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wow you guys are amazing, did you take any classes or learn from any professional 3ds max animators? or is this just time and effort with online tutorials and just "playing" the max?
also, about opacity mapping, can you reccomend anywhere online that gives a description and a few tutorials about it? sounds like a time-saver
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yeah, there's some great stuff here
For me, learning max was an individual thing. I didn't start with 3ds max directly, but instead with free easier stuff; that way, I could learn the basics of 3d without being confused and disheartened by max's complex interface
When I got into max, then, I could focus on the interface and more complex features rather than starting from scratch.
I was just looking for opacity mapping tutorials, but haven't found anything terribly useful. I'll try to explain:
This is an image found in 3ds max's reference files, not mine
On the left you can see 2 different planes; the foremost one being a standard diffuse map and the one behind it being the opacity map.
When that opacity map is dropped into the "opacity" slot found in the standard material, you can see the effect that has on the final output (seen on the right in that image). Basically, max evaluates the opacity map and uses it to determine the transparency of the final material.
Opacity maps are most commonly greyscale images; you can see that pure black makes that area of the material completely transparent, while white represents an opaque area. Any grey area in between creates a semi-transparent material.
For example, the trees in our animation were all created with the following as an opacity map:
All I had to do was stick that material on a 2d plane to get a perfect tree. I'm not the greatest at explaining things, so if you have any more questions just let us know.