Lightsaber 3Ds Max Tutorial

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 and in the G-Buffer, Object Channel put 2 Now go the the Rendering - Video Post and choose Lense Effect Glow from the Add Image Filter Event 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:

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Posted in 3Ds MAX

3D Mountain in 3ds Max

Step 1 Mental Ray Renderer

We’re going to render the mountain with the Mental Ray. By default 3ds Max uses the Scanline renderer so we have to change that. Change the renderer to the Mental Ray ( Rendering > Render Setup… > Common tab > Assign Renderer > Production > mental ray Renderer ).

Step 2 3D Mountain Geometry

Create a Plane ( Create panel > Geometry > Standard Primitives > Plane ) in the top viewport . Modify the Plane ( Make a selection > Modify panel ) according to the following parameters :

• Length: 200
• Width: 200
• length Segs: 200
• Width Segs: 200

( We need a dense (80k faces) mesh because we’re going to deform it with the displace modifier and Gradient Ramp map. )

Step 3 Mountains with the Displace Modifier

Add Displace modifier to the Plane ( Make a selection > Modify panel > Modifier List > Object-Space Modifiers > Displace ) and apply the following parameters:

• Displacement
  • Strength: 100
• Image
  • Map: Gradient Ramp

Open Material Editor ( Rendering > Material Editor > Compact Material Editor ). Drag and drop the Gradient Ramp map from the Displace modifier into a material slot in Material Editor and select ‘instance’ when asked. Apply the following parameters to the Gradient Ramp map:

1. Double click on the Flag #1 and change the color to white
2. Double click on the Flag #3 and change the color to black
3. Gradient Type: Radial
4. Noise: Amount: 0,3
5. Noise: Size: 6
6. Noise: Turbulence
7. Noise: Levels: 10

Finally go to the ‘Output’ section, click ‘Enable Color Map’ and adjust the color map according to the picture below. ( to adjust a point, right-click on it and change it to ‘Bezier-Corner’ point. )

Tip: To adjust the small details of the mountain you can change the ‘ Phase’ in the Noise settings.

Step 4 Mountain Material

We’re going to create a snowcapped mountain with snow also at the base. The material will be created from scratch and it will use only procedural maps found in 3ds Max. We’ll utilize Gradient Ramp diffuse map to create color variations and Composite bump map to create lots of small scale details. So let’s select an empty material slot and create the material. You can just copy the settings from the picture or read the explanations below the picture.

1. Select the mountain and click ‘Assign Material to Selection’
2. Diffuse Color: Gradient Ramp
   Flag #1: Color: RGB 180, 180, 180 Position: 0
   Flag #2: Color: RGB 180, 180, 180 Position: 15
   Flag #3: Color: RGB 100, 100, 100 Position: 22
   Flag #4: Color: RGB 100, 100, 100 Position: 39
   Flag #5: Color: RGB 180, 180, 180 Position: 49
   Flag #6: Color: RGB 180, 180, 180 Position: 100
   ( Click on the color gradient to add a new flag. Right-click on a flag to modify or delete it. )
   Gradient Type: Radial
   Noise Amount: 0,1
   Noise Type: Turbulence
   Noise Size: 1
   Noise Levels: 10
   ( It’s a good idea to make a test render now to see how the diffuse map looks like )
3. Bump: Composite ( The Composite map is used to combine several maps together )
4. Add Smoke map to the first layer of the Composite Map ( large scale details )
   Size: 5
   # Iterations: 20
5. Add second layer to the Composite map. Change the blending mode to Addition and Opacity to 70. Add Speckle map to the second layer ( medium scale details )
   Size: 4
   Color #1: white
   Color #2: black
6. Add third layer to the Composite map. Change the blending mode to Addition and Opacity to 60. Add Speckle map to the third layer ( small scale details )
   Size: 0,003
   Color #1: white
   Color #2: black

( We combined three different maps to create large, medium, and small scale details to the bump map. This method produces more realistic bump map than a single map would. )

Make a test render to see how the 3d mountain looks like with the diffuse and bump maps. At the moment there are several problems with the rendered image:

• The mountain looks really boring and flat
• Sampling quality isn’t high enough for the small scale details
• There are some unnaturally sharp edges in the outline of the mountain

Next we’re going to fix these issues.

Tip. If you’d like to create vegetation to the base of the mountain you could change the color values of Flags 5 and 6 ( in the Gradient Ramp map) to green.

