starting with a sphere, adding a bomb, adding fire and smoke, making the explosion into a movie, adding materials and a background. Using the tools covered in this tutorial you will be able to easily blow up just about anything. This file takes a minute to load.

To get started, go to "file" and "reset".

1. Making the Sphere

Go to the shapes tool (highlighted sphere) and click on "sphere". Click in the front panel and drag the mouse to create the sphere. In the parameters box, change the radius to 40.

If you change your mind about the size of the sphere, you can click on the curved blue modifier and change the values.

2. Adding a Bomb

Now we need to add the bomb. So click on the "Space Warps" button (highlighted in yellow).

In the drop down menu under the space warp, choose "Geometric/Deformable" and select "Bomb".

Click somewhere in the top view to add the bomb close to the sphere.

Now, we need to bind the bomb to the sphere. So click on the "Bind to Space Warp" tool (highlighted in yellow). Click on the bomb and drag your mouse to the sphere. The sphere will flash white for a second. I have dragged the time slider (at the bottom of the screen) to frame 12 to see the effect.

I moved the bomb into the middle of the sphere, because I want the bomb to explode equally in all directions. To do this, use the move tool on the top task bar (the one with four arrows is the move tool).

Now, dragging the timeslider to frame 14, has this effect:

3. Adding Fire and Smoke

First of all, we need to add a gizmo, so we can make an explosion with fire and smoke. Choose "Helpers" (highlighted yellow). In the drop down menu (where it says standard) choose "Atmospheric Apparatus". Click on "Sphere Gizmo" and in the parameters rollout select "Hemisphere". Click in the middle of the sphere and drag your mouse out past the sphere. Set its Radius to 150.

I did two things here. First, I used my cursor to make a box around everything on the screen and then used the move tool to adjust everything to zero on the Z plane (I moved it up). Second, in the atmosphere and effects rollout, I clicked on Add. This opened up a window where I'm going to select "Fire Effect" and say "OK".

Now, highlight the fire effect (on the left column) and underneath it click on "Setup" and another window will open. In this window you'll want to scroll down a little bit past here:

At the very bottom, in the explosion options, place a checkmark in the "Explosion" box and select "Setup Explosion". Another window opens up. I have the fire effect of the explosion starting at frame 15 and ending at frame 50. Click "OK" to exit the environments and effects window.

Now I'm going to modify the bomb. So click on the bomb and select the modifier tool again (curved blue icon). Change the spin to 100, chaos to 2, detonation to 15. You can play around with the numbers to achieve different effects.

The most common problem that happens now is, that you will want to look at a screen shot to see the fire and smoke (press F9) and you won't see the fire. You have to actually render the scene to an AVI video to see the fire. So click on "Render" and in the rollout select "Render".

4. Rendering

And the following window opens up. Select the "Active Time Segment": 0 To 100 with a resolution of 320x240 (makes the file smaller).

You can watch the screen, rendering the AVI frame by frame and make notes about changes to improve the effect.

Scroll down in this menu box and click on Files. Another window opens up. Here, you can give your file a name and in the drop down options (where it says ".jpg") change this to ".avi". Click "Save" and make sure the viewport is set to a perspective. Now, click on "Render" at the bottom of the first menu box.

5. Adding Materials

Finally, I'm going to add some materials to the scene to make it look more realistic. Select the sphere and press "M" for materials. Click on "Standard" and in the new window that opens, select "Mtl Library" and lower down select "Open".

Another window opens up. Scroll over to space materials and double click on "Space". Click on the "red green blue" icon to see thumbnails of the options. In the options that open up, double click on "Space Earth".

Now you should see this. There's a little icon of a sphere with an arrow pointing to a cube. Click on this to assign the material to the sphere.

Press F9 to see a screenshot of the material applied to the sphere.

6. Adding a Background Environment

Now, we're going to add a background environment. Click on "Rendering" and select "Environment". The following window will open up. Click on "None".

Another window opens up. Double click on "Space_Hi-Res_Stars (Stars10.jpg)"

7. Result

You will want to re-render your scene to look at the result. It should look similar to this picture:

Creating Glow in 3d max - Engine Glow

2010-03-02T18:13:00.001-08:00

This is a very easy effect to obtain. You can do a wonderful engine glow without using Video Post and Lens Effects. (Though a nice subtle lens flare and star field would be nice additions.) All of the parameters can be animated without too many hassles. To do this, you will use a few Volumetric Omni lights with activated attenuation and shadow parameters.

Lets reproduce the image above as an example.

The two engines are just copies of the same thing with the same Omni lights. So in the following description we will be only making one engine. To copy the group, just select all the lights and engine parts, shift and left click drag.

The model is the engine off of the Apollo spacecraft that ships with MAX. Clear MAX and load the engine you want to use.

When it is loaded, go into the light panel and load an Omni Light. Place the light inside of the engine. (You are trying to create the illusion that the glow is coming from inside of the engine. To many times people place the light out side of the engine.) Stick it inside…trust me. Name this light Main Engine Glow.

Now place a second Omni Light just behind the first so it sits back in the engine just a little further. Name this light also.

Now we need to adjust some of the parameters for each of the lights. Choose the Main Engine Glow Omni light and go to the modify panel. In the Light modify panel scroll down to the Attenuation Panel.

The numbers are not really important because mine may set to a different scale then yours. Notice that we are using the Far Attenuation and that there is no decay needed. You will need to play around with the numbers in your scene to get the effect that you want. Have the use and show boxes checked. Below are the gizmo lines to show you the positions that worked for me. The light tan inner gizmo indicates where the light is at its greatest intensity. The light will fade to zero as it approaches the outer brown gizmo. Try to adjust your attenuation to be similar to these.

Under the shadow rollout, turn on the shadow option. (Shadow map is fine, no need for ray tracing here.)

Now select the second light and adjust its parameters just as you did for the Main Glow. This time, however, have the start and end attenuation spinners set to a smaller size then the first. You want this light to give off a "tighter" glow then the first. In the above image you can see the smaller gizmo sitting behind the first. The far attenuation is almost contained completely within the engine. You will not need to set shadows on for this one. (If you have objects close to the engine however, and the outer gizmo intersects the object they my receive some of the glow. This may not give you the effect that you are looking for.)

Now we need to move to the Environment rollout. Go to Rendering> Environment.

You want to add two add a volume light to the scene. Click the "Add" button and then the Volume Light from the dropdown list as shown below.

In the select light option, choose the Main Engine Glow Omni. I have given my main glow engine a blue/green hue. I have also found that the default density of the Volume lights to high. Crank it down to about 0.2 or 0.3. You may want to play around with it to get the effect you are looking for. The best results also tend to come when using the Light Sample Range. Adjust the % Sample Volume can also help. For this example though, let’s use the "Light Smp Range".

