Autodesk 3ds Max 2012 Essentials E-Book

Randi L. Derakhshani

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 423

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Get a jump-start on Autodesk 3ds Max 2012 essentials--withthe Essentials! The new Essentials books from Sybex are beautiful, task-based,full-color Autodesk Official Training Guides that help you get upto speed on Autodesk topics quickly and easily. Autodesk 3ds Max2012 Essentials thoroughly covers the fundamentals of this popular3D animation effects, and visualization software, teaching you whatyou need to become quickly productive. By following the book's clear explanations, practical tutorials,and step-by-step exercises, you'll cover all the bases. Topicsinclude modeling, animation, rendering, rigging, compositing, andmuch more. Whether you're an aspiring 3D designer or a professionalbrushing up on the basics, here is the essential grounding you needin 3ds Max 2012. * Covers Autodesk 3ds Max 2012 fundamentals, so you becomequickly productive with the software * Uses straightforward explanations and real-world, hands-onexercises and tutorials to teach the software's core features andfunctions * Helps you develop the skills you'll need throughout ananimation production pipeline, whether you're a beginner or a moreexperienced user brushing up on the basics * Uses a task-based approach and covers topics such as polygonmodeling, materials and mapping, lighting, using mental ray, HDRIimages, and more * This book is an Autodesk Official Training Guide If you want to get quickly up to speed on 3ds Max, Autodesk3ds Max 2012 Essentials is the place to start.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Publisher's Note

Dedication

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Introduction

Who Should Read This Book

What Is Covered in This Book

The Essentials Series

Chapter 1: The 3ds Max Interface

The Workspace

Transforming Objects Using Gizmos

Graphite Modeling Tools Ribbon

Command Panel

Time Slider and Track Bar

File Management

The Essentials and Beyond

Chapter 2: Your First 3ds Max Project

Starting to Model a Chest of Drawers

Modeling the Top

I Can See Your Drawers

Modeling the Bottom

Creating the Knobs

The Essentials and Beyond

Chapter 3: Modeling in 3ds Max: Part I

Building the Red Rocket

Creating Planes and Adding Materials

The Essentials and Beyond

Chapter 4: Modeling in 3ds Max: Part II

Creating the Thruster

Making the Wheels

Getting a Handle on Things

The Essentials and Beyond

Chapter 5: Animating a Bouncing Ball

Animating the Ball

Refining the Animation

The Essentials and Beyond

Chapter 6: Animating a Thrown Knife

Anticipation and Momentum in Knife Throwing

The Essentials and Beyond

Chapter 7: Character Poly Modeling: Part I

Setting Up the Scene

Creating the Soldier

The Essentials and Beyond

Chapter 8: Character Poly Modeling: Part II

Completing the Main Body

Creating the Accessories

Putting On the Boots

Creating the Hands

The Essentials and Beyond

Chapter 9: Character Poly Modeling: Part III

Creating the Head

Merging In and Attaching the Head’s Accessories

The Essentials and Beyond

Chapter 10: Introduction to Materials: Red Rocket

Materials

Compact Material Editor

Mapping the Rocket

Bring on the Nose, Bring on the Funk

The Essentials and Beyond

Chapter 11: Textures and UV Workflow: The Soldier

Mapping the Soldier

UV Unwrapping

Seaming the Rest of the Body

Applying the Color Map

Applying the Bump Map

Applying the Specular Map

The Essentials and Beyond

Chapter 12: Character Studio: Rigging

Character Studio Workflow

Associating a Biped with the Soldier Model

The Essentials and Beyond

Chapter 13: Character Studio: Animating

Character Animation

Animating the Soldier

The Essentials and Beyond

Chapter 14: Introduction to Lighting: Red Rocket

Three-Point Lighting

3ds Max Lights

Default Lights

Standard Lights

Lighting the Red Rocket

Selecting a Shadow Type

Atmospheres and Effects

Light Lister

The Essentials and Beyond

Chapter 15: 3ds Max Rendering

Rendering Setup

Cameras

Safe Frame

Raytraced Reflections and Refractions

Rendering the Rocket

The Essentials and Beyond

Chapter 16: mental ray and HDRI

mental ray Renderer

Final Gather with mental ray

HDRI

The Essentials and Beyond

Index

Bonus Chapter 1: Particles

Understanding Particle Systems

Setting Up a Particle System

Controlling the Particles with Deflectors

The Essentials and Beyond

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Acquisitions Editor: Mariann Barsolo

