Mastering Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2010

Mark Gerhard, Jeffrey Harper, Jon McFarland

• Publisher: Sybex
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780470402344
• eBook ISBN: 9781118059418
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: CAD-CAM
• Index: Computer Science

The only comprehensive tutorial/reference exclusively devoted to Autodesk's robust architectural visualization software

3ds Max Design is a powerful real-time 3D design, modeling, and animation tool for architectural visualizations. This book covers all the software's crucial features, including how to simulate and analyze sun, sky, and artificial light-crucial factors for sustainable design-and how to define and assign realistic materials and work with AutoCAD and Revit files.

You'll quickly learn how to get the most from this powerful software's 3D modeling, animation, and rendering capabilities. McFarland is an Autodesk Authorized Author with professional experience in creating complex visualizations for a large property development company. His real-world focus means workflows and instructions are professional and proven, and projects will include those that pros work on every day.

• Uses actual examples from the author's experience, including retail spaces, small offices, residential developments, and more
• Concise explanations, focused examples, step-by-step instructions, and hands-on tutorials teach the basics and fine points of the software
• Covers all the essential features, such as how to simulate and analyze sun, sky, and artificial light
• Demonstrates efficient use of the interface; how to work with Revit and AutoCAD files; using data, scene management, and solid modeling tools; rendering real-world surfaces; and setting up animated walkthroughs

Mastering 3ds Max Design 2010 provides a practical education in using this powerful architectural visualization tool.

Chapter 1

Getting to Know 3ds Max Design 2010

Welcome to Mastering Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2010. Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2010 replaces Autodesk VIZ 2008 and benefits from the development of its sister product, 3ds Max, to give architects and other design professionals an indispensable design and visualization tool. Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2010 gives designers cutting-edge rendering technology, easy-to-use architectural materials, improved communication with other related software, enhancements to modeling and animation tools, and better viewport interactivity than ever before.

This chapter introduces some of 3ds Max Design 2010’s special features and then gets you started working with the 3ds Max interface. In this chapter, you will learn to:

• Navigate and configure the viewports
• Dock and float toolbars
• Copy objects and use the Transform tools
• Create a named selection set

Introducing the New 3ds Max Design 2010 Features

3ds Max Design replaces Autodesk VIZ 2008 as Autodesk’s 3D modeling and visualization tool for the architectural industry. It is comparable to 3ds Max and is essentially the same product without the Software Developers Kit (SDK), which is used to develop plug-ins that give the programs additional functionality. In addition to having all the features that 3ds Max has, 3ds Max Design offers a new Exposure lighting analysis tool, which is used to help meet the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) 8.1 certification standards. The program is referred to as either 3ds Max or 3ds Max Design throughout the text.

Each new version of 3ds Max incorporates fresh and exciting tools to enhance your capabilities and workflow while also increasing the performance of the program on your computer system. Utilizing these new features is key to improving your skills and decreasing the time it takes to complete your projects. To help you find information, the 3ds Max Design 2010 Learning Movies dialog box (see Figure 1-1) includes links to essential skills movies, which teach many of the basic skills for using 3ds Max, as well as links to movies that explain the new features and additional 3ds Max–related tutorials.

Figure 1-1:The new Learning Movies dialog box

New Features and Essential Skills Movies/What’s New and Learning Path The new features and additional skills movies are located on the Autodesk website, and an active Internet connection is required to view them. When you no longer want the dialog box to appear as 3ds Max opens, simply uncheck the Show This Dialog at Startup option in the lower-left corner. The dialog box can then be opened by choosing Help ⇒ Learning Movies from the menu bar.

Graphite Modeling Tools The new Graphite Modeling tools provide over 100 new modeling features for organic sculpting, texture painting in the viewports, and advanced polygon modeling. They are available on the new Graphite Modeling Ribbon. These tools bring a new level of interactivity to modeling in 3ds Max.

Containers Containers are a new toolset within 3ds Max designed to improve project collaboration and workflows by aggregating multiple objects into containers. Similar objects in a scene can be added to a container so you can interact with them as one unit. Containers can be loaded and unloaded from the viewports as necessary to improve the performance of 3ds Max Design 2010.

Material Explorer The new Material Explorer is a hierarchical display that allows you to review and manage all materials in a scene. Unlike the Material Editor, the Material Explorer does not suffer from a limitation of how many materials it can display at one time.

Exposure lighting validation When architectural or engineering visualizations are being created, accurate simulation of lighting conditions can be vitally important to a project’s success. The Exposure feature, only available in 3ds Max Design, allows you to create more sustainable design projects by analyzing the interaction of artificial lighting, sun, and skylight directly in your models. This information can be studied right in the viewports. Although the Exposure name is trademarked by Autodesk, you won’t actually find “Exposure” anywhere in the Help file or 3ds Max Interface.

xView Mesh Analyzer The xView Mesh Analyzer feature allows you to check your models in the viewport for common mesh errors such as overlapping UV coordinates, isolated vertices, duplicate and flipped faces, and other geometry errors. This new feature can help you avoid potentially costly modeling mistakes before projects proceed too far down the production pipeline.

ProSound Included in this release of 3ds Max Design is the new ProSound system, which allows you to work interactively with up to 100 unique audio tracks directly in your scene using the Track View dialog box. ProSound can be used to help when working with lip-syncing or creating preliminary audio tracks for your animated projects.

Review3 Autodesk has spent a significant effort improving the interactivity of the 3ds Max 2010 viewports. The third generation of this technology helps artists get a closer idea of how their final renderings will turn out by previewing the scenes directly in the viewports with interative shadows (hard and soft), ambient occlusion, real time HDR generated lighting, and interactive exposure control, and takes advantage of the mental mill shader technology.

mental mill/MetaSL Support Integral to the improvements in the interactive viewports is the inclusion of support for mental mill (the new shader technology from mental images), which allows users to create, test, and distribute hardware-independent shaders that provide real-time feedback and look the same in the viewport as they do in renderings.

Multi-map Shader The new Multi-Map shader for use with metal ray allows you to create materials with built-in variations that can be applied randomly to scene objects or applied based on specific object properties. This is a great way to create more natural-looking variations among similar scene objects such as trees, vehicles, furniture, or any anything else you want.

Render Surface Map The Render Surface Map in 3ds Max 2010 can create grayscale bitmaps of selected UVW-mapped poly objects based on the unique properties of the objects. The four types of maps that can be rendered are Cavity Map, Density Map, Dust Map, and SubSurface Map.

Viewport Canvas The Viewport Canvas tools allow you to paint your maps directly on your poly objects right in the 3ds Max viewports using familiar paint software concepts.

ViewCube and SteeringWheel ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Credits
• Copyright
• Publisher's Letter
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Getting to Know 3ds Max Design 2010
• Chapter 2: Introducing 3ds Max Objects
• Chapter 3: Creating Shapes with Splines
• Chapter 4: Editing Meshes and Creating Complex Objects
• Chapter 5: Creating AEC Objects
• Chapter 6: Organizing and Editing Objects
• Chapter 7: Light and Shadow
• Chapter 8: Enhancing Models with Materials
• Chapter 9: Using the 3ds Max Camera
• Chapter 10: Working with External Files
• Chapter 11: Using mental ray
• Chapter 12: Understanding Animation
• Chapter 13: Creating Animations
• Chapter 14: Atmospheres, Effects, reactor, and Particles
• Chapter 15: Using Other Autodesk Applications with 3ds Max Design 2010
• Appendix A: The Bottom Line
• Appendix B: Modifiers and Materials
• Index