WEEK 5

Materials are a way of applying a 2D texture or design to a 3D model. By the nature of modelling in 3D everything is made of flat surfaces enclosing a space, and, by default, models can end up looking a little flat and lifeless. Adding a texture to your model can help break things up. It also can help disguise the "3D-ness" of the model, making it blend more seamlessly with other elements in your animation. In particular, using your own drawn marks to texture the model can really help mark it out as yours.

Materials are controlled using the Material Editor, which can be called up by pressing M.



the Material Editor

 The top part of the material editor shows your selection of "Material Slots", each of which can be customised with individual settings. Once you've made your materials in here, you can then apply them to objects in the scene simply by dragging the Material Slot to the object.

Once you've done this, you can still change the material within the Material Editor window and the object in the scene will automatically update. The slot and the object are now "linked".

Within each Material Slot there are a bunch of different options to change.

1. SHOW MAP IN VIEWPORT

This needs to be pressed in order for your "map" (the material) to be visible in 3DS max's viewports. If this isn't clicked, the object will just look textureless and grey (this is presumably for saving memory).

2. GO TO PARENT

This returns the window back to the main Material Slot when you're editing the diffuse properties or any other property within the material. Basically, whenever the Material Editor doesn't look like the one shown above, click this button to return to normal.

3. WIRE

Makes the faces of the object invisible - only the edges will show up. A sort of "wireframe" mode.

4. 2-SIDED

Polygons (flat shapes). in 3DS Max default to one-sided - they are invisible from one direction. This makes them visible from both.

5. FACETED

Removes all "smooth shading" from an object, making it look faceted.

6. AMBIENT

Ambient colour is the colour of an object in shade. THIS WILL ONLY WORK IF YOU GO TO RENDERING > ENVIRONMENT AND CHANGE THE AMBIENT COLOUR TO GREY. Change the colour of these options by clicking the grey rectangle next to the name.

7. DIFFUSE

Diffuse is the colour an object is when it's in full light, so this is the main way of changing the colour of an object. Click the little square button to the right of this to add an image to the material - this will bring up the following list:

This is just a list of "premade" textures and patterns that 3DS has. Not all of them will become immediately visible on your object, as some are there for specific rendering effects that aren't immediately obvious.

A good one to be aware of here is the "Checker" pattern, which is (as you'd guess) a black and white checkered grid. This is quite good as a default texture to see if your mapping results in much deformation.

The main option here is "Bitmap", which allows you to pick your own 2D image which will be applied to your object. Double click on Bitmap to choose an image.

Remember that if you try to put a Bitmap on an object, it won't show up in the viewport unless you press the "Show Standard Map in Viewport" button.







8. SPECULAR

SHINY

An object's specular colour is the colour it takes in very bright light. For objects with smooth surfaces this can be used to give the object a shiny look.

9. SPECULAR HIGHLIGHTS
Once you've set the Specular colour, increase "Specular Level" to make it visible. Then, use a combination of "Glossiness" & "Soften" to get the right level you're after. The graph that appears might help to visualise this.

10. SELF-ILLUMINATION
Self-illuminated objects are sources of light (they don't need light to shine on them, they just are lit constantly). The main reasons we might use this are to make an object constantly visible (making reference photos Self-illuminated means they'll always be visible even if they're in shadow) and to achieve a sort of "toon shading" look, because the lack of shadows makes an object look flat and cartoony.

11. OPACITY
This controls the opacity of an object - 100 is fully opaque, 0 is completely invisible. Opacity in  3DS max is a little funny for a couple of reasons, so it's best to render everything out at 100% opacity and then change it in the comping stage (in something like after effects).

WEEK 4

 In week 3 we looked at poly modelling (the process of actually making stuff in 3d to use in animation), and we modelled a four-legged creature by taking a box, subdividing it up and using the Extrude tool to project legs, from it. 

Last week we went over another method of modelling called Edge Loop Modelling where we start with a simple tube and build up objects along their length. We used this method to model a (reasonably) realistic human body from a couple of reference images. Modelling realistic objects is really useful to practice, whatever style you'd eventually like to end up in, and it's important to be able to model stuff from a 2D turnaround. Think of it as like life drawing, but in 3D.


This guy goes through exactly the same process that we went through last week in a good amount of detail - I know a lot of people missed last week's workshop so I'd recommend having a look at this video even if you don't get a chance to physically go through the process.


