1st Birthday
Welcome to the latest unofficial 3ds Max/Design (and all things randomly related) post.
The picture will probably give away the latest theme - this blog is celebrating its first birthday this month. Yep, that’s right, I’ve managed to pretend I know how to use 3ds Max for almost a year now. (Feel free to send any cakes to the below address - in fact, cakes are always welcome. Although only non-CGI, cream-filled-lemon-iced produce will be eaten).
So before I have a ridiculously super-sized glass of Merlot to celebrate, let’s move away from this mindless-chitter-chatter, and onto some CGI chitter-chatter….
The night after
In rare occasions you may experience a slow down in performance when rendering a translation to mental ray or a preview of exposure control. You may also experience long wait times when you try to open or import files. This issue typically happens with models imported from Revit as FBX containing many light sources.
OK, so that’s the issue, what’s the fix…..well, if you carry out the below then your lovely copy of 3ds Max Design will be happy again.
Change the DontRepeatRefMsg and InvalidateTMOptimization values in the CurrentDefaults.ini file:
1. Open the file CurrentDefaults.ini in Notepad. By default, this file is located in C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\3dsMaxDesign2010 - 32bit\enu\defaults\CurrentDefaults.ini.
2. Find the [Performance] section in the file to locate the performance defaults.
3. Find the lines below and change the values from 0 to 1.
DontRepeatRefMag=1
InvalidateTMOptimization=1
4. Save the file.
5. Restart 3ds Max Design 2010.
Better than getting socks
I’ve been using this image viewer for a while now, and highly recommend its use. For anyone wanting to quickly view imagery, then this could be the way to go. For more info on Picasa, then click here. (oh, and did i mention its free?)
To examine what’s in the latest version, watch the following movie:
Gift-Card
A while back I updated some 3ds Max shortcut cards for 3dWorld. Jim Thacker (Editor) has kindly offered to share these with you all, so please feel free to download. These cards do not cover the latest features in 2010, however they should form a good grounding in the short-cuts you should all try to learn, to hopefully be more productive.
Download the PDF from http://www.box.net, by clicking here.
Npower party Guests
The guys at Npower have uploaded show demo tutorials for their newly released Power NURBS and Power Translators for 3ds Max 2010. This can be viewed by clicking here. The demo tutorials cover the making of the below watch.
They also have two more customer showcases - View these articles by clicking the names below.
Presents
This handy expansion pack script for the scene explorer is a set of scene explorer presets and scripts for use in 3ds Max 2010.
The creator (Joshua Newman, Meshroom) states its intent is “to enhance the scene explorer capabilities. It contains a set of useful explorers like a light lister and a camera lister, and also some tools to help migrate you to using containers instead of the Max layer system.” Please read the creators article, by clicking here for more information.
Installation -
- Download the mzp package from the link below
- Either run it from your MAXScript drop down menu or drop it onto your viewport.
- Choose customize | customize user interface from the max drop down menus
- Select Toolbars from the tabs at the top of the dialog
- Press select to create a new toolbar and name it ‘Scene explorers’
- Select the category : JN Scripts
- Drag the three Scene explorer scripts onto the new toolbar. Max will need to be re-started for the icons to display correctly
- Drag the script ‘Convert layers to containers’ to the toolbar
- Place the toolbar wherever you would like it live
- re-start Max
Download this script by clicking here.
A 3dworld
This article from 3dWorld gives a good insight into some of the secrets and rules involved in creating high quality games textures and environments, as seen in the image below.
To read the full article from 3dworld, click here.
Mentallists
The good folks over at MentalBoutMax have released some free online tutorials. These cover how to control colour bleed in Splutterfish’s Brazil render engine.
Below you will find two links, the first is for the Quicktime Movie, and the second ‘MBM installer’ link will place your Quicktimes in the relevant Mentalboutmax folders, as they do with their regular training downloads.
Link 1 QT Movie - click here.
Link 2 - MBM Installer - click here.
Mac
Next time you need to output an animation to a Mac, than DivX 7 could be a good option as ....“DivX has announced the release of DivX 7 for Mac, the latest major version of its video encoding software. The decoder is free… ....a Pro version with encoding tools is also available for around £13.50.”
Click here for further details and to download.
Wouldnt be a birthday without a book
Ballistic Publishing has announced EXPOSÉ 7. The next in its range of great books, is now available. This book, as with past publications, covers some of the world’s best 3d artists.
For more info, click here.
Wrapped present
This script (thanks to Gary Davis) has some great features for retopologising geometry in versions 2008+, and if that wasn’t enough, its free! There are a few ways to do this with the standard graphite toolset in 2010. Those of you lucky enough to attend the latest UK events, will of seen Kevin Booth doing exactly that.
To view this MAXScript visit scriptspot.com by clicking here
More gifts
As if the above games texturing link from 3d world wasn’t enough, then there’s also these two links which I found interesting. Take 5 minutes out of your schedule to read the below informative articles, and see how CGI has changed in the film industry. Ever wondered where the techniques and algorithms get their names from?
Article - 7 CGI Pioneers
Article - 8 CGI film moments you didn’t realise were CGI
Support round-up
Objects in viewport are not antialiased - View article…
Prerequisite components fail to install - View article…
Shader errors appear when using the mental ray renderer - View article…
As always Happy Max’ing…
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