3D Animation Q/A

[Damelvin]

Originally Posted by Capt.ArD

Reactor isnt that hard you just need to sit down and learn it. the stuff it allows you to do is really sweet. I'll give anyone interested a rundown sometime if they want. Pm me about it.

Which one is better cloth or reactor cloth, I heard anything using reactor can shutdown the program do to error. If i got time later I definetly would mind you showing me some tips about reactor.

[Capt.ArD]

To be perfectly frank, i never learned cloth, only reactor cloth, so i don't know which is better.

Yes reactor can crash max, but only if you do no set up the reactor correctly. basically reactor is a physics engine like what some games have, only it is a lot more accurate. the accuracy therefore makes the program a lot more picky about how things are set up.

a good example is how objects interpolate. in a videogame, especially an older game, some objects can go through others. one example i remember is in Tomb raider you can lock Lara's butler in a freezer, and his hands and face stick through the door. If any object does that in reactor, it goes crazy for a while then crashes. it looks a lot like the objects exploded. so you always have to be careful not to have objects overlapping. other problems arise from all the vertices in an object being coplanar, low substeps (which will need to be explained better later on), or odd environment settings.

The overall product of a good reactor job is a very realistic and lifelike movement or arrangement. It's also really helpful for arranging things in a random manner. if you have a desk, papers are usually scattered all over, and pencils and things are lying all over. instead of taking the time to individually placing each object, you can just put them about 5 inches over the desk and let reactor make them fall down, landing in a random and realistic-looking mess. plenty of other uses, too. it's great fun.

wow long post

[Damelvin]

Originally Posted by Capt.ArD

To be perfectly frank, i never learned cloth, only reactor cloth, so i don't know which is better.

Yes reactor can crash max, but only if you do no set up the reactor correctly. basically reactor is a physics engine like what some games have, only it is a lot more accurate. the accuracy therefore makes the program a lot more picky about how things are set up.

a good example is how objects interpolate. in a videogame, especially an older game, some objects can go through others. one example i remember is in Tomb raider you can lock Lara's butler in a freezer, and his hands and face stick through the door. If any object does that in reactor, it goes crazy for a while then crashes. it looks a lot like the objects exploded. so you always have to be careful not to have objects overlapping. other problems arise from all the vertices in an object being coplanar, low substeps (which will need to be explained better later on), or odd environment settings.

The overall product of a good reactor job is a very realistic and lifelike movement or arrangement. It's also really helpful for arranging things in a random manner. if you have a desk, papers are usually scattered all over, and pencils and things are lying all over. instead of taking the time to individually placing each object, you can just put them about 5 inches over the desk and let reactor make them fall down, landing in a random and realistic-looking mess. plenty of other uses, too. it's great fun.

wow long post

Some help would be nice on the bed cover since I can't get the corners to look like i want them too.

[Damelvin]

Saw a guide online on how to make simple valance/curtain and I was wondeering if waht I did could pass as a curtain or should I mess with cloth.

[rowe]

Originally Posted by Capt.ArD

the easy/ghetto way of doing this is to simply share the max scene file over your network. open it in each of your computers seperately. now you have 5 computers running independant of each other, all with the same scene loaded. then tell each computer to render a set of frames.

Computer 1- frames 1-50
Computer 2- 51-100
computer 3- 101-150
and so on...

now you have 20 little mini animations, which, when put together in a media program, form your final product.

inefficient and boring as you can get, but this is the most reliable way i can think of to render your stuff quickly.

To elaborate to this. Instead of output as movie files as suggested by Capt.ArD, you can make the output a .tga, .jpg, or .png sequence (.tga and .png should preserve transparency which can come in handy if you want to put effects behind your animation in post). What this does is it saves you animation as [filename][framenumber].[extention], then you can move all the files to the same folder and use a video editor to import the sequence. (I know this works in Adobe After Effects and it should work in others, just make sure it does before you spend the day rendering it.) The nice thing about .tga sequences is that they are uncompressed so then when you compress them in post, you get better quality than if you were to compress an already compressed video.

[(InsrtNameHere)]

Here, This guy needs some help with 3d Studios. If someone could help him, that would be nice.

[Damelvin]

I was wondering how you would make a light bulb look realistic and also cast light? Would a lume modifier or material work? .


Crumpled paper:

[MiNT]

Did a quick test for a bulb, doesn't itself cast light, but the effect seems *ok*

The model itself is a mutilated box, bottom face missing, with a shell modifier on it to give it thickness.