PART 1





PART 2



I'd suggest looking at this guy's youtube channel, too, he does a bunch of pretty detailed instructional videos for 3DS Max so if you're stuck with something or if there's something you want to do but don't know how, he might help.

www.youtube.com/user/iwkya1

he's a graduate from a Computer Game Design course and so knows his stuff. There are also some tutorials on particle effects and rigging that some of you might be interested in. GO LOOK AT IT

Talking to people it seems like a lot of people are thinking of using 3D for things like props or backgrounds (which is fine!). I was going to go through some animation with rigs next week but in light of the feedback I've been getting from some of you I'm going to go over materials and texturing in more detail, as well as show you how to render out image sequences. Materials let you add 2d textures to the surfaces of your models, and make it so your work doesn't have to look boringly 3d and flat. Good texturing can really bring 3d to life.

I'D REALLY LIKE FOR YOU ALL TO CHECK OUT THIS SITE IN PREPARATION TOO:

http://www.mobilefish.com/tutorials/3dsmax/3dsmax_quickguide_materials.html

this runs through a lot of options you have in the materials editor. It might be a bit less confusing on Monday if you sort of have a cursory glance at it now.

Sorry for not being able to put up a more in-depth tutorial, but unfortunately I'm really busy in the week at the moment!

I spoke to some of you last week about your 3D work in your lip-sync projects and you had some really great ideas. PLEASE BRING IN ANYTHING YOU'VE MADE DURING THE WEEK AND TRY TO COME WITH QUESTIONS SO I CAN HELP YOU. HOPEFULLY MOST OF YOU HAVE GOT A PRETTY GOOD IDEA OF HOW YOU'RE GOING TO USE 3D IN YOUR PROJECT BY NOW - IF NOT, GET MY ATTENTION SOMETIME ON MONDAY AND WE CAN GO OVER IT!

WEEK 3

Last week we went over poly modelling in more detail.

Using Convert to Editable Poly on a primitive such as a box or cylinder (by right-clicking and finding it in the drop down menu as shown), we can make it so we can pull around all the individual vertices, edges and polygons of an object, which allows us a lot of control over what shapes we end up with.

However, at some point simply pulling around vertices isn't enough - luckily, 3DS has a bunch more tools to help you model, most of which we went over in creating a model of a quadruped.






The method we used is known as extrusion modelling or box modelling. You start off with a box:

 and then subdivide and extrude it to make legs, a head, tail etc.

I'm not going to detail the entire process here (you'll probably be able to find an internet tutorial that'll go through it step-by-step) - instead I'm going to quickly go through a few useful things you can do with Editable Polys.

With the object selected, the modify panel on the right hand side of the screen is now filled with lots of different buttons and values.

The main thing to remember here is the Selection panel at the top. This has 5 buttons underneath it, which allow you to select different elements of the object -

-   Vertices (points)
-   Edges (lines)
-   Borders (like lines but slightly different)
-   Polygons (flat faces)
-   Elements (selects a "chunk" of polygons within the object)





So, if you have a single point you want to move, make sure Vertices is selected. If you want to move whole faces, make sure Polygons is selected, etc etc.

Each selection method has different tools to help you in modelling. I'm going to go through them left to right, starting with...

VERTICES

• MAKE PLANAR - this makes a selection of vertices line up in a plane. Pressing the "Make Planar" button makes 3DS sort of line them up arbitrarily. Pressing the "X", "Y", or "Z" buttons next to it will make the selected verts line up on that axis.

The selected vertices (highlighted in red) have been flattened and are now all on the same "plane"

• RELAX - normalises the geometry a little bit. Can be good if you have some verts sticking out here and there, it'll smooth everything out a bit.

EDGES

• RING / LOOP - this will expand your current selection to include all the edges in a ring or a loop around the model.

• CONNECT - this draws a new edge between two edges, like so:

 

This can be used on multiple pairs of edges at once. For instance, by using RING to expand your selection and then using connect will draw an edge through the entire ring.

  

BORDERS

"Borders" selection is mostly used to select "holes" in your model, or any continuous edge that opens out on the model.

• CAP - Cap is pretty simple - select any border on the model and it will attempt to "fill" the whole with a single polygon. If your hole has lots and lots of sides to it this doesn't work so well - try only to use it to plug 4-sided holes.

