I NEED MAJOR 3DS MAX HELP!!!

[Ranma]

When you look at my questions you can tell that we're obviously behind, but we're trying our best to get up to date, so please help!

1. How do you make a bicycle chain moves correctly in 3DS Max? The best we've been able to do is getting each link spinning round and round. How do you get them to actually LINK with each other and spin around two sprockets?

2. We constantly get a "need map coordinates" error when rendering, but we have NO idea what we're supposed to do. What do we do to fix this?

3. How do you make a road or a background constantly fly by? So far we've designed a section of a freeway that we're going to use with the animation, replete with lights and everything. However, we don't like the idea of plopping down 50+ copies of the same road in order to achieve a moving effect. Is there an easier way to "loop" the road somehow?

4. Right now our lights on our freeways looks nice, but it would be even nicer if it had a "light cone" to it. I managed to turn on the light cone effect once but now I can't remember how I did it and it was too bright anyways. On a real street, the light reflects off of the particles in the air, and the light has a "cone" that shines down. I was wondering how I could realistically do the same effect in 3D Studio Max.

5. Is there an easier way to change the color of a texture? Up till now we've been just using the textures provided with 3D Studio (no one knows how to make textures), and we would like to know how you can easily colorize a gray cement texture another color like yellow (for stripes on the freeway). This is not a simple ambient lighting change though, cuz doing it that way will SOAK it in yellow, and all we want is to just adjust the color levels. Our alternative is for me to edit it out in Photoshop but I don't want to do that if you can do it in 3DS Max.

Thank you for bearing with all my questions, please reply ASAP. Much mahalo's (thank you's).

[ComBBAT_Albrot]

1. The easiest way I've found to make a chain/tread system is to make one link of the chain, then copy it lots and lots of times until you have a long, straight chain. Then make a spline that goes where you want your chain to go. Apply a PathDeform modifier to the chain (all of the links selected at once) and pick the spline as your path. Then, when you change the percent value, they'll move around the sprocket. There will be some stretching, but it likely won't be noticeable if your links are small enough.
It takes some trial and error to get the right amount of links, though, so keep trying!

2. What MAX is asking you to do is to apply a UVW Map. This tells the program how to put a texture map on an object that isn't default (like a box or a sphere). Quite simply, you must go to the modifiers section and apply a UVW Map modifier, then pick how you want the texture to be applied. You can also specify the size of the texture by resizing the Gizmo that is automatically created as a sub-object or changing the "tiling" section.

3. I don't know of any ways to make that happen, unless you rendered a section of it flying past, and then looped it, compositing in your robot later. However, if your team isn't yet experienced enough to make textures, I wouldn't count on compositing. Your best bet is just to copy the section of road. Sorry.

4. This can be done, and it looks good when used well, but it will probably wreak havoc with your render times. Select your light (spotlight, I assume) and in the properties on the right side, go all the way down until you find "Atmospheres and Effects" Click add, and select "Volume Light" You should have a light cone. You can edit the properties (you'll probably want to change its density) by selecting the "volume light" effect you just added and clicking "Setup" right below it.

5. This is slightly tricky, but it's possible. Open your Material/Map Browser, and open the material you want to change. Go to its diffuse map properties (likely the concrete you wanted to change) and head down to the rollout called "Output." You should see a graph with a diagonal line going up. It's grayed out, though, so you'll have to click "Enable color map." Then click "RGB" to select it as a color output. The little yellow asterisk-looking button is "Add point." You'll want to add a point to that line right about in the middle. Then, using the "move point" tool, you'll notice that the texture becomes brighter or darker. That's because you're moving all three channels, Red, Green, and Blue. You can choose to move just one or two of those. It takes trial and error, but in regard to your specific problem, the best way I could find to make grey turn yellow would be to drop your point on the blue line almost all the way down and to the right, leave the green line alone, and raise the red point straight up just a little.

I hope I could help.

[Ranma]

Thank you very much for your help! I'll be sure to use it! We're really behind, by the way. We're don't even have a "rough draft" yet of our animation, and we have about 80% of our robot drawn in 3DS Max. Good luck to all of you guys on your animation, and wish us luck as well!

[ComBBAT_Albrot]

Well, since I have nothing but time on my hands, I'll offer my services in the name of gracious professionalism.
If you need me to do anything, don't hesitate to ask.

This also applies to anyone who reads this!
Albrot is now a freelance animation helper.