3D Studio Max
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Wikipedia-Article "3D Studio Max"
3D Studio Max (sometimes called 3ds Max or just MAX) is a 3D computer graphics and animation program, written by Autodesk Media & Entertainment (formerly known as Discreet and Kinetix). It was developed as a successor to 3D Studio for DOS, but for the Win32 platform. Kinetix was later merged with Autodesk's latest acquisition, Discreet Logic. The current version of 3DS Max as of September 2005 is 8.
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Overview
3ds Max is one of the most widely-used 3D animation software. Its has strong editing capabilities, an ubiquitous plugin architecture and a long heritage on the Microsoft Windows platform. 3ds Max is mostly used by video game developers but can also be used for pre-rendered productions such as movies, special effects and architectural presentations.
In addition to its modeling and animation tools, the latest versions of 3ds Max also features advanced shaders (such as ambient occlusion and subsurface scattering), dynamical simulation, particle systems, radiosity, normal map creation and rendering, global illumination, an intuitive and fully-customizable user interface, its own scripting language and much more. There is also a plethora of specialized plugins that can be bought separately, such as Brazil r/s and finalRender.
Earlier versions required a special copy prevention device (a dongle) to be plugged into the parallel port while the program was run. A software copy prevention method was later implemented instead due to the risk of people sharing the dongle. Registration involving personal information such as name, address and e-mail address is now required.
Modeling Methods
There are 5 basic modeling methods:
- Modeling with primitives
- NURMS (subdivision surfaces)
- Surface tool/Editable patch object
- NURBS
- Polygon modelling
Modeling with primitives
This is a basic method, in which one models something using only boxes, spheres, cones, cylinders and other predefined objects. One may also apply boolean operations, including subtract, cut and connect. For example, one can make two spheres which will work as blobs that will connect with each other. This is called "blob-mesh modeling," or "balloon modeling."
List of Primitives
Standard Primitives
The Standard Primitives are: Box, Sphere, Cylinder, Torus, Teapot, Cone, Geosphere, Tube, Pyramid, and Plane.
Extended Primitives
The Extended Primitives are Hedra, ChamferBox, OilTank, Spindle, Gengon, Prism, Torus knot, ChamferCyl, Capsule, L-Ext, C-Ext, and Hose.
NURMS
NURMS stands for Non-Uniformal Rational MeshSmooth.
This is the 3ds Max implementation of subdivision surface modelling, a methodology that is rapidly displacing NURBS modeling as the methodology of choice for both low- and high-polygon modelling. Max implements NURMS as a modifier, to be applied to a polygon or mesh object. After creating a rough-edged model (including all the desired detail) with polygons, Meshsmooth (the modifier containing NURMS) is applied. An advantage of NURMS Meshsmooth is that every vertex and edge has its own weight. The numeric value, weight, determines how strongly each vertex/edge will influence the final shape.
In the Editable Poly object/modifier, there is an option to interactively apply nurms subdivision on an polygon object, thus removing the need to move up and down the stack to apply smoothing, and also to more interactively view the effects such modelling has.
NURMS modeling is less complicated than spline-based modeling, and serves the needs of less professional users very well, yet it provides excellent scalability and control for skilled and experienced artists.
For ideal results NURMS requires an input mesh where each vertex is the intersection of four line segments. This is contrary to the common belief that subdivision surfaces modelling requires the mesh to be made entirely of quads (quadrangles- as opposed to say triangles).
In older versions, Max required the user to smooth the whole mesh to which the Meshsmooth modifier was applied, or to pass the portion to be applied upward, through the modifier stack. With the addition of the Sub-D tools to the package came the capability to edit smaller portions of a model's smoothing, with the aim of allowing greater control of the level of detail across different parts of a complicated model. Alias' Maya, the long running main competitor to 3d Studio Max, seemingly prompted this inclusion with the advance of the feature "Subdivision Surface object".
Surface tool
Surface tool was originally a 3rd party plugin, but Kinetix aquired and included this feature since version 3.0. The surface tool is for creating common 3ds max's splines, and then applying a modifier called "surface." This modifier makes a surface from every 3 or 4 vertices in a grid. This is often seen as an alternative to 'Mesh' or 'Nurbs' modelling, as it enables a user to interpolate curved sections with straight geometry (for example a hole through a box shape). Although the surface tool is a useful way to generate parametrically accurate geometry, it lacks the 'surface properties' found in the similar Edit Patch modifier, which enables a user to maintain the original parametric geometry whilst being able to adjust "smoothing groups" between faces.
NURBS
NURBS stands for Non-Uniformal Rational B-Spline.
See: NURBS
Scanline rendering is 3ds Max's default. Max's scanline renderer is fairly robust compared to many similar packages' out-of-box offerings (Lightwave's default renderer being one exception). While several advanced features have been piggy-backed onto the scanliner over the years, such as global illumination, radiosity and ray tracing, advanced users may wish to consider using one of the many 3rd-party renderers available for Max, or make use of the somewhat limited connection to mental ray. A 3rd-party connection tool to Renderman pipelines is also available for those that need to integrate Max into Renderman shops. mental ray (written in non-capital) is integrated into the later versions of 3dsmax, and is a powerful rendering tool, with bucket rendering, that distributes the rendering burden between several computers more efficiently. It has hundreds of different tools which allow myriad effects to be created with relative ease. It also counts with global Illumination, that is an automated calculation of all the behaviour (reflection and radiosity) of the current scene. Such effects can lead to grainy-looking scenes, so activation of Final gather (which extends the render time significantly) is advised.
Polygon modelling
Polygon modelling is more common with game design than any other technique. Usually, the modeller begins with one of the 3ds max primitives, and using such tools as bevel, extrude, and polygon cut, adds detail to and refines the model. This technique is most often used for game design, as the very specific control over individual polygons allows for extreme optimization.
Particle systems
3ds max allows the user to create an object called a particle emitter which allows the user to treat all the particles as a group.
A particle emitter is an object in a 3D modelling program which emits objects that are treated as a group. As of version 7, there are 7 3ds max particle emitters. The 7 3DS Max particle emitters are PF Source, Spray, Snow, Blizzard, PArray, PCloud, and Super Spray. The most flexible of these particle systems is PF Source, which makes use of a technology called particle flow.
Features
MAXScript
Is a built-in script similar to C++ programming language, which is useful for developing script using 3D Studio Max objects.
Character Studio
Character studio is an application integrated in 3D Studio Max helping user to create and animate virtual characters.