Now we need to add another volume effect to the smaller Omni light. Go back up to the top and select "Add" again to obtain another Volume effect. This time choose the second Omni light as the light source. I left the color white because this is the hotter of the two colors. I wanted to give the effect of a hotter engine center. You will need to ramp down the density again just as you did for the first. I had it slightly denser just because it represents the heat source.

With a test render you should obtain a nice engine glow. The smaller light should be a slightly more dense area near the back of the engine. The main engine glow, a blue plasma cloud. The two will blend into each other seamlessly as if coming from one source. There are a few other things you can do here. One would be to add some noise to the glows. I think that adding noise to the center tighter light gives a more convincing effect.

One of the great things about this glow is that it really does a nice job of glowing behind the engine. If you change the view so that you are no longer looking right into the engine, you will see that the glow is seen even though you are not looking at the light directly. (If you don’t get this effect make sure that the shadow option is on for the engine lights.)

Well, that’s it. You will want to link the lights or make a group so the lights stay with the engine. A great addition to this is the Star Field filter in Video Post. (In the previous Hot Tip the Star Field filter is discussed.) As with everything in MAX, there are many ways to produce effects such as this engine glow. This is just one of those ways. Try to come up with others. Perhaps using Lens Effects. Remember, there are no rules. Go nuts.

Creating Shockwave 3d max

2010-03-02T18:11:00.001-08:00

This time around I will show you how to do a pretty good looking shockwave effect not using plugins. So start max up and create a tube object with radius 1 -70 and radius 2 about 50. Set the height about .6 or .7 high as we want this to have some depth. Also give it about 70 sides.

Now apply a uvw map modifier to your tube planar will work fine.

Now open up your material editor and scroll down to your maps. Under the diffuse slot select a gradient use the settings that I did in fig 1.a. Remember to select radial or it wont look right.

fig 1.a

Next go down to the self illumination slot and select a gradient as well and use the settings like in fig 1.b. Now in the color 2 tab, select a noise map and use the settings that are in fig 1.c; note the phase has a little red square around it. This is gonna be the part that we animate later on.

fig 1.b fig 1.c

Now, the last part we select a gradient for the opacity using the settings like in fig 2.a. In the color 2 we select a noise map and use the settings like in fig 2.b. Note the phase has a red box around it this will be for our animation, which we set to 0 at the first part of the animation and set about 15-17 for every 100 frames afterward. This will make it look more realistic in the end, but make sure you do it for the noise in both the self illumination and the noise in the opacity map. Good luck!

fig 2.a fig 2.b

HIDING OBJECTS DURING ANIMATION

2010-03-01T07:36:00.001-08:00

Sometimes you'll need to have an object hide or appear during an animation. The Display panel's Hide rollout has options for hiding objects while you're working with the scene, but these options won't make an object hide or appear during a rendering. For this you need something called a Visibility Track, which can be added in Track View.

Open Track View . Expand the hierarchy until you find the object you want to hide or reveal. In this tutorial, we will assume you are using a teapot.
Highlight the object name in the Track View hierarchy.
When you do this, the Visibility Track button becomes available on the Track View toolbar. This button has a picture of an eyeball on it .
Click the Visibility Track button . A new track appears in Track View under the object name, called Visibility. You might have to expand the hierarchy to see the new track.
Click the Add Keys button on the Track View toolbar. In the key dots area of the Track View window, click across from the Visibility Track at various frames. Keys are created at these frames.
We will need to adjust these keys to get the visibility effects we want.
Right click on any key dot. If you want the teapot to be visible at this point, change the Value to something positive, like 1.0. If the object should be invisible, make the Value negative.
Pull the time slider to see the effect on the screen. The object fades to a "ghost" when it is hidden. In 3ds max 4, the keyframes are connected by smooth fade-ins and outs by default.
To make a your visibility changes sharp, click and hold on the In: and Out: flyouts and choose Step . Do this for each keyframe. You can also move the keys to change when your object is visible.

Billowing smoke – using particle system

2010-03-01T07:34:00.001-08:00

Billowing smoke can be made with a particle system. Each particle becomes a chunk of smoke that blends with the other particles (chunks of smoke) around it. You can control the particles' direction, speed and size, so you can make the smoke go anywhere, move at any speed, and dissipate whenever you want.
Smoke can be made with just about any particle system, but for billowing smokestack-type smoke, Super Spray works best. Super Spray makes a continuous, straight stream of particles emanating from a point source.

On the Create panel, click Geometry. From the pulldown menu, choose Particle Systems. Click on Super Spray.
Click and drag in the Top viewport to make the super spray icon.
Pull the time slider to see the default super spray motion.
The particles fly straight up out of the icon.
Go to frame 30 and arrange the Perspective view so you can see the spray.
Under the Particle Formation section, change the two Spread parameters to 20 and 90 respectively.
Now the particle spray is spread out in a random fashion.
On the Particle Type rollout, change the particle type to Facing.
Render the Perspective view.
Facing particles are rectangles that always face the Perspective or Camera view.
Under Particle Motion, change the parameters to the following:
- Speed: 2
- Variation (Speed): 20
- Emit Stop: 100
- Variation (Life): 5
Under Particle Size, change Size to 5 and Variation to 20.
These values are just one set that works well for smoke. You can change your own smoke as needed by playing around with these parameters. Next we'll put a material on the particles to make them look like smoke blobs.
Go to the Material Editor. Under the Maps rollout, click on the box labeled None across from Opacity and choose Gradient from the Material/Map Browser.
The Gradient map will make the particle appear solid at the center, gradually becoming transparent at the edges.
Change Gradient Type to Radial.
On the Material Editor toolbar, click Go to Parent .
On the Basic Parameters rollout, turn on Face Map.
This will map the gradient onto each facing particle.
Change Self lllumination to 100. Change the Diffuse color to a light gray.
Apply the material to the particles.
Render the Perspective view.

The facing particles are beginning to look like smoke blobs. To make them look more like smoke, you can make the diffuse color depend on the particle age.
On the Maps rollout, click on the box labeled None across from Diffuse and choose Particle Age.
The Particle Age map changes the color of each particle depending on its age. A particle is 0% old when it is emitted (born), then 100% old when it is about to disappear (die).
Click and drag the color swatch from Color #1 to Color #3, and choose Swap.
Render the Perspective view.

You now have rising smoke that dissipates as it reaches the top of the screen.

When making materials for a particle system that will have some transparency, such as the one above, don't spend a lot of time on the material until you have placed the particle system in its final environment. Transparent materials look different against different backgrounds, so smoke that looks great against a black background might not look right against a lighter or patterned background.

MAKING AN OBJECT FOLLOW A PATH

2010-03-01T07:33:00.001-08:00

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to make an object follow a path.
3D Studio MAX animates with something called controllers. The default controllers use the position, rotation and scale of the object that you set with the Move, Rotate and Scale transforms. Other controllers can make the object move and change in different ways. Here, you'll learn to use the Path controller to make an object follow a path.

