Welcome to the Articles Page. Every now and then I feel like writing something useful about 3D or the software I’m using. Even more infrequently I actually do it. When such a rare occasion happens, I’ll be putting those articles here. Read up!
3DS Max Tips:
(As seen on my Twitter feed @CaptainPixel)
- It’s easy to turn any maxscript into a button. Highlight the code in the maxscript editor and drag it to a empty spot on a toolbar.
- Quickly jump to the rollout you need by right-clicking an empty rollout area and selecting it from the list.
- In the “Edit Geometry” rollout of an Editable Poly, you can constrain your subselection to move only along edges, faces, or normals.
- Save subobject selections by copy and pasting the Poly Select modifier.
- The substitute modifier is a quick and simple way to replace objects in your scene.
- You can freeze objects without them turning solid gray. Right click, object properties, uncheck “Show Frozen in Gray”.
- Resource Collector is a great tool for archiving projects. Gathers all of your maps and files to one folder. In Utilities.
- You can right click the undo/redo arrows on the tool bar to get a list of your previous actions.
- Everyone knows Ctrl+Z is undo, but did you know Shift+Z is viewport undo?
- Speed up your viewports in scenes loaded with objects by selectively using box mode. Right click, object properties.
- Right clicking on the Snap Toggle button gives you a ton of snap settings, including snap to frozen objects. Handy.
- Right clicking any map in the material editor will let you render a 2D image of that map to any size.
- Render to a .rpf file to save out channels like Zdepth, Material/Object IDs, Velocity, etc. All very useful in Post.
- When placing 3D vegetation, applying a random rotation and scale can make 3 unique plants look like 3,000.
- When editing geometry, you can translate a selection in one subobject to another by holding ctrl while switching. An example of that would be selecting an edge, ctrl clicking the verts button and having the verts in that edge selected.
- The Asset Tracking window is a handy way to view or modify file paths associated with your scene. Under the File Menu.
- Use proper Gamma. In Preferences enable Gamma, set it to 2.2, check “Affect Color Selectors” and “Affect Material Editor”
- If you’re like me you’re going to want to increase the number of undo levels under the General tab in the Preferences.
- Use “Compress on Save” under the File tab in the Preferences. It will really cut down on your file sizes.
The 12 Principles and How they Apply to Computer Animation:
Imagine in the story of Moses and the 10 Commandments that there were actually 12, and that instead of outlining the mortal sins that would get you a direct bus to Hell they outlined the most important techniques to the illusion of motion. In that case Moses would be Disney and the Commandments would be Disney’s 12 Principles of Animation. The Principles were written back in Disney’s heyday by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, arguably two of the most important figures in animations history. Frank and Ollie set about creating guidelines for how Disney creates animation and since then the rules have been universally accepted as the most key elements in convincing animation. Regardless if you’re doing traditional 2D, stop motion, or 3D computer animation all of the principles can and should be applied to your work. If you take the time to learn the Principles and use them your animations will undoubtedly be the better for it. For the sake of remaining topical I’ll focus on how the Principles apply to 3D computer animation. Let’s take a look.