  


POLYGONS

•  EXTRUDE - this is how we made all the extremities of the model - head/tail/legs etc. Extrude projects a plane out of the surface of the mesh, like so:

This is the best way to create extremities or protrusions - another way is just by dragging the polygon out from the surface but this will deform the surrounding geometry.

• BEVEL - this does pretty much the same thing as extrude, except you can taper the protrusion so it's more like a spine, or a fin.

AN IMPORTANT POINT:

You generally want to click the little button to the right of most of these tools (with the little black window icon).




<<<< THIS DUDE RIGHT HERE

this opens up a dialogue box for each of the above where you can control the tools with some precision.

Also whenever you see these arrows, remember you can LEFT CLICK AND DRAG on these to make them go up and down. Also you can RIGHT CLICK them to set them to zero.




NEXT WEEK (I.E. TOMORROW): SOME MORE MODELLING WITH A DIFFERENT METHOD CALLED EDGE LOOP MODELLING. SEE YOU THERE!

WEEK 2

I feel like I was a little less organised with this week's lesson than the first one, so I'm going to just go over the process of animating in a little more detail here (big apologies to those who came in late who I never really got a chance to properly go over the basics with, hopefully this will help).

Pretty much all the stuff related to animation in 3DS Max is here at the bottom of the screen. Here you can see the timeline (which you can scrub back and forth through with the playhead), and all the buttons related to Keyframes (Auto Key etc).

By default, your timeline is set to 100 frames, and the default framerate is 25fps (the standard for PAL). To change the length of the timeline, you can use these shortcuts -

• Ctrl + Alt + Click & Drag RIGHT Mouse Button --- change the end frame of the timeline
• Ctrl + Alt + Click & Drag LEFT Mouse Button --- change the start frame of the timeline

To do this you have to click & drag on the timeline itself, i.e. the bit with the numbers. This is often useful if you want to focus on one small bit of animation to concentrate on it.

If you click on an object, you can see its keyframes as little coloured dots on the timeline. Keyframes are exactly the same as in After Effects or even motion tweens in Flash - they are literally "Key" frames in your animation that 3DS Max will automatically animate in between. 3DS defaults to smooth animation between keyframes, but you can edit all that later on.

If there aren't any keyframes then the object probably isn't animated at all, but REMEMBER - some keyframes might be outside the current frame range, e.g. your timeline might go from 0 - 100 and your object has a keyframe on the 150th frame, which is outside the timeline so you won't see it.

If your object is moving and you can't see any keyframes, try expanding the timeline in both directions and look for any stray keys that might be stuck out there.

for reference, the coloured keyframes stand for -

• RED - POSITION
• GREEN - ROTATION
• BLUE - SCALE
• GREY - OTHER VALUES

 Keyframes can be multicoloured, too, so a red/green keyframe has both a position and a rotation value. This really helps when you want to "overlap" one kind of animation with another (say if something's moving and you want to make it rotate at the same time).

TO MAKE NEW KEYFRAMES

The easiest way to animate something in 3DS is using the AUTO KEY function. Press this button to activate Auto Key mode (you can tell when it's on thanks to the giant red border that appears around the viewport). In this mode, whatever change you make to the stuff in the document will become a keyframe, so be super careful as to when you turn it on!

You can also use this button with the key icon on it to make a keyframe of whatever state your object is currently in. With Auto Key on, you have to actually move your object to make a keyframe - if you want to create a key without moving it, use this button. I usually use this to create a keyframe on the first frame of the animation every time I animate, but it's much better to animate with Auto Key for everything else.

Remember on the timeline you can select, move around and copy keyframes just like you would objects on the stage. To copy them, you just select them and then hold SHIFT & drag them with the mouse. If you right click on the timeline and go to Configure > Show Selection Range then you can also select groups of keyframes and condense or expand them by using the little bar that appears (see above).

THAT CURVE EDITOR

Animating the way explained above, you'll see that 3DS Max automatically smooths out the inbetweens between keyframes, so that all movement looks floaty. If you want a different style of movement, you can either:

1. add a bunch more keyframes to try and define what you want, OR
2. keep the number of keyframes down and use the CURVE EDITOR

 The curve editor just shows graphs for any animation on the selected object. The x-axis shows whatever value we're looking at (eg position) and the y-axis shows time.

