99 3DS MAX QUICK VISUAL TIPS
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Quick visual tips to speed up your 3dsMax workflow By James Abell www.jamesabellart.com https://www.youtube.com/chann https://www .youtube.com/channel/UCSh49ftomfbu2yvFlx-M el/UCSh49ftomfbu2yvFlx-MHqg Hqg
Version 1.1 Published on 3rd October 2014 Copyright (c) James Abell 2014
CONTENTS How To Use This Book
BASIC MANIPULATION Mirror Move Rotate Scale Select And Place Select By Name Select Options Lasso Snap Sub-Object Unhide By Name Use Pivot Point ANIMATION Autokey Bip Animation
Motion Capture On The Cheap N Keyframe Populate–Easy Crowd Simulation Sliders–Custom Control Your Animations
CONSTRAINTS Array Cat Parent Look At
CREATIVE CONCEPTS 4 Simple Colours All Angles Be Inspired Be Expansive Save As Plus Draw Draw Draw! Film And Games Inspiration Negative Space www.ebook777.com
Use Real World References Don’t Be Afraid Of Other 3d Packages This Is A Tool! You Are The Creator!
LIGHTING Daylight Sunlight Exposure Controls Paint With Light Presets Light Types Shift+L
MATERIALS AND TEXTURES Bake Shortcut Composite M Is For Material Peel Save UVW Render Template|outline Slate Traditional Material Editor|outline Unwrap UVW Paint Select|outline
MODELLING Bridge Conform Grow Shrink Hide Polys Inset Looper Low High Mesh Paint Move Arrows Non Quads Proboolean Quad Chamfer Sphere Quads Swift Loop Wire Draw
MODIFIERS
Bend Drag To Instance FFD Greeble Melt Pro-Optimiser Shell Spherify
PHYSICS AND PARTICLES Mass FX Particle Presets Shapes Particle Presets Use Real World Inspiration RENDERING F9 Final View Print Assistant
Region Round Corners Walk-Through
SCENE SETUP AND MANAGEMENT Colour Scheme CTRL Asset Tracker Expert Mode Grid Layers Layout Configuration New X Search – Find Things Quickly
VIEWPORTS AND CAMERAS Alt+W Minimise And Maximise Viewports Clay Clipping Plane Colour Pencil
Ctrl+R Depth Of Field Edged Faces Lenses Make Camera Pin Cushion Press Z Zoom Safe Frame See Through Viewport Statistics More Information About Me And What I Do
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INTRODUCTION
How to use this book Hello! In 2014, I started making quick visual tips to help myself speed up my 3ds Max workflow. I decided to put these tips into visual form with simple visual instructions. Once I made some of these tips, I tweeted some of them and they proved popular with people re-tweeting them. Therefore, I started to make these quick visual tips into a book. There are many great books and videos out there to teach you 3ds Max in depth. This book is not a course on how to use everything in 3ds Max. It is a tip book for shortcuts and hints of 99 things that I have found to be useful in my commercial 3ds Max work of over 14 years. If you are a visual person like me you will find that having these hints and tips in visual will be of great help. For this book, I used 3ds Max 2014 and 2015. Of course, this book is more than relevant for other versions too. I have divided this book into as logical sections as possible to allow you to find what you need quickly. The Table Of Contents has quick links so that you can jump straight to the tip or hint that you want. You can also read it from cover to cover or also flick through it on your e reader or tablet while commuting etc.! Each tip is on a separate page for neatness and you can zoom into each image for more details. I believe that the learning process is often a ‘grasp’ for knowledge while doing a specific task .This book gives you hints and tips that you can quickly ‘grasp’ for while working on your own projects in 3ds Max. This book is for all levels of 3ds Max users out there. If you are a complete beginner, I would recommend to use this book along with another more comprehensive 3ds Max guide. There are many great ones out there on Amazon for example! 3ds Max is a great tool, I have worked with it a lot for commercial clients, mainly visualisation for engineering companies. Today, I use 3ds Max mainly for my artwork where I mix 3d and traditional processes. Feel free to check it out to see where I come from! www.jamesabellart.com I hope that you find this book useful. Please leave an honest review on Amazon or contact me if you have any questions, comments or suggestions.
Ok let’s go!
BASIC MANIPULATION
Mirror Don’t forget the mirror tool on the main toolbar. Use the offset setting to build up copies. You can collapse the meshes to a single mesh too.
Move Obvious really, move on move on!
Rotate Rotate tool is again pretty obvious! Keyboard shortcut select then E.
Scale Scale keyboard shortcut select then R.
Select And Place A great feature that speeds up placing objects onto other objects in your scenes. 1.Select the icon in the main toolbar. 2. Drag the desired object onto the object you want it to touch. 3.Right click on the select and place icon for setting, including quick orientation of the object being placed.