Create a teapot and a curvy line in the Top viewport. Make the line much larger than the teapot. The teapot will be made to follow the line.
Select the teapot. Now you'll set up a Path Constraint controller for the teapot.
Go to the Motion panel . Expand the Assign Controller rollout. Highlight the word Position in the white box.
Click the Assign Controller button at the top of the rollout. Choose Path Constraint from the list that appears.
On the panel, scroll down until you see the Add Path button. Click Add Path and click on the line.
The teapot moves to the beginning of the path. When you move the time slider, you will see it follow the path.
With the Path Constraint controller, you can add two or more paths to the list. The teapot follows the average of the paths. For instance, you could make a boat sail down the middle of a river by making two lines along the banks, and using them in a Path Constraint controller for the boat's motion.
Turn on the Follow and Bank checkboxes. This will make the teapot bank and turn as it follows the line.
If the teapot isn't pointing in the right direction, go to the first frame and rotate the teapot so it points the right way.

You can also go back and change the vertices on the path. The teapot will follow the changed path.

3d max in CAMPFIRE

2010-03-01T07:32:00.003-08:00

A campfire is made with the aid of a helper object. Helpers are non-rendering objects that assist in a number of tasks. In this case, it will allow you to place a fire effect in a particular place in order to make a campfire.

On the Create panel, click Helpers. From the pulldown menu, choose Atmospheric Apparatus.
Atmospheric Apparatus in MAX is a non-rendering helper object for making atmospheric/environment effects. Whether you choose BoxGizmo, SphereGizmo or CylGizmo depends on the shape you want your fire to be in. For a campfire, a SphereGizmo works well.
Click SphereGizmo, then click and drag in the Top viewport to create the radius of gizmo. Check the Hemisphere checkbox. Note the Radius as you'll use it later to animate the fire.
Choose Select and Non-Uniform Scale from the toolbar. Click Restrict to Y, and scale the SphereGizmo in the Front viewport to 400% on the Y axis. Make sure you do this in the Front viewport and not the Perspective view.
With a campfire, the fire will always flow in the direction of the gizmo's local Z axis. How you draw an object in MAX determines the orientation of its local axis. The viewport in which you first draw the object sets the object's local XY plane, and the remaining axis is the local Z axis. Since we created the gizmo in the Top viewport, the gizmo's local Z axis points upward out of the screen in the Top viewport, and points upward in the Front viewport. This also means it points upward in the default Perspective view, which is what we want. Because you are using the View reference coordinate system, the gizmo's local Z axis is the equivalent of the Y axis in the Front viewport.
From the Rendering menu, choose Environment. On the Atmosphere rollout, click Add. Pick Fire Effect from the list. The bottom of the dialog changes to display the Fire Effect parameters.
Click Pick Gizmo and click on the SphereGizmo. This tells MAX that you want the fire to appear within the SphereGizmo. Note that this step has to be done, or you won't get any fire at all.
For the Flame Type, choose Tendril. This will make the long, thin tendrils of a campfire, as opposed to the round fluffballs of a Fireball.
Set the Fire Effect values to the following:
- Stretch: 1.2
- Regularity: 0.4
- Flame Size: 4.0
- Density: 8
- Flame Detail: 10
Move to the last frame of your animation and turn on the Animate button. Change the Drift value to the same as the SphereGizmo's Radius.
Drift is the number of units the flames will move upward over a number of frames. If you make Drift a multiple of the gizmo's Radius value, the animation will loop seamlessly. For example, if the Radius is 200, you can make Drift 200, 400 or 600 for the animation to loop.
With the Animate button on, change the Phase value to a whole number such as 2 or 5. Higher numbers will make the flames churn a lot.
You now have a looping campfire animation.
Keep in mind the following when animating a campfire:
- You can't see the effect until you render.
- A Fire Effect only renders in a non-orthographic viewport, such as a Perspective or Camera view.
- In order for the flames to animate, you have to animate the Phase and/or Drift values under the Motion section.

FIERY EXPLOSION in 3d max

2010-03-01T07:32:00.001-08:00

A simple explosion is easy to do with Fire Effect. Fire Effect is designed to make fire and explosions of many different kinds.

On the Create panel, click Helpers. From the pulldown menu, choose Atmospheric Apparatus.
Atmospheric Apparatus in MAX is a non-rendering helper object for making atmospheric/environment effects. Whether you choose BoxGizmo, SphereGizmo or CylGizmo depends on the shape you want your fire to be in. For an explosion, a SphereGizmo works well.
Click SphereGizmo, then click and drag in the Top viewport to create the radius of gizmo. Make the gizmo about as big as the viewport so you can see the effect easily.
From the Rendering menu, choose Environment. On the Atmosphere, click Add. Pick Fire Effect from the list. The bottom of the dialog changes to display the Fire Effect parameters.
Click Pick Gizmo and click on the SphereGizmo. This specifies that you want the explosion to appear within the SphereGizmo. Note that this step has to be done, or you won't get any explosion at all.
Check the Explosion checkbox. Move to the last frame of your animation and turn on the Animate button. Change the Phase value to 300.
Explosions happen by making the Phase value go from 0 to 300. When Phase moves between 0 and 100, the fireball gets bigger. When the Smoke checkbox is on and Phase moves between 100 and 200, the fire turns to smoke. When Phase moves from 200 to 300, the smoke dissipates.
Render the animation in a Perspective or camera view. The effect only renders in these type of viewports.

Creating supernatural materials

2010-02-28T19:48:00.001-08:00

In this tutorial is explained how to make a material for some kind of an alien, and what options you can use
By Rebaz Saladdin
Hello again, I modelled this alien monster head with the editable poly inside 3ds max 7 as shown below.