Bulb glass material is:

Standard, blinn shading
Diffuse: Pure white
Opacity: Falloff perpindicular/parallel starting at ~.05 with a sharp curve up to 1 the right - meaning, the sides are not transparent.
Reflection: Raytrace, with a mapping the same as opacity
self illumination (when on) - Glow(lume) shader with very high yellow intensity
Specular set to 0

The thing inside is:
Standard, self illumination with Glow(lume) shader with very high intensity. Black in the diffuse channel.
Specular set to 0

i then put an omni light with inverse falloff, set the outer bound to fit the scene nicely, and turned the intensity up a bit. Then I excluded the bulb stuff from recieving light from the omni. (Off pic has a sun on) To turn it off, i just turn off the omni and switched off the self illumination channels.

Used Mental ray to render (pardon the low AA), auto levels + specular bloomed a bit in photoshop. raytrace depth was 6 for everything.

[Capt.ArD]

you can just make a bulb and turn up the self illumination, and if yu use radiosity or lighttracer, there is an option to turn the bulb into a light emitter.
alternatively, you can make an area omni, make it visible, and make it a sphere. I don't have max with me, but if you look in the MR omni optoins, look for a check box that says "make visible in renderer"

[animator1]

I'd like to thank MiNT for trying to help me with the question mark/exclamation mark morpher thing. But, as a beginner, this seems a little advanced. If you can think of a way for it to seem easier than great, but other than that, i will just figure a way around it i guess.

[BuddyB309]

Originally Posted by animator1

I'd like to thank MiNT for trying to help me with the question mark/exclamation mark morpher thing. But, as a beginner, this seems a little advanced. If you can think of a way for it to seem easier than great, but other than that, i will just figure a way around it i guess.

bend modifer with lower or uper constraints

[Damelvin]

Well i tried and this is what I got now to just light the room right.


Now the room I am trying to get everything lighted without turning up teh intensity of the omni light. Can't get the mental ray shadows to work right so i wne t with raytrace and they work to teh most part and tehre is 3 omni lights in teh scene any thing need to be fixed Other wise its time to animate and render.

[MiNT]

animator - here is a simple .max with (from left to right in the scene). Drag the time slider back and forward to see them change from question mark to a line.

www.majestic12.modnmod.com/crew101/MiNT/Q.max

1. A simple line, created with create->shape->line, and i clicked 5 times.
2. The same line. I went into vertex subobject mode, selected all the vertices, right clicked, and clicked 'Bezier' (its in the top left of the quad menu that comes up when you right click in the viewport). Now that they're bezier curves, you can rotate and scale them. When you rotate, the green handles come up showing the direction that the line goes through them - the tangent. You can use the manipulator just as you normally would to change the direction. Also, you can scale the point, which lessens the degree of the curve.
3. The reference question mark
4. The bezier question mark, with 'renderable' checked, 4 sides, adaptive interpolation.
5. Just a copy of (2)...
6. A segmented box with a pathdeform modifier, using (5). The box will 'morph' around whatever path it is using, in this case, the animated spline. I also animated the y scale so the line matched up.

To animate the splines, easily, just turn on AUTO KEY (next to the key button on the bottom). I started out by keying frame 0, which is the question form. Then I went to 100, and made all the points straight, and rotated their tangents vertical. After, I went to the intermediate points (frames 50 and 75 int his case) and just rotated/moved points around until the transition was decently smooth. Whenever you change something with auto key on, a keyframe is added automatically at whatever frame you are at.

[MiNT]

Originally Posted by Damelvin

Well i tried and this is what I got now to just light the room right.


Now the room I am trying to get everything lighted without turning up teh intensity of the omni light. Can't get the mental ray shadows to work right so i wne t with raytrace and they work to teh most part and tehre is 3 omni lights in teh scene any thing need to be fixed Other wise its time to animate and render.

Heh, was about to say add some shadows, but I see you were already all over that =] As for the dark areas, you can safely lighten them by making an omni, setting it to diffuse only (uncheck specular), and excluding everything but the object that needs to be lightened. Then just position it however you'd like, adjust brightness, etc. Also you could perhaps add an omni, with 'ambient only' checked, at a low intensity. Keep in mind it will add with your other lights, so be careful you don't get any blowout.

For your wood materials, I would add a bit of a specular component - not too high, and with some glossiness, assuming this would would be coated. The, select the outside edges, and give them a small chamfer - this will let the corners catch a small highlight that will add a lot of depth to the scene.

[animator1]

thanks for the file MiNT, but was it created in 3ds max 8 because i can't open it in 3ds max 7.