Development Editor: Dick Margulis

Technical Editor: Jon McFarland

Production Editor: Dassi Zeidel

Copy Editor: Liz Welch

Editorial Manager: Pete Gaughan

Production Manager: Tim Tate

Vice President and Executive Group Publisher: Richard Swadley

Vice President and Publisher: Neil Edde

Book Designer: Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Compositor: Craig W. Johnson, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Proofreader: Publication Services, Inc.; Paul Sagan, Word One, New York

Indexer: Ted Laux

Project Coordinator, Cover: Katie Crocker

Cover Designer: Ryan Sneed

Cover Image: Randi L. Derakhshani, Dariush Derakhshani

Copyright © 2011 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-118-01675-6

ISBN: 978-1-118-11779-8 (ebk.)

ISBN: 978-1-118-11780-4 (ebk.)

ISBN: 978-1-118-11781-1 (ebk.)

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Dear Reader,

Thank you for choosing Autodesk 3ds Max 2012 Essentials. This book is part of a family of premium-quality Sybex books, all of which are written by outstanding authors who combine practical experience with a gift for teaching.

Sybex was founded in 1976. More than 30 years later, we’re still committed to producing consistently exceptional books. With each of our titles, we’re working hard to set a new standard for the industry. From the paper we print on, to the authors we work with, our goal is to bring you the best books available.

I hope you see all that reflected in these pages. I’d be very interested to hear your comments and get your feedback on how we’re doing. Feel free to let me know what you think about this or any other Sybex book by sending me an email at [email protected]. If you think you’ve found a technical error in this book, please visit http://sybex.custhelp.com. Customer feedback is critical to our efforts at Sybex.

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Vice President and Publisher

Sybex, an Imprint of Wiley

To Max Henry

Acknowledgments

We are thrilled to be a part of Autodesk3ds Max 2012 Essentials, a complete update and style change to our previous Introducing 3ds Max series. Education is an all-important goal in life and should always be approached with eagerness and earnestness. We would like to show appreciation to the teachers who inspired us; you always remember the teachers who touched your life, and to them we say thanks. We would also like to thank all our students, who taught us a lot during the course of our many combined academic years. Equally, we want to extend many thanks to the student artists who contributed to this book, many of whom are our own students from The Art Institute of California—Los Angeles.

Having a good computer system is important with this type of work, so a special thank-you goes to Hewlett-Packard for keeping us on the cutting edge of workstation hardware. Special thanks go to Mariann Barsolo, Dick Margulis, Dassi Zeidel, and Liz Welch, our editors at Wiley who have been professional, courteous, and ever-patient. Our appreciation also goes to technical editors Jon McFarland and Jeff Harper, who worked hard to make sure this book is of the utmost quality, in addition to contributing to the writing of a few chapters. We could not have done this revision without their help.

In addition, thanks to Dariush’s mother and brother for their love and support, not to mention the life-saving babysitting services.

—Randi L. Derakhshani, Dariush Derakhshani

About the Authors

Randi Lorene Derakhshani is a staff instructor with The Art Institute of California—Los Angeles. She began working with computer graphics in 1992, and was hired by her instructor to work at Sony Pictures Imageworks, where she developed her skills with 3ds Max and Apple Shake, among many other programs. A teacher since 1999, Randi enjoys sharing her wisdom with young talent and watching them develop at The Art Institute. Currently, she teaches a wide range of classes, from Autodesk 3ds Max to compositing with Apple Shake and Adobe After Effects. Juggling her teaching activities with caring for a little boy makes Randi a pretty busy lady.

Dariush Derakhshani is a visual effects supervisor and Supervisor of Games at Zoic Studios in Culver City, CA, and a writer and educator in Los Angeles, as well as Randi’s husband. Dariush used Autodesk’s AutoCAD software in his architectural days and migrated to using 3D programs shortly after. Dariush started using Alias PowerAnimator version 6 when he enrolled in the University of Southern California (USC) Film School’s Animation program, and he has been using Alias/Autodesk animation software for quite a while. He received an M.F.A. in Film, Video, and Computer Animation from the USC Film School in 1997 and holds a BA in architecture and theater from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. He has worked on feature films, music videos, game cinematics, and countless commercials as a 3D generalist and CG/VFX supervisor. Dariush also serves as an editor and is on the advisory board of HDRI 3D, a professional computer graphics (CG) magazine from DMG Publishing.