Then I thought: if it had a weird material I would be much better than the traditional skin material, that is why I began to create a bizarre material for that model (It is not just specified to that head but I created to that head.You can apply to any model you have ,you are free.)After some testing and altering parameters I reached to the result below:

Now I am going to tell you how to create the same material step by step, I do not care what is your level of experience you can follow this tutorial and create the same result, but if you countered any problem (hope you don’t), just ask in the forum and I’ll try to answer it.
Let's begin:
The goal of this tutorial is not to tell you how I modeled this head (but for more information I modeled it with editable poly using the old box modeling technique. Then I applied the new TurboSmooth modifier.) I recommend creating a simple standard sphere or Teapot for the sake of test rendering, then after you finished creating the material you can apply it to your model (feel free to change any parameters and discover new materials from it).
Open Material Editor (M key) then select a new sample slot and rename it to Weird Material
*Just as a tip naming is very important in 3ds max for everything try to put a name for it. It saves you from confusing things, especially if your scene is complex and contains a lot of models. And it is good to create your own material library.
As Shown below:

Then in the Shader Type Choose Metal and 2Sided as the figure below:

Then Click on the small button beside the diffuse color. The material map browser appears, then choose Falloff map type as shown below:

Then the Falloff Parameters appears, click on the None beside the Black Color (Front) then in the Material Map Browser choose Bitmap as shown below:

Then choose a very rusty metal image. I chose MEDRUST3.jpg and the path should be" :3ds maxmapsMetal MEDRUST3.jpg".
Then in the Output rollout make sure to choose invert (to save our self from that orange color of the rust.) as shown below:

Then Back to the Falloff Parameters via the Go to Parent icon as shown below:

Then change the Value between the already selected bitmap and the Black color (Front) to 15, and the Black color (front) to a very dark blue mine is: 0.0.25 for the RGB value.
Then go back to the Metal Basic Parameters and change the specularity level to a very high value, mine? Yes I set it to 338.Then click on the small button beside the Glossiness value then in the Material Map Browser select Bitmap then select the same rusty surface bitmap before "MEDRUST3.jpg".
Then back again to the Metal Basic Parameters this type select a Falloff Map for the Self Illumination. But before that make sure to check the small box a the left of the Self Illumination Value to change it into color(black is the default)as shown Below:

Select the Falloff Map of the Self Illumination (that is what you applied before now) then in the Falloff Parameters, click on the None button beside the White Color (side) then select another Falloff in the Material Map Browser. Then in the second Falloff Parameters click on the None beside the Back Color (front) then select bitmap in the Material Map Browser, for this one select another metal but this one should be a very shiny one I selected Tinfoil.jpg the path should be ":3ds maxmapsMetal Tinfoil.jpg" .Then Go to parent one level (Click on go to parent one time) then change the front black color to a dark blue, mine is: 25.25.73 for the RGB value. Then change the value to 20 (the value between the dark blue and the bitmap Tinfoil.jpg) the Falloff type to Fresnel (we choose this because with this falloff type we have IOR index of refraction which we can control the fall of better); increase the IOR according to your object, mine is 2.87 and works fine for me. And this is a screenshot which shows the second Falloff map in the Self Illumination Parameters.

Then Go to parent two levels and select the maps rollout then click on the None beside the Bump map then select the dent map as shown below:

Then do some changing in the Dent Parameters, first for the size I think the size is very huge for my head I decreased from 200 to 20 and the strength from 20 to 2 (strength is found under the maps rollout again). Then Back again to parent and this time in the Super Sampling Rollout Local super sampler is selected and the Max2.5 Star is selected too. This is increases the accuracy for the Antialiasing calculation. As in this figure below:

Then drag the material from the material slot to the object you want for example I created a teapot (Command panel>Create>Geometry>Standard>Teapot) with the radius of 20 and the segments equals to 12 ,Then Go to the Rendering menu and Environment then change the environment (Background) color to pure white .Finally do a quick render (F9).
As shown below:

That is all for the material tree, you should have the same tree as I have which is shown below:

Hope it is useful, and that you enjoyed reading it, and following the steps .Finally I want to tell you that I am sorry for any mistakes.

3d max Multi-subobject material

2010-02-28T19:41:00.001-08:00

For this tutorial we need to know how the multi-subobject and polygon ID works.

1. Prepare a multi-subobject material before drawing.

Material ID 1 = wall

Material ID 2 = ceiling

Material ID 3 = floor

. . . and etc.

2. Draw a box, convert to poly and flip all polygon's normals.

3. Create a camera inside and change a viewport to be the camera view. Assign material IDs to each polygon by following the materials that we have already prepared.

In this stage I put ID 1 for whole wall, ID 2 for the ceiling and ID 3 for the floor. The important thing is to assign material IDs to polygons in the beginning rather than later, as the finished model might be more complex and it could be more difficult to select polygons.

4. work on edge sub-object, select edge and connect. This is for creating window and door

Tip: Avoid using slice tool in editable poly/mesh by using connect edge instead, as incorrect uvwmap coordination may sometimes appear on the sliced polygon when we apply face UVWmap to it.

5. Connect edge again. 2 segments divided horizontally for a window in the left and 1 segment divided for a door in the right.

6. Adjust the selected edges height to the same as window and door.

7. Go to polygon sub-object and extrude the selected polygons to create wall thickness and then assign Material ID =4 (Material ID 4 = window frame) to the extruded polygons.

8. Connect the selected edges

9. Select the polygons and inset. This is to create the width of window and door frame.

10. Go to the door polygon and move it down as we don't need the door step.

11. Extrude polygons to create the thickness of door and window. Then assign number ID 5 for the extruded polgons window and number 6 for polygon door.

12. Select the polygons and delete the overlaping polygons at the door step that we don't need. Go to the Border sub-object and cap the hole again. A new clean polygon will be created at the foot of the door.

13. The model has been finished and we can now check the material IDs on each polygon.

14. Select each polygon and apply UVWmap.

15. The finished scene lit with lighting techniques from the first 3 tutorials.

Self illumination Material – 3d max

2010-02-28T19:33:00.001-08:00

Self illumination map

Just imagine how the lampshade's illumination looks like first. A self illumination map can be easily done with many layers of gradient ramp.

1. Black and white cross hatch bitmap put on mix map and change the color for the lampshade's diffuse color.

2. Gradient ramp map tree for self illumination maps.

2.2. Fluorescent diffuser (light box)

We can create this map by using two layers of gradient ramp and putting in self-illumination maps.

2.3 Fake translucency using falloff map on self illumination map

From Max help file: "Translucent shading is similar to Blinn shading, but it also lets you specify translucency. A translucent object allows light to pass through, and also scatters light within the object. You can use translucency to simulate frosted and etched glass."

Translucent shader

There is an unwanted shadow appearing on the sphere which is the translucent shader or translucent color in the raytrace material. I have not yet found a solution to solve this problem.

Fake Translucent, using falloff map (shadow and light) on self-illumination map in Blinn shader.

Though the effect of this falloff map is not as good as the real translucent shader, the effect is still too closed and without the weird shadow appearing on the object.
An example of faking translucent, using falloff.

1. Diffuse
*2. Self illumination

3. Opacity
4. Reflection

5. Refraction

The beer bottles in the image are just small items compared with the whole scene, so it's non-sense if we put the material above for these as the rendering time are surely super long. So, for these bottles, it's enough to put only the self illumination and opacity map on them.
2.4 Vertex illumination

Vertex color illumination color overlay on base map. The vertex illumination uses a similar technique as the vertex color on diffuse but instead, we put this map on the self illumination map. The default color of vertex is white. So if we use the vertex color map for self illumination, we first need to change all the vertex colors to be black.