So, the steepness of a line shows how fast something is animating between two keyframes. The steeper the line, the faster the transition.

By default, 3DS Max "rounds off" these lines whenever there's a keyframe. The animation term for this is "cushioning" - stuff speeds up to start and slows down to a stop. In some cases this looks natural enough, but we want to be able to have more control over the animation.




Keeping the number of keyframes down is a general rule of thumb. Animation is a LOT easier to make changes to when there are just a few essential keyframes rather than a million of 'em.

Open the curve editor by pressing the button to the left of the timeline in the bottom left part of the screen. With an object selected you'll be able to see all the edited properties of the object as coloured lines that show how fast it's transitioning from one value to another.





Here, another Red/Green/Blue system is used - this time

• RED - X VALUES
• GREEN - Y VALUES
• BLUE - Z VALUES
• CYAN - OTHER VALUES

So the graph above is of an object being animated in its X-Position, but its other two position values are staying the same. If your curve editor looks like this:

It can be confusing to work on. It's good to limit yourself to looking at one or two values at a time, so say you want to just look at ROTATION values on this one - scroll down the panel on the left (click the middle mouse button on it and drag to move this panel around), then find the ROTATION values and click on them (hold shift and click to select multiple curves). Now only the rotation values will be shown in the curve editor, so you can concentrate on them.







You can click on and move around individual keyframes in this mode, too. If you hold CTRL whilst dragging a keyframe it will lock its value, so you can move it perfectly horizontally. Just like with objects you can also hold SHIFT and drag a keyframe/selection of keyframes to copy them.

These buttons at the top of the curve editor change what's called the "interpolation" of the keyframes. They don't change the keyframe itself, but change how fast animation goes into a keyframe and out of a keyframe. Click on a keyframe and click on each of these to see how it visibly changes, both in the curve editor and in animation. Generally the ones you want to use are 1 and 2 as you can customize your curve completely with the bezier curve tool handles (see below).

Each of these curves will make the object animate in quite a different way.
If you hold SHIFT while moving one of the handles you can grab them individually (without this they are locked and move together):

Eventually you'll remember the way certain movements look in the graph editor, like that bouncing ball excercise:

I was going to do some proper modelling with you next monday but I feel like I didn't take you through animation as well as I could have last week, so I'm gonna combine some modelling elements from week one with some animation from week two. See you there!

WEEK 1

Here's a quick reference for all the main controls we went over:

Alt + W --- Maximise Viewport Toggle. This switches between the screen being divided into 4 or just 1.
Scroll Mouse Wheel --- Zoom in and out.
Click & Drag Mouse Wheel --- "strafe" the viewport, drags the screen around.
Alt + Click & Drag Mouse Wheel --- pan around whatever the viewport is focused on.
P --- returns your viewport to the "perspective" view if stuff starts to look weird.
Z --- focuses the viewport on the currently selected object. If nothing is selected, it'll just zoom so that everything in the scene is in view.

There are a ton of other hotkeys, most of which are helpfully listed here!

 W, E, and R select the MOVE, ROTATE and SCALE tools respectively (you can also click the buttons in the toolbar as shown).




The button on the left showing the mouse clicking a cube is the SELECT tool (you can also press Q). This is the default you start off with and you can't do anything with it except select stuff (obviously). This is useful if you want to select stuff without moving it slightly by accident (which can happen if you're in the MOVE mode).

This sidebar has tabs for a bunch of different panels. The first two on the left are the only ones you really need to worry about. These are the Create Panel (which you use to create things, primitives, lights, cameras, anything) and the Modify Panel (which you can use to modify an object's properties).

INTRODUCTION

Just an introductory post to the 3DS max workshop! I'd suggest having a quick look at the videos below before we dive in on the 16th, especially if you've never ever done any work in a 3D program before as it can be a bit confusing initially.

Actually opening up the program beforehand and having a play around will always be helpful but isn't essential, I'll be going over everything from the very basics anyway.

1. POLYGONS - basic building block of pretty much everything.



2. MORE POLYGONS - weird stuff you can do with polygons!



3. OBJECTS - groups of polygons that form 3d shapes.



This stuff might seem confusing at first but watching through it will probably help later on. all these videos are from a now-defunct site called guerillaCG. There are others in this series of tutorials, just have a look on youtube if you're interested!