Introduction

Welcome to Autodesk 3ds Max 2012 Essentials. The world of computer-generated imagery (CG) is fun and ever-changing. Whether you are new to CG in general or are a CG veteran new to 3ds Max, you’ll find this book the perfect primer. It introduces you to Autodesk 3ds Max and shows how you can work with the program to create your art, whether it is animated or static in design.

This book exposes you to all facets of 3ds Max by introducing and plainly explaining its tools and functions to help you understand how the program operates—but it does not stop there. This book also explains the use of the tools and the ever-critical concepts behind the tools. You’ll find hands-on examples and tutorials that give you valuable experience with the toolsets. Working through these will develop your skills and the conceptual knowledge that will carry you to further study with confidence. These tutorials expose you to various ways to accomplish tasks with this intricate and comprehensive artistic tool. These chapters will give you the confidence you need to venture deeper into 3ds Max’s feature set, either on your own or by using any of 3ds Max’s other learning tools and books as a guide.

Learning to use a powerful tool such as 3ds Max can be frustrating. You need to pace yourself. The major complaints CG book readers have are that the pace is too fast and that the steps are too complicated or overwhelming. Addressing those complaints is a tough nut to crack, to be sure. No two readers are the same. However, this book offers the opportunity to run things at your own pace. The exercises and steps may seem confusing at times, but keep in mind that the more you try and the more you fail at some attempts, the more you will learn how to operate 3ds Max. Experience is king when learning the workflow necessary for any software program, and with experience comes failure and aggravation. But try and try again. You will find that further attempts will always be easier and more fruitful.

Above all, however, this book aims to inspire you to use 3ds Max as a creative tool to achieve and explore your own artistic vision.

Who Should Read This Book

Anyone who is interested in learning 3ds Max should start with this book.

If you are an educator, you will find a solid foundation on which to build a new course. You can also treat the book as a source of raw materials that you can adapt to fit an existing curriculum. Written in an open-ended style, Autodesk3ds Max 2012 Essentials contains several self-help tutorials for home study, as well as plenty of material to fit into any class.

If you’re interested in certification for 3ds Max 2012, this book can be a great resource to help you prepare. See www.autodesk.com/certification for more certification information and resources.

What You Will Learn

You will learn how to work in CG with 3ds Max 2012. The important thing to keep in mind, however, is that this book is merely the beginning of your CG education. With the confidence you will gain from the exercises in this book, and the peace of mind you can have by using this book as a reference, you can go on to create your own increasingly complex CG projects.

What You Need

Hardware changes constantly, and it evolves faster than publications can keep up. Having a good, solid machine is important to a production, although simple home computers will be able to run 3ds Max quite well. Any laptop (with discrete graphics; not a netbook) or desktop PC running Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista, or Windows 7 (32- or 64-bit) with at least 2 GB of RAM and an Intel Pentium Core2 Duo/Quad or AMD Phenom or higher processor will work. Of course, having a good video card will help; you can use any hardware-accelerated OpenGL or Direct3D video card. Your computer system should have at least a 2.4-GHz Core2 or i5/i7 processor with 2 GB of RAM, a few GBs of hard drive space available, and a GeForce FX or ATI Radeon video card. Professionals may want to opt for workstation graphics cards, such as the AMD FirePro or the Nvidia Quadro series of cards. The following systems would be good ones to use:

Intel i7, 4 GB of RAM, Quadro FX 2000, 400-GB 7200-RPM hard diskAMD Phenom II, 4 GB of RAM, ATI FirePro V5700, 400-GB hard disk

You can check the list of system requirements on Autodesk’s website at www.autodesk.com/3dsmax.

What Is Covered in This Book

Autodesk 3ds Max 2012 Essentials is organized to provide you with a quick and essential experience with 3ds Max software to allow you to begin a fruitful education in the world of computer graphics.

Chapter 1, “The 3ds Max Interface,” begins with an introduction to the interface for 3ds Max 2012 to get you up and running quickly.

Chapter 2, “Your First 3ds Max Project,” is an introduction to modeling concepts and workflows in general. It shows you how to model using 3ds Max tools with polygonal meshes and modifiers to create a bedroom dresser.

Chapter 3, “Modeling in 3ds Max: Part I,” takes your modeling lesson from Chapter 2 a step further by showing you how to model a complex object, a child’s toy rocket.

Chapter 4, “Modeling in 3ds Max: Part II,” shows you how to use and add to the tools you learned in Chapter 3 to complete the toy rocket model. You will learn how to loft and lathe objects, as well as how to use Booleans.