Reflection and refraction maps – 3d max

2010-02-28T19:28:00.001-08:00

Perpendicular and parallel

The anisotropic effect produces different kinds of reflection. The reflection will change more or less depending on the viweing angle. The least reflection will appear on a suface that is perpendicular to the camera and the most reflection appear on surface that is parallel to the camera. This effect is called the fresnal effect.

1.You can see this effect on most of the anisotropic objects ie. damp/wet road, water surface on swimming pool, polished leather, some kind of metals and etc.

The reflection is changed in every angle. The bird eyes angle has less reflection and more reflection at the worm eyes view (where the camera angle is almost parallel to the wet floor)

2. Curve/freeform object ie. Cylinder, and sphere and etc.

The least reflection is at the middle of the cylinder which surface is the area perpendicular to the camera and the more reflection is on the suface which is parallel to the camera.

You can create this effect by using a fall off map (perpendicular/parallel or fresnal) over raytrace. Both perpendicular/parallel and fresnal produce almost similar effects, but I found perpendicular/parallel to be more apparent.

3.2 Shadow and Light

Falloff "shadow and light" seems far different from the real world reflection. I am not sure if there are any theories about this, but I just use it to accerelate the reflection at the light area and dim down the reflection in the shaodw areas. This will create "subdued mood" in your scene. Imagine the reflection on a black granite floor in a pub. The bright area will be blow the light and will then disappear into the shadows.

Shows the parameters and settings of Shadow and light.

A rendering with Shadow and light falling off. The reflection give a subdued mood.

3.3. Some examples of complex scene refractions

This is quite off-topic in that doesn't lend itself to our architecural tutorials, but we basically need to know how it works so that we can apply it on our own .

3.3.1 Create water drops on a glass

I will skip mentioning about details on lighting as this is a simple scene. Let's just look at the wire frame only.

After a few time tests on the materials, I decided to use raytrace material as the effect is much easier to create than standard material. Also, I found the splash map is the more suitable than cellular as the effect appears clearer. I used blend material for the glass model which contains 2 materials ie. galss material and water material and a splash map for masking.

The rendering time was about 32 minutes and it quite long for a dual processor.

Glass material legend

1. Glass material. It seemed to be very easy as I didn't even put any map on it. Just change the color of diffuse, transparency and reflection and change the IOR to be 1.5.

2. Water drop material. I just copied the same mateial from the first slot and changed the IOR to be 1.333 for the water, and copyied the same masking map (slash map from slot#3) and placed it on spec.level and Bump.

3. Masking map : splash

This is the floor materail which uses a similar technique to the blend material.

The image above is very close to the 1st one but uses only material#2 which is the water. There are bump and specualar effects except that it has only 1 IOR that is set to 1.33. If you don't mind about the IOR. The rendering time is quite fast at 3.32 minutes.

3.2 Diamond

Someone had asked me how to draw a diamond. Rendering a diamond is not as difficult as what you might think. Just use raytrace material and chnge the transparency to white, IOR=2.417 and facet, that's all. The diamond model and its surface is also important that you need to find a blue print to see how it looks before you draw.

This is roughly how the edge of the diamond looks like.

Put seveal color of lights around the diamond

Making of a realistic light bulb – 3ds max

2010-02-21T06:47:00.001-08:00

Here I will show you a way to make a realistic looking light bulb to be used in any scene.

1.Create simple line like this below.

2) Than select these vartex.

3) Right click on one of them, and select smooth option.

4) When that is done chose Lathe from modifier list and check Flip Normals and Weld Core, set segments to 40.

5) To ease your job assign simple material to head of the light ball and reduce opacity amount to 50.

6) After that assign shell modifier from modifier list and set Outer Amount what ever you like, it must be small value because glass of the light ball is very tick.

7) To create bolt, draw again basic shape like this below.

8) Repeat 2-4 step and you will get something like this

9) To create detail on the bolt draw line like this below

10) Before assigning Lathe modifier you must change pivot position.

You will do that by clicking on Affect Pivot Only in Hierarchy panel.

11) Right click on Transform Type in, set x to 0.

This will move pivot to centar of the future object.

Click on Affect Pivot Only to close it.

12) Assign Lathe modifier and you will have object like this . . .

13) Create inner part on same way

14) Make little parts of wire with line and in rendering parameters check Enable in Renderer, and Enable in Viewport. Set radial thickness to small value.

15)With selected little wire part click on the Mirror button and check copy option from Clone Selection, move offset value until second part is on the right place, click Ok.

16) In left viewport create one more small part like in step 14-15.

17) When everything is on right place create light line like this

18) From dropping menu in create panel select dynamics object and pick spring object.

Set height to approximate 80 and turns to 150 (you will change these values after next step)

19) With selected spring object add Path Deform modifier and after clicking pick path button, pick light line.

In Path deform click on Gizmo and place spring object on right position.

Now go to bottom of list and select spring(change height and turns when it looks like light line).

20) I am using Vray renderer .

For creating glass material make new VRayMtl and use this settings:

Diffuse : R 189, G 219, B 207

Reflect: 50 black

Fog color: R 144, G 244, B 198

Check Fresnel Reflections, Affect shadows, Affect alpha

21) Black metal material

Diffuse: pure black

Reflect : 84 black

Refl. glossiness : 095

22) Chrome material

Diffuse: pure black

Reflect: 219 black

Refl glossiness: 0.7

Check Fresnel reflections, set FresnelIOR to 10

IOR: 2.97

23) Use simple plane modeling to create background. . .

24) For background plane create new material, put gradient ramp in diffuse slot and play with colors. This is my example . . .

25) Place two Vray lights like shown below with both Mult. set to 4.5.

26)Create plane for reflections above light balls.

27)Right click on it and select properties.

Uncheck Visible to Camera, Receive Shadows and Cast Shadows.

28) Make VRayLightMtl, check double sided and assign it to reflection plane.

29) In render use this settings

30) You can also use HDR for better reflections.

Create new VRayHDR in Material editor, Browse any HDR file and play with multiplier.

31) Now open render and go to Vray : Enviroment.

Check skylight and set it t 0.1.

Check reflection and copy VRayHDR to reflection slot, after that pick instance.

32) Click render…. F9

Modeling a Robot: 3ds max

2009-11-24T22:32:00.001-08:00

This is a neat little tutorial on modeling a robot using basic 3DS MAX techinuques. This tutorial will be followed by lights and cameras, animating and textures so sit still. :)

1. Make a cube 20x50x60 and segment it 4;5;3. Thank position it in the middle by selecting it and pressing w on your keyboard and set all paramaters to null.

2. Now select the cube and convert it to poligons (right click on object and select "convert to" -> "convert to editable poly")
3. Move to a top view by pressing f on your keyboard, and than press F3 and F4 to get the look like on picture 2.

4. Now switch to sub object level 1 and press "1" to select all the vertices.

5. We will just shift the vertices a little to the side, press "r" and move the pointer right on the X axis. Deselect the vertices and select those left in the middle. We need to constrain them wich we will do by moving the pointer to the left. Picture should look like this.