Select By Name In larger scenes find the objects you want with ease. 1. Either go the the edit menu or press 2. Use the pop up box to select what you want.
Select Options Lasso Remember that the selection toolbar on the main menu has other options than just the rectangular tool. Hold the icon down and a range of other lasso options will appear.
Snap Press S for a shortcut to snap activate snap setting. Hold down the icons and also right click the icons in the toolbar to customize the type of snap.
Sub-Object Switch between sub-object modes by pressing 1 to 5 on your keyboard when in sub-object mode.
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Unhide By Name Unhide objects quickly. 1. Right click on the quad menu. 2. Choose which object to unhide on the pop-up menu.
Use Pivot Point In the main toolbar hold down the pivot icon for pivot point options. Useful when adding constraints.
ANIMATION
Autokey I prefer to use autokey and the time-slider than the set keys button. I find it more fluid.
Bip Animation Import BIP animations into Biped.. You can find lots of free BIP animations for your characters out there on the internet! 1. Select the biped. 2. On the setting tab click on the yellow folder. 3. Then choose the BIP file and watch the results!
Motion Capture On The Cheap A great and often overlooked animation tool in 3ds Max work with the position motion capture to control an object animation in your scene with the mouse, joystick etc. 1. Go to the motion panel. 2. Assign controller, position. 3. Click on position motion capture and assign the x y z values to your control device.
N Keyframe To activate autokey on your keyboard, just press N.
Populate–Easy Crowd Simulation Populate is an amazing solution for instant crowd simulations. 1. Click populate on the ribbon. 2. Create flow and drag the path where you want on the viewport. 3. Click simulate. Other adjustment settings are easy to learn!
Sliders–Custom Control Your Animations Create sliders to custom control animations intuitively. 1. Create a slider in the command panel. 2. Go to animation wire parameters to connect the slider to the objects to be animated.
CONSTRAINTS
Array Use array to make interesting shapes and patterns from a single object. 1. Select an object, Click on the tools menu. Choose Array. 2. Experiment with the Move/Rotate and Scale spinner settings on the pop up menu.
Cat Parent In 3dsMax instantly create a CAT rig and choose from a great range of pre made templates 1. Modify panel. 2. Helpers. 3. CAT parent 4. Choose a template
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Linking Linking is easy in 3ds Max. 1. Use the top symbol in the main toolbar. 2. Click on the object you want to be the child and drag to the parent object. Remember your parents and your children to avoid mix-ups!
Look At Get objects to follow or rotate in the direction of other objects. 1. Go to motion panel, assign controller and click on rotation. 2. Assign as look at constraint and chose object to ‘look at’ 3. The original object will now ‘look at’ the chosen object. Magic!
CREATIVE CONCEPTS
4 Simple Colours You don’t need to always have huge amounts of materials and textures. Sometimes one or two texture-less materials can give a great effect, especially if you are taking it into a 2d package such as sketch book pro or printing it out to draw sketch lines on top of it!
All Angles When creating a model. Treat it like a real world sculpture, look at it at all angles, orbit around it. Model it as a whole shape and how parts relates to other parts of itself.
Be Inspired Be inspired by other artists. Look outside the game/film/3d magazine industry. Look at fine art, sculpture, art history. Put your work in context of your time!
Be Expansive As long as you save your work, don’t worry. Be expansive, press buttons, go to hidden corners of the UI interface. This way you will learn organically rather than parrot fashion!
Save As Plus When you save, make sure you save as and press t he + symbol next to the save icon. This way, you can return to any stage of your work if you make a mistake or want to roll back your progression of a scene.
Draw Draw Draw! I mean traditional drawing. Pen and paper, sketch buildings, streets, whatever you see. Long after 3ds Max and other industry tools have evolved or even gone, there will still be traditional drawing! Drawing also teaches you things far beyond what a 3d programme can about creativity, space, line, etc.!
Film And Games Inspiration Be inspired by your favourite games and films. Try to find less popular games and films that are interesting to you and inspire you with new things!
Negative Space When composing a view for a final render. Look at the ‘negative space’ the space where there is nothing but air. This will help you improve your compositions.
Use Real World References Use the view image file form the rendering menu to refer to real life photos when making a model or a scene. This improve the believability of your scene.
Don’t Be Afraid Of Other 3d Packages Other 3d and 2d packages should be explored. 3Ds Max in its current form and possible in its entire form will not be around for ever. Using other 3d software will help you to realise that once you know the main concepts in one package, you can quickly transfer to other packages to suit your needs. Yes Blender is definitely worth a look!
This Is A Tool! You Are The Creator!