Step 5 The Lighting

Soon we’re going to create more serious renders so let’s create a camera. Create a Target camera ( Create panel > Cameras > Target ) in the top viewport and place it according to picture below. Right-click on the Perspective view and press C in the keyboard to change it to the Camera view.

We rely heavily on the bump map so we desperately need more interesting illumination for the mountain. Create ‘mr Area Spot’ ( Create panel > Lights > Standard > mr Area Spot ) in the top viewport, place it according to picture below, and apply the following settings to it.

• General Parameters
  • Shadows: ON
  • Shadows: Ray Traced Shadows
• Intensity/Color/Attenuation
  • Multiplier: 2,5
  • Color: RGB 255, 248, 221
  • ( These settings create really strong light with warm yellowish color )
• Spotlight Parameters
  • Hotspot/Beam: 15,2
  • Falloff/Field: 17,2
  • ( Just big enough to cover the mountain. Increase values if needed. )
• Area Light Parameters
  • Type: Disc
  • Radius: 250
  • ( the higher the value, the softer the shadows. If you do a high resolution render and experience graininess in the shadows you can increase the ‘Samples’ values to fix it )

Render your mountain to see the effect of the Mental Ray area spotlight.

Now the left side of the mountain is completely black and it fades into the background. Let’s fix that by adding a fill light. Create ‘Omni’ light and place it to the left side of the mountain and apply the following setting to it:

• Intensity/Color/Attenuation
  • Multiplier: 0,7

Render a test image to see the effect of the fill light. Move the Omni light if necessary.

Compare this to the render in step 4 to understand the importance of lighting.

Step 6 More Polished Look

Next we’re going to increase the quality of the mountain geometry and adjust the sampling settings to get more polished render. Go to the render setup and increase antialiasing quality by increasing Mental Ray’s sampling values ( Rendering > Render setup… > Renderer > Sampling Quality ):

• Samples per pixel
  • Minimum: 4
  • Maximum: 64
• Filter
  • Type: Mitchell ( For most scenes the Mitchell filter gives the best results. )

Select the mountain, go to the modify panel, and add TurboSmooth modifier to smooth out the hard edges of the model. Render your mountain to see the effect of these adjustments.

Step 7 Volumetric Clouds Around the Mountain

As a final thing we’re going to add some clouds around the mountain to create more depth and better sense of scale. Create four sphere gizmos ( Create panel > Helpers > Atmospheric Apparatus > SphereGizmo ) in the top viewport. Apply the following settings to the gizmos:

• SphereGizmo001
  • Radius: 61
  • Hemisphere: YES
• SphereGizmo002
  • Radius: 47
  • Hemisphere: YES
• SphereGizmo003
  • Radius: 79
  • Hemisphere: YES
• SphereGizmo004
  • Radius: 50
  • Hemisphere: YES

Place the gizmos according to the picture below. SphereGizmo001 is on the left and SphereGizmo004 is on the right.

Let’s go to the atmosphere settings ( Rendering > Environment… > Atmosphere ) to add some clouds:

• Click ‘Add…’ , select ‘Volume Fog’, and click OK.
• Gizmos:
  • Click ‘Pick Gizmo’ and click on the SphereGizmo001. Repeat for all sphere gizmos.
  • Increase ‘Soften Gizmo Edges’ to 1.
• Volume:
  • Color: RGB 255, 248, 221 ( The same as in the spotlight )
  • Max Steps: 200 ( Increases the quality of the effect )
• Noise:
  • Type: Turbulence
  • Size: 40

Just hit render and your 3d mountain image is complete. I made some small adjustments in Photoshop:

• Smart Sharpen Filter
  • Amount: 40%
  • Radius: 0,5 pixels
• Contrast
  • +25

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Posted in 3Ds MAX

Create aWooden Barrel with 3D Studio Max

egin by creating a box.

We then use array to create copies of our box along its thinner side.

Convert one of the boxes to editable poly and using the attach tool attach all the copies to a single mesh.

Select the new mesh and add a bend modifier.

Real barrels have metal rings which hold the wooden pieces together. So our barrel must have rings. Create tube rings and align them to the center of our barrel. Make sure they have ate least 30 side segments and 5 height segments.

Group the boxes and the tubes together and choose the FFD cylinder modifier.     Select the 2 middle rows of vertices and scale them up to give the barrel its round shape     Your barrel is ready. Add a top and bottom cylinder and some textures and you are on your way

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Posted in 3Ds MAX

Maya - Mental Ray - Pitcher Render

1 Creating CV curves of the Pitcher Profile.

2. Using the Surface Revolve tool, revolve around the Y axis and create a pitcher using the profile curves. Edit the pitcher till the desired shape appear by pulling and translating the CV points. If History is turned On in Maya, the revolved surface will adjust when translating the CV curves of the original CV profile curve.