6. Now select these two poligons in perspective view (pic. 5)

(press "p") and using bevel pull them out as in pic 6.

7. Now we will do edge face so that when we mash smooth, wich will make a nice flow on the body, all this looks real. Switch to object sub level 2 (edge) or key "2" on your keyboard. Select edges wich are on the previously pulled out part. Pic 7.

Now on command panel go to "edit edges" -> "chamfer" and press the small window so that you get an option box and enter the values as in pic.

8. From the modifier list choose opcion "mesh smooth" and set all parameters like in pic.

9. Now we will have a bit of fun with fixing the shape and removing iregularities in light refraction. Switch to left viewport on object and select opcion "mesh smooth" and move to first level and from there move vertices with scale on the X axis to the right so to get straighter edges.

10. Now that you are comfortable with mesh smooth you can try and make something similar to the last picture. If you run out of vertices to manipulate you can go to "cotrol level" and set how many control points there will be.

This should be the end result.

After making the body we will switch to the head.
1. We will use polygons to make the head of this robot.
2. First and foremost we need to insert these pictures as background acording to wich we will model.
Pic. 1 Top
Pic. 2 Side
Pic. 3 front
This is done by taking a plane object and sticking the material whoose difuse color is one of these pictures and if needed stick a UW map so that it looks ok.

3. When this is done like this (pic. 4) select a plane object and make it aproximately the same size as one of the segments of the head. (It is important to keep the plane 1x1 segments)

4. Convert it to polygons (right-click "convert to" -> "convert to editable polygon") with edge set to sub vertex object level 2 (pressing the key 2) position them in the shape of that part.

5. Now select an edge and move it while holding left shift. Edge will clone itself.

6. When you are finished with these parts you need to join them. This is done by selecting sub vertex level 1 objects (press 1 on keyboard, pic. 7) and move them as close as possible. And than as in pic. 8 use collapse . You should do only one side of the head as the tool simetry helps us make the other half. If needed perhaps scale the head on Z axis to make it a bit rounder.

This is how your perspective should look like when making the head. :)

Now for the arms and legs.
1. We will do again some box modeling. Make a box similar to pic. 1, convert to polygons and go to sub vertex level 1 there you will find an option in the command panel called "slice plane" (you can rotate it as you wish) and do as shown in pic. 2 divideing the box into segments and than rotate 90 degrees and slice it verticaly to about 3 segments.

2. Now shut down slice plane and svitch to sub vertex object level 1 and by moving vertices make something similar to show in picture.

3. Now select edges from the begining and end and use the option chamfer with mesh smooth modifier to get something like this. Now center the arm into the cavity in the body of the robot.

4. If the arm seems thin or small you can always scale it to fit. Now by rotating this while holding shift we will clone the object and select option copy in the tool box wich apears. Again edit vertex to get something similar to the picture.

5. Concerning the fingers simple take a simply make a box where the hand should be, box should be 1x1x1 segments and make this part of similar size to the arm. Now with slice plane make as many parts as you want to have fingers.

6. Now switch to level 4 sub object and find option bevel and pull out the fingers modeling them on the way to look decent.

7. Use option mirror to make the other arm.
8. Legs are made exactly the same way as arms so just follow stepts 1-3

9. For the foot just make a box and model it to look like a foot and perhaps smooth it a bit.
That is it for the modeling part, next lesson will be lights and animation than onto animating and last but not least materials.

Modeling A Jug, orange juice, glasses, ice in 3ds max

2009-11-24T21:24:00.001-08:00

A Jug, orange juice, glasses, ice, glass and mental ray…

A scene like this is not hard to achive since it does not use any specialy advanced options of 3D Studio Max, and the only thing you might run into trouble with is drawing the contours which we will use for making jug and glasses with the lathe modifier.

Therefore, most of our attention we will put into making these contours.

1. – contour of jug

2. – contour of liquid

3. – contour of jug handle

4. – side view of jug handle

5. – contour of a glass

Contours like these are best drawn with some other program like Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw, and than import into max, but you can make these in Max too. On the create panel, click the shapes icon and choose line. With line tool you can make contours like this. To make it easier we will import the front viewport where you will draw these, set this picture as background. From the menu choose views/vieport background… find this picture. Turn on match bitmap and you will have the background.

Note: Little help with drawing curves.

Line 3 will be best drawn if you turn on smooth under initial type group in the line tool. Line one is easiest to draw by first making it rough, with corner option under initial type group on. The side view 4 should be drawn with a circle, and than make it into an editable spline, and in the vertex sub object mode draw the lowest vertex a bit down. If this seems too hard, and it should not because good spline drawing is imperative in Max, in that case get your curves here.

Hide everything except the jug curve and fluid. With jug contour selected switch to hierarchy panel / pivot and turn on the affect pivot only. On the top toolbar turn on the icon 3D snap (with your right click call up the 3D snap dialog and check the snap to edges) That way it will be easier to move the jug pivot to the axis shown in next picture. Do the same with liquid contour inside the jug.

Select the jug spline, on the modifier panel find lathe modifier. You will get almost the complete jug, on the lathe modifier turn on weld core. Change number of segments from 16 to at least 50. We want a detailed glass jug. Turn on generate mapping coordinates option. Same action apply to liquid contours. If you do not see the liquid object, turn on flip normals option in the lathe modifier.

Unhide the remaining splines. Now it is time to make the jug handle. Select spline number 3 (handle itself) and on the create panel choose compound objects/loft. With the spline selected, click the get shape button and select spline 4. We now get the starting shape of the handle like in the picture.

Note: Be carefull that the handle be oriented inwards. Switch to modify panel with handle selected, go into subobject mode and choose shape. It will be easier to rotate it 90 degrees if you turn on the option Angle Snap toggle on the main toolbar. Rotate the shape into correct position like in pic.

Before we connect the jug and handle, we will set a bit more realistic look of handle. Get out of sub object mode if you have not already. On deformations panel turn on scale. You will get a dialog with wich you set the length scale of object handle. With Insert cornet point (yellow colored icon on the picture) add enough new points on the line.

Switch to Move control point and set points approximately like in next picture. Now the handle looks more realistic. Look at the handle in the viewport and how moving control points effects it. The more points you add deformation will be more detailed.

Now that you are happy with the handle look, move it close on the x axis to the jug so that goes a bit into the jug itself. Before we “stick” it to the jug, we will cut out the surplus with a Boolean operation. Check the top viewport if handle is aligned to the middle of the jug.

Zoom in the handle and jug so that it is convenient to draw a new line of object with wich we will cut out unneeded parts of handle. Choose spline and along side the jug like in this pic draw a line.

On that line add extrude modifier. Set the new object to center so that it covers handle completely.