LIGHTING
Daylight Sunlight I always find this confusing. Daylight is the one to pick for full sky, day system etc., not sunlight!
Exposure Controls Press 8 and it brings up Environment Settings. Use exposure control to control the look of your render. Especially important to use when using sunlight or daylight.
Paint With Light As in real world photography and cinematography, you can move objects outside your camera view to create shadows, bounce light etc. This further adds a dimension of artistic control with composition renderings of scenes.
Presets Light Types Photometric lights come with a large number of real world lighting simulation presets. Select light, go to modify panel and select the type of preset you want.
Shift+L Just by pressing Shift+L will hide/unhide your lights in the scene.
MATERIALS AND TEXTURES
Bake Shortcut Just press 0 to bring the render to texture window so that you can start to bake your textures.
Composite The composite material gives you great control for creating decals, mixing when you want total control over a material.
M Is For Material Just press M to open the material editor!
Peel The peel tools in the Unwrap UVW panel to do turbo-boost your unwrapping time.
Save UVW Render Template If you want to take the UVW map into Photoshop/Gimp etc. In the edit UVW window. 1. Click on tools in the menu, go to ‘render UVW’ template. 2. Choose size of the render. 3. A UVW template will render, then save it as a JPEG or whatever format you want.
Slate Traditional Material Editor Switch between the slate material and traditional material editor by going to modes and choosing which one you want. Often I prefer to use the old style material editor.
Unwrap UVW Paint Select Use these tools to ‘paint’ select your UVW elements. Speeds things up!
MODELLING
Bridge Use bridge when in polygon sub-object mode, to connect non touching polygons on the same model.
Conform Conform is a great tool, Create new clean model copies of messy models, for example ones imported from 123d catch etc. 1. On the free-form tab, select conform. 2. Chose the surface you want to paint on so that the model conforms to the mesh underneath.
Grow Shrink You can quickly grow and shrink selections in sub object mode Ctrl+Page Up to Grow. Ctrl+Page Down to shrink!
Hide Polys Alt+I hide the unselected polygons when in sub-object mode. Very useful for isolating an area of a model you want to focus on.
Inset In sub-object mode, use the inset tool to inset polygons. Switch between group and by polygon to inset individual polygons in a selection. Very useful when creating urban/city environments.
Looper Double clicking an edge when in sub object mode will loop it automatically.
Low High Always work with a lower polygon and subdivide up. Keep the old lower polygon model. If you make mistakes, go back to the lower polygon model. This makes clean meshes!
Mesh Paint Paint multiple copies of objects onto other objects. 1 . Click on the object paint ribbon. 2. Click paint with selected object and choose what to paint on. Paint away!
Move Arrows When in sub-object mode with loop/ring selected. Use the little arrows to the right of the loop and ring panels to move them to the adjacent edge.
Non Quads When modelling, remember that quads are best for 3d real-time and game creation. Try to minimise or eradicate triangular polygons on your models.
Proboolean Pro boolean is often a good solution for making ‘cleaner’ quad meshes with your booleans. 1. Choose The Pro-boolean tab from the utility/geometry toolbar. 2. Select operands. 3. Tick ‘Make Quadrilaterals’ in the Advanced options panel.
Quad Chamfer When you chamfer using the old chamfer tool. It would create triangular polygons at intersections. The new quad chamfer gives you the option to create a chamfer entirely of quads. Again, very good for real-time 3d/game applications. 1. Click on the chamfer box when in sub object edge mode. 2. Click on the triangle symbol on the pop up option menu. You can alternate between quad and triangular chamfer.
Sphere Quads A good way to make sure you are modelling using only quads is not to start with a sphere primitive, this had triangles. Start with a cube, spherify it using the spherify modifier. Start your model from that.
Swift Loop Quickly insert loops into your model and delete them.
Wire Draw To get a cool wire sculpture look from models1. Select your model and click on free-form tools in the ribbon. 2. Then ‘draw on’ selection and click splines. If you want to render or see the splines in the viewport remember to enter the correct settings in the modify command panel.
MODIFIERS
Bend Remember that the simplest type of modifier will get you the results you want.
Drag To Instance You can click and drag any modifier to another mesh in the scene. This instantly copies it to the new mesh.
FFD Use an FFD modifier on an mesh to change the shape with control points. Unlike normal mesh editing, you can turn it off and it will go back to the original mesh shape.
Greeble Install the great free greeble plugin http://max.klanky.com/plugins.htm . Quickly turn any plane or any mesh for that matter into a surface with cubes resembling buildings. Great for far off cities and birds eye view cityscapes!
Melt The melt modifier is a great quick solution to simulate melted/melting objects.
Pro-Optimiser If you only have a higher polygon mesh but you need to reduce the polygon count in a quick way that leaves the object fairly ‘clean. Use the pro-optimiser modifier.