Chapter 5, “Animating a Bouncing Ball,” shows you the basics of 3ds Max animation techniques and workflow using a bouncing ball. You will also learn how to use the Track View - Curve Editor to time, edit, and finesse your animation.

Chapter 6, “Animating a Thrown Knife,” rounds out your animation experience by exploring the animation concepts of weight, follow-through, and anticipation when you animate a knife thrown at a target.

Chapter 7, “Character Poly Modeling: Part I,” introduces you to the first of three chapters on creating a low polygon mesh character model of a soldier. In this chapter, you begin by blocking out the primary parts of the body.

Chapter 8, “Character Poly Modeling: Part II,” continues the soldier model, focusing on using the Editable Poly toolset. You will finish the body and add hands and boots.

Chapter 9, “Character Poly Modeling: Part III,” shows you how to finish the model of the special operations soldier started in Chapter 7. You will create the head and merge in elements such as goggles and a face mask and integrate them into the scene.

Chapter 10, “Introduction to Materials: Red Rocket,” shows you how to assign textures and materials to your models. You will learn to texture the toy rocket from Chapter 4, as you learn the basics of working with 3ds Max’s materials and UVW mapping.

Chapter 11, “Textures and UV Workflow: The Soldier,” furthers your understanding of materials and textures and introduces UV workflows in preparing and texturing the soldier.

Chapter 12, “Character Studio: Rigging,” covers the basics of Character Studio in creating a biped system and associating the biped rig to the soldier model.

Chapter 13, “Character Studio: Animating,” expands on Chapter 12 to show you how to use Character Studio to create and edit a walk cycle using the soldier model.

Chapter 14, “Introduction to Lighting: Red Rocket,” begins by showing you how to light a 3D scene with the three-point lighting system. It then shows you how to use the tools to create and edit 3ds Max lights for illumination, shadows, and special lighting effects. You will light the toy rocket to which you added materials in Chapter 10.

Chapter 15, “3ds Max Rendering,” explains how to create image files from your 3ds Max scene and how to achieve the best look for your animation by using proper cameras and rendering settings when you render the toy rocket.

Chapter 16, “mental ray and HDRI,” shows you how to render with mental ray. Using Final Gather, you will learn how to use indirect lighting as well as get a brief introduction to HDRI lighting.

The companion web page at www.sybex.com/go/3dsmax2012essentials, provides all the sample images, movies, and files that you will need to work through the projects in this book. There you will also find a special downloadable chapter in PDF format, Bonus Chapter 1, “Particles,” which introduces you to 3ds Max’s particle systems and space warps, tools that come in handy when you create a firing machine gun.

The Essentials Series

The Essentials series from Sybex provides outstanding instruction for readers who are just beginning to develop their professional skills. Every Essentials book includes these features:

Skill-based instruction with chapters organized around projects rather than abstract concepts or subjects.Suggestions for additional exercises at the end of each chapter, where you can practice and extend your skills.Digital files (via download) so you can work through the project tutorials yourself. Please check the book’s web page at www.sybex.com/go/3dsmax2012essentials for these companion downloads.

You can contact the authors through Wiley or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/3dsMaxEssentials.

Chapter 1

The 3ds Max Interface

This chapter explains the 3ds Max interface and its basic operation. You can use this chapter as a reference as you work through the rest of this book, although the following chapters and their exercises will orient you to the 3ds Max user interface (UI) quickly. It’s important to be in front of your computer when you read this chapter, so you can try out techniques as we discuss them in the book.

Topics in this chapter include the following:

The workspaceTransforming objects using gizmosGraphite Modeling Tools ribbonCommand panelTime slider and track barFile management

The Workspace

This section presents a brief rundown of what you need to know about the UI and how to navigate in 3ds Max’s 3D workspace.

User Interface Elements

Figure 1-1 shows the 3ds Max UI. At the very top left of the application window is a large button ( ) called Application; clicking it opens the Application menu, which provides access to many file operations. Also running along the top is the Quick Access toolbar, which provides access to common commands, and the InfoCenter, which offers support for various Autodesk applications. Some of the most important commands in the Quick Access toolbar are file management commands such as Save File and Open File. If you do something and then wish you hadn’t, you can click the Undo Scene Operation icon ( ) or press Ctrl+Z. To redo a command or action that you just undid, click the Redo Scene Operation button ( ) or press Ctrl+Y.

Figure 1-1: 3DS Max interface elements

1 Application button Opens Application menu that provides file management commands. 2 Main toolbar Provides quick access to tools and dialog boxes for many of the most common tasks. 3 Graphite Modeling Tools ribbon