On create panel, with new object selected choose Boolean, choose pick operand and click the handle. In properties of Boolean modifier under group operations choose Substraction (B – A).

Now it is time to connect handle and jug. On the modify panel right click and turn Boolean object of handle into mash. Again turn on Boolean opearation on the create panel/compound objects, click pick operand and under operations select union.

And now before you there is a pretty nice jug with the juice already in it. Turn Boolean object into mash (or some other format you feel comfortable with: pathc, nurbs, poly) Repeat the lathe command for the remaining glass contuours.

Extrusion on top of the jug is relatively easy to make. Select the jug in front viewport and on modify panel choose mash select modifier. Go into vertex sub object mode and select the top part of the jug like in picture. Now we will limit the effect only to selected part of mash. Now add an FFD 4x4 modifier to Jug from the modifier list. Go into control points subobject mode and set control points so that you get a look that you like. With a little practice and experiments it should be fun and easy.

Now for the ice. Make a cube big enough to fit in a glass (create panel, standard primitives, box), change number of segments to 32, 32, 32 and add it noise modifier on the modify panel. In noise parameters turn on roughness to around 0.435, and turn on fractal too. Strenght noise choose for your self (somewhere around 3, 3, 3) so that your cube looks like this.

Copy the cube. In this scene I made four glasses and I will put 3 ice cubes in each. Hide the Jug, and put glasses in the wanted position. Before that turn ice cube to a mash object (select cube, go to modify panel and right click option collapse all) If you have not done it already turn the glasses to mash too. Before copying the cubes give it a nice name something like ice box :)

Now we will use reactor to put the ice cubes in glasses with physics.

On the reactor toolbar, choose Create rigid body collection and set the reactor icon somewhere on the scene (position of icon is not important for simulation itself).

In RB collection rollout turn on Add and add all objects on the scene that you can see.

(RB collection should be made of 4 glasses and 12 ice cubes) Select all the glasses (ctrl click) and on reactor toolbar choose Open Property editor. Option Mass put to 0. (we do not want our glasses to move) Under Simulation geometry turn on concave mash.

Get out of property editor and select all the ice cubes. (it will be easier to select them all by choosing “Select by name” option from the main toolbar. Again turn on property editor on Reactor toolbar. For ice cube mass add 5. Turn on concave for simulation geometry and get out of editor. Turn on preview animation on reactor toolbar. Shortcut “P” will start the simulation. Check if all the cubes are falling nicely into glasses. If it seems that the cubes are not so naturally postioned one on top of other, increase their bounce coefficient with the reactor property dialog. Than they will jump around a bit more and their final position will be a little more chaotich. If you notice that they are apart one from another or from the glass (space between them) that is solvable too. On the utilities panel choose reactor and in the world group find Collision tolerance. Lower Collision Tolerance from default 3.6 to 1 or less.

Note: If your preview is too slow, probably your computer is not good enough for a real time simulation. Problem is solvable by selecting all the ice cubes in the modify panel and finding option Optimize. That will lower number of poligons on them and preview should work much faster.

If you are happy with the simulation, turn on in preview editor update max from max menu. Get our of preview and all the ice will already be in the glasses. That is it for simulation. Unhide the rest of object (jub and liquid), now it is time to make a scene out of these objects, ad a base on which they will stand, lights, materials and turn on caustic effects.

Base you can make with a simple circle (create panel, shapes, choose circle) In top viewport make a circle and in the modify panel with right click turn it into mash.

Before adding materials, we will switch maxs default scanline renderer to mental ray. In render scene dialog, under common tab, find group Assign Renderer. At the production field choose icon with three dots and change default scanline to mental ray.

Setting up lights.

Before doing materials, we will light the scene with two lights. Under create panel choose lights. Firs put one skylight on scene from top viewport. Its position is not important. All settings should be left to default. Make one omni light. Set it above the scene, a bit forward so that it lights the right side of objects. In properties of omni light, turn on cast shadow and choose raytrace shadow.

Now its time for materials. Open material library from the main toolbar. We will set a total of 5 materials in the scene and we will use maxs materials. (make sure you have installed matlibs library) In material editor turn on icon get material, from the list left choose library and find the folder with materials on your max installation. Choose raytraced_01 and in it material glass clear. Click twice and material will be in your first slot of material editor. Now switch to another slot and in the same way, find library raytraced_02. From this library choose glass frosted material and click twice. You will see it in the second slot. Now for the liquid materal we will choose it to be orange juice and we will make such a material. Click the third slot in material editor, and call it juice material. Apply type of material Phong, and color set for ambient and diffuse put a strong yellow color. Turn on 2 sided, pu opacity to 70 and click the empty icon on the side. There from map browser (make sure that in “browse from:” right group is turned on new) find falloff and click ok. Material is now more see through from inside than from outside. For juice we need it the other way round. Click the white cube under “front-side” and drag it to the black one down. Dialog will ask you to copy or swap, you should choose swap. This way we will switch places to white and black color wich sets transparency levels. With icon go to parent in material editor go back to your juice material. Material for the base you can choose at your own free will we will use just plane old white plastic.

Materials can be added to object with Assign to selection. It is easier just to drag from the slot to object.

Open render scene dialog and on bottom choose final gather and number of samples should be 50 instead of default 500. (for test renders 50 samples is sufficient with default settings) Click the render button and you should see a nicely filled jug with orange juice and ice in the glasses waiting.
In this tutorial you learned how to use lathe, Boolean, how to change object axis, how to set up a simulation in reactor, generator caustics and render with mental ray. Want more? Now we leave you to your experiments. You can add caustic effect, add a background or pour the juice into glasses and beutify them with some lemon circles or mint leaves, model a table and a garden to put all this into. Everything is up to you. If you want caustic shadows that will show the light going through glass like in the picture just open the render scene dialog and with Indirect Illumination, turn on option Caustics. It will be enough to leave default setting for a test render (glasses, jug, liquid) and right click/ properties find tab mental ray. There turn on option to generate caustics and click OK.

Note: If you want a better quality of your render and anitaliasing, in render scene dialog choose the render tab and in group samples per pixel first order put to 1 and the other to 64, this will give you best quality but also slow down your rendering.

Creating Lightsaber - glow effect

2009-11-24T20:28:00.001-08:00

In this tutorial I will show you how to make a light saber-glow effect. This was done in Max 5, so not Advanced Lighting Override was used. For the modeling part I will not insist because is really simple. So lets begin

Assign a standard blue material to the light beam. RGB(32, 65, 140)

Make the material self illuminated by checking the color. RGB(84, 182, 218). You can modify the illumination and the colors how you like it but these are my settings.

To make some glow right click the light beam, select Properties and in the G-Buffer, Object Channel put 2

Now go the the Rendering - Video Post and press Add Scene Event button(teapot icon) and from there select the view desired(perspective or camera), the press Add Image Filter Event(wave like) button and there select Lens Effect Glow from the drop down list. Click ok, then press setup.