Shell The Shell modifier is a very quick method for thickening the ‘walls’ of models.
Spherify Remember spherify is good for quickly turning your meshes into more spherical forms.
PHYSICS AND PARTICLES
Mass FX To show the useful Mass FX toolbar in 3ds Max. 1.Right click in the toolbar area. 2. Select Mass FX. The floating toolbar will appear.
Particle Presets Particle presets are a great shortcut to quickly create particle systems based on real world 1, Open particle view. 2. Go to Tools and click on Preset Manager 3. Choose from the pop up box the particle simulation you would like. For example, a Galaxy Explosion!
Shapes Particle Presets In particle view, click on shape and you can choose from a nice range of presets! These hearts for example!
User Real World Inspiration Physical simulations can only be understood and made believable if you look at real world examples of physical reactions and interactions. This will improve your particles skills no end and give you plenty of inspiration!
RENDERING
F9 Hitting F9 will instantly render the selected viewport.
Final View As 3ds Max progresses with new updates the realistic settings in the viewport get much better. Use them to have a sense of what the final render will look like.
Print Assistant This is a useful thing to make sure the prints that you are planning will be the correct size when you press render.
Region Speed your render times up by selecting regions on the render setup frame window so that you don’t need to render the whole scene when render testing small elements or areas of the scene. 1. Select region in the ‘Area To Render’ box in the top left. 2. Move and scale the region to where you want to render.
Round Corners Most things in reality have slightly rounder corners, even a knife edge. Make your corners rounder. Do this without increasing render time dramatically by using the round corner tick box and spinner in the material editor options. 1. Choose the material 2. Go to round corners and tick enable 3. Use the spinner to adjust how round the corners will be 4. Check the material in the render to see if it is the roundness you want.
Walk-Through If you use the walk-through tool in a camera viewport while auto key and play on the time slider is on, it will actually record the moves you make!
SCENE SETUP AND MANAGEMENT
Colour Scheme Change the colour scheme in 3ds Max. 1. Go to customize on the menu and to Custom UI and Defaults Switcher. 2. Choose the different colour options in the UI schemes box
CTRL Asset Tracker Shift+T will open the asset tracker tr acker window. window.
Expert Mode Ctrl+E will take you in and out of expert mode.
Grid G toggles the viewport grid on and off.
Layers Layers help you manage large scenes in an orderly fashion. Click on the main toolbar to open the layer window.
Layout Configuration Quickly change your viewport configuration, click on the plus symbol in the top left of a viewport window and choose configure viewports.
New Ctrl+N will make a new scene.
X Search – Find Things Quickly Press X and it will bring up a search box where you can type in things you need to find out in 3ds Max!
VIEWPORTS AND CAMERAS
Alt+W Minimise And Maximise Viewports Minimise and maximise your active viewport by clicking Alt+W.
Clay The clay effect display option in the viewport can help you to model clearly. 1. Right click ‘Realistic and Edged Faces’ in the top left area of the viewport. 2. Select clay
Clipping Plane Clipping planes can be useful in 3ds Max if you want to make a cutaway without cutting up your meshes… 1. Select the camera you want to use. 2. Make sure the clipping plane box is ticked. 3. Make sure that the near clip intersects the object where you want to cutaway. You can see a red box in the non camera viewport to help you.
Colour Pencil 3ds Max , display stylised renders in your real-time viewports! Right where the image shows, choose stylised in the menu and choose your option!
Ctrl+R In an active viewport pressing Ctrl+R will make you orbit in the viewport.
Depth Of Field Depth of field for mental ray can now be previewed in the active viewport! A great help!
Edged Faces F4 toggles edged faces on and off.
Lenses Use stock lenses in the camera modifier panel to to simulate real life camera lenses.
Make Camera When in perspective mode in a view port press Ctrl+C. This instantly makes a camera at that exact location!
Pin Cushion Use a mental-ray distortion loom, apply it to the Lens Camera Shader in the render setup window. Choose pin-cushion or barrel effect and adjust the amount as suited.
Press Z Zoom Lost the model you are editing in a viewport? Just press Z in your active viewport and you will go directly to that model.
Safe Frame Develop your work with the composition dimensions in your final animation or image. 1. Right click on perspective in the viewport. Make sure ‘show safe frame’ is ticked. 2. The safe frame will correspond to the dimensions you set in the Render Setup panel.
See Through Sometimes modelling helps when you can see through certain objects in your scene. 1.Right click on the selected object. 2. In the object properties box, click on see through on the display properties box.
Viewport Statistics Simply by pressing 7 in you viewport, will bring up the useful viewport statistics in the top left corner of your active viewport.
