Re: Animation Previews
 

just a little lol :eek:

Re: Animation Previews
 

since i am a rookie and am learning from no one and are last video guy only made about 1 or 2 short 5 min videos a year and probably didn't even know we had 3ds max at our school.

well what I'm trying to get at here is i need some info on registering to be in the comp. since its only me and its later in the season already i wont be able to enter but what about next year how does it work what are some of the rules? :confused:

thanks

p.s. what regals is everyone going to? i wanna see your animations :) . were going to Philly and Hartford.

p.p.s. i will plan to have some of my work at the regionals :D

Re: Animation Previews
 

same here.

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I was messing around with modeling some extra things to put in my animation and I started making a psp. The only problem is when I tried to make the L and R buttons on the top smaller I had to detach them and shrink them then retach them. Probably another way to do it but cant think of any. Anyways it left a gap in the model and when I cap the holes it doesnt work right. Any suggestions heres some pics:

the problem:

After trying to cap:

Re: Animation Previews
 

If you're working with an editable poly, go to "poly" under selection on the modify panel. Then hit "create" (i think it's under edit geometry, but i'm not sure off the top of my head). This will show all the vertices in the model. Next, check the picture I made for you. Click on the following vertices in the following order (1,2,4,3,1) then (3,4,6,5,2). That should fix up your problem.

The Picture:
http://www.dropshots.com/photos/5920...116/202033.jpg

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Wow! Thanks it worked perfectly. Heres what is looks like now:

Not the finished project but close.

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The buttons could use a little work. I'd suggest first putting a shell modifier on them with a pretty big inset for the "inner" spinner. Next make them a *bit* more opaque, and spin up the index of refraction to something like 1.7 or so. Finally put the specular and gloss to something appropriately high. This will help to give them some mass, rather than just looking like ghostly parallelograms on the sides. Good luck!

Re: Animation Previews
 

Since I have never used a shell modifier since I dont know everything about all teh tools in Max, I will try it. But this is a easter egg not really important to the animation, so I will work on it later.

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for the animation, how do you make an object seethrough? what i mean is i want to make a sheet of plexiglass or a window, but i don't know how to make it see throught to look like a window. any help would be great.

Re: Animation Previews
 

okay, look at the material that you apply to the plexiglass-to-be. look near where the diffuse/ambien/specular colors are, and you should see a box that says transparency or opacity or something like that. set the number low for opacity and high for transparency, depending on which one is what you see.

another thing that you want to consider is reflections/light. Im gonna assume you know how to adjust specularity/glossiness, so just keep in mind that if the object you have is 100% see through, those things won't show up so well.

shout if you need more help.

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what material do i use? i'm not sure how to start it. I am new to 3ds max this year, i started working on it last year, but couldn't complete in time for the deadline. Yes, i should know how to do the others, just not sure where to start exactly.

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okay, open up the material editor. click on one of the blank material slots. from there you need to decide how cool and fancy you want it to be. if you want lots of shiney and reflections, then click "get material" and make a raytrace material. then uncheck the transparency box and increase the number. then add whatever colors or other tweaks you want. this will give you lots of cool reflections, but slows render times a bit. or you can just set the opacity low on the default material. then make sure to up the specularity and glossiness.

I don't know if max 8 come with them, but there are a lot of premade materials in the materials library. i have mine left over from max 6, and just copy the materials over every time i update. if you don;t have raytrace libraries 1 and 2, pm me and i can email them to you. they'll help a lot.
don't worry, this stuff is legal as it is part of 3dsmax6 that went out 2 years ago.

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Hey everyone

Unfortunately its just me and one other person on my team that have offered to work on the animation and we both help with designing and building the actual robot so it'll be a challenge.

Ive done character modeling before, but it was in maya, i was wondering how different 3dsmax 8 is from maya 6.0. If anyone has also used that

Re: Animation Previews
 

max is more complex more menues sometimes harder to find places where maya is more visual. In max you gota enter like numbers in random little boxes with like 1 line of text and fool around with it, where in maya well thats a little different its more visual.If you read a couple tuts online then ur ready to go i would say

http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/3DS-MAX/1 (very good tutorials)

comparison otherwise its pretty similar

i prefer maya 6.5 myself but max is what we gota work with so be it.

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Thanks

and do you know why they arent allowing maya and also how they are going to enforce it?
arent there converters?