In the Object ID put 2

In the preferences tab you can set the properties of the glow(size, color, intensity, etc) until you get the desired glow

Choose the button bellow to render the scene

Now to make the object cast some light, we will use some Omni, with shadows unchecked, small intensity, and a bluish color. Play with the near and far attenuation to get the correct light.And make some copies of this along the light beam choosing Instance. Now if you modify one light, the other lights will automatically have the same settings.

And if you choose Video Post again, here is the result

Thanks for watching the tutorial!

Modeling diamond ring – 3ds max

2009-11-24T19:25:00.001-08:00

In this tutorial you will learn how to quickly make a simple, yet sleek ring shape and we also drop a little 'diamond' on top at the end.

Start with a pretty thin Tube primitive, with 3 Height Segments, one Cap Segment and about 32 Sides. Turn Slice On and Slice From 340 to 0.

Apply an Edit Poly modifier and select about 9 polygons as shown in our image.

Do the same on the other side as well as on the interior side. Delete the selected polygons.

Clean the new geometry by creating two edges on each 'end' of the ring. This is done fast if you have Snap to Vertex turned On.

You may have noticed the new holes in our geometry.

Use the Bridge tool to create new polygons between the edges.

Next select the edges that outline our object and Chamfer them by a low value (1.5-3.0).

Throw a MeshSmooth modifier with 2 Iterations and our ring is almost done.

Mushroom modeling tutorial – 3d max

2009-11-24T18:56:00.000-08:00

In this tutorial we will learn how to quickly build a mushroom shape. The steps can be further simplified, however our main goal is to have a nice flexible mushroom object.

We will start off with a nice sphere in the perspective view (parameters: Radius: 60, Segments: 48). Hit Z to zoom extents all.

Add a Taper modifier to the sphere (parameters: Amount: 4, Curve: -0.5, Limit Effect: ON, Upper Limit: 10, Lower Limit: -15). The shape is already starting to look like a mushroom. That was so easy! Now onto refining...

Add a Edit Mesh modifier to the stack, click on vertices subobject, enable Use Soft Selection. Leave Affect Backfacing ON and change the Falloff to 30. In the front view, select the two rows of vertices shown in the image.

Still in the front view, use the Move tool to shift the selected vertices a few units lower.

To flatten the bottom part of the mushroom leg, select the corresponding vertices.

With the vertices still selected, click the Make Planar button.

Select the two bottom rows of vertices and apply another Taper modifier to the stack. Soft selection should be ON from last time.

At this point I've made my mushroom's leg a bit skinnier by resizing (in the top view, to keep the XY proportions) the leg's vertices. You can do that as well, but it is not absolutely necessary.

Back to the Taper modifier we just applied to the leg's vertices, we change the Amount parameter to -1 and our mushroom is pretty much ready.

You can now play with it to create various shapes and mushroom species

Here's what I made from the basic mushroom shape.

Creating Realistic Smoke in Photoshop

2009-11-01T00:14:00.001-07:00

1. Open an image on which you want to apply smoke, i am using this image ( if tou want to use this image then copy it to your disk drive, just right click on the image and choose "save as")

2. Create new layer over this image and set Forground & Background colour to Black & White or press 'D' on keyboard.

3. By selecting new layer apply render clouds filter on this, to do this goto Filter>Render>Clouds. Now layer look alike this.

4. Still selcting the new layer change Blending Mode to Lighten

5. Adjust smoke as your requirment by selecting edit in quick mask with black & white gradient tool or with Brush tool.

6. Go back to regular mode by selecting , inverse the selection by pressing Shift+Ctrl+I or Select>Inverse from menubar, and delete the selection. And our Realistic Smoke is ready.

7. You can adjust the density of smoke, for this call Levels (Ctrl+L) and adjust as requirment.

If you want white smoke then use Screen Blending mode in place of Lighten.

3d Scan & Skin Filling Effect in 3ds Studio Max

2009-11-01T00:07:00.001-07:00

In this 3ds max tutorial we are going to discuss the basic of 3d scan like effects and skin filling effect. 3d scan means to show the conversion of solid into wires and skin filling just opposite converting wires to solid. okay..let us start.

1. Create any geometry or open any completed model for practice, I am using this human head model for this tutorial, you can download this models here for free. Duplicate model and name them "model1" and "model2" .

2. Now open material editor by pressing M on keyboard and select any empty slot name it solid, select an another empty slot and name it wire and select the Wire checkbox. Apply solid material to Model1 and wire material to model2.

3. Place both object model1 and model2 at the same position let at origin (just for practice)

4. Select model1 and from the modifier drop down menu select and apply Slice modifier and select Remove Top option.

5. Now on Auto Key, select frame 100 or so, select Slice and then Slice Plane and move down to slice all model.

6. For the thin scan line effect that appears front of the model, use Line with thickness or a Cylinder with small radius and animate as same way as slice moves.

Now to glow the scan line add glow material to this, for that please follow Neon Glow tutorial.

7. For the skin filling effect reset max and start from step1 and just do changes in the Slice parameter, select remove bottom instead of remove top.

To animate it do the same, on Auto Key, select frame 100 or so, select Slice and then Slice Plane and move down to slice all model,

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I hope you understand this tutorial and enjoy it , creative knows the worth of this tutorial.

Realistic Gold & Copper Material

2009-11-01T00:02:00.001-07:00

1. Open 3ds max and draw teapot with 10 segments ( You may use any object )

2. Now open material editor by pressing M on keyboard, and select any material slot, give it name Gold and select shader Phong in place of Blinn. Do setting like Specular Level = 68 and Glossiness = 19. In the diffuse map add Falloff and do the setting as shown below

Fallof Curve

In the first falloff map add another Falloff (2nd Falloff)with these setting

1st color Red=252 Green 154 Blue 0.

And Curve as same as 1st fallof map.

3. Go back, copy diffuse map and paste into selfillumination as instance, for realistic look and reflection add raytrace in the reflection map with value 20, our gold material is ready. Apply to the object.

overall maps.

4. For Copper material do the same as did for Gold material (Step 1 to 3), Goto 2nd falloff and just do changes in the output as shown

apply to 2nd teapot and render .

Realistic Gold and Copper Material.

Modeling Golf Ball in simple way

2009-11-01T00:01:00.001-07:00

1. Create a box with follwing parameters.

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2. Now apply spherify modifier on it with 100% value, and convert it into editable poly.

3. By selecting the polygon selection select all the polygons, and apply inset with the following setting:

Our object now look like this .

4. With the same selection apply Extrude with these setting.

5. Now apply Turbosmooth modifier with Iteration 2, and our golf ball is ready .

You may also use Geospher in place of box for different ball shapes.