3. Now we create a scene, in order to render the pitcher. For this I require a Wall side. A Poly cube is created.

4 Inside the poly cube is our Pitcher. It is easy if the pitcher is in a different layer and set as a reference object. Make windows by manipulating the Poly cube: use the Split polygon tool and extrude face tool in Maya for this.

5 I Have created the scene. For the window i Have mapped a window texture. the reason for this is that, I would like to have the window partially reflecting on my pitcher.
Next is to set the cameras.

6
Setting the lights. Here I use a three point lighting system. A Key, Fill and a Rim light.
Once created in Maya they are converted to Mental Ray lights and are set to emit photons.

7
 The three lights are in place. One more light is created in front of the pitcher. This will only emit specular light.
This is used to gain the extra highlight.

8
Some sample initial results.
Final Gather is turned on.

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Posted in 3Ds MAX

Subdivision Surface Modeling Tutorial

1. Launch Maya
2. Go Windows > General Editors > Script Editor
3. In the Script Editor window go Edit > Clear History
4. In the Script Editor window go Edit > Clear Input
5. In the Script Editor window go File > Open Script
6. Locate the script, and click Open
7. In the Script Editor window go Edit > Execute



Fake Sub-Division surfaces are loaded in Maya now.

Now for the modeling tutorial.

PART ONE, pulling and shaping

1.Create > Polygons Primitives Cube
2.On your tool bar at the top Select By Component Type, Turn on poly facets.



3.Select a facet and go Polygons > Extrude
4.You will see a manipulator that has the translate, rotate, and scale controls all in one.
5.Select the blue (z) arrow and 'pull' it away from the object.
6.Scale the object in all axis' (you can get the proportional scale tool by grabbing any of the other 'scale manipulator' cubes



7.Press F8
8.Press R on your keyboard
9.Scale the entire object in the Y axis (if you're not Y up, you're doing something wrong)



10.Save your file.

PART THREE, adding detail

1. Use the Split polygon tool to 'cut' lines into the hand for detail
2. Shape these new lines by pushing and pulling CV's
3. You can also 'extrude' these new polygons (As I've done here for the knuckles. I've also
deleted some edges at the top of the knuckles):



4. Now we can finally use our subdivision surface plugin
5. At the Maya command line, type fakeSubD, and press ENTER
6. You should see your blocky mesh turn into a higher-resolution mesh. Like this:



Now, at this point, you can work on the 'cage' (represented in the previous picture by the blue lines)
and see your updates in real-time. Or you can Edit > Undo the script to continue working in 'block' mode.


Let's add a fingernail. Use the Split Polygon tool to add poly edges around the 'nail'. Remember, adding
an edge is like adding a crease in your hi-res model. Play with this until you are happy. If you are not
working in 'cage' mode, be sure to check your results by subdividing the surface
(you can get back to block mode by pressing Z)



7. Save your file

In this tutorial, I've given you some ways to use Subdivision Surfaces effectively to model with. By adding
bones you can animate just the cage (So that your hi-res model updates underneath it)





PART 2, dividing the surface

In this section, we're going to pull fingers out of the hand. We'll learn to create more geometry from the existing cube
And insert seams. These techniques will be used later when we use them to add detail.

1. Select your object, and go Edit Polygons > Split Polygon Tool (your cursor will turn to an arrow)
2. Left mouse button click and hold on the top edge of the object
3. Drag your mouse left and right (while holding mouse button) to 'snap' to the center point
4. Release when the center point is snapped



5. Repeat for the bottom edge.



6. Press ENTER to 'enable' the edge we just added. (NOTE: the Z key, or Edit > Undo DOES NOT
work with this tool. If you place a point in the wrong place, press Delete to remove it)
7. Once, you've pressed ENTER from Step 6, press the Y key to use the same tool
8. Create places for the other fingers to go



9. Now lets use the Extrude tool from PART 1 to pull out some fingers
10. Go into component mode (press F8)
11. Select the four faces we've created, and go Polygons Extrude



12. Pull and shape the fingers using the Extrude manipulator
13. You can also shape the fingers by moving the CV's of the poly model
14. Try to make your 'blocked in' model look as much like a hand as you can

Here's a shaded model of mine up to step 14 (I'm leaving the thumb out for now):



15. Save your file

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Posted in 3Ds MAX