our team is doing a 3D Studio max entrance, we were wondering if any other teams maybe have parts or any other importable things, that are common, that you could let us use 
ok, well it’s worth a shot!
thanks
-Lana
Team 341 Animation Team 
When you signed the consent form, assuming that you have, you agreed that everything in the scene would be 100% yours or it came from the program (IE the materials that came with MAX) It’s more beneficial for you guys to just try and do it all on your own.
thanks!!!
If you guys got the Max 5 CD, on the 2nd disc there are tons of textures and models that come with it. Hope that helps.
yea, the third CD that comes with max6 has a huge resource of stuff… very cool.
what consent form are you talking about?
and what does it say?
There’s nothing that says you cannot recieve help from outside support. Just give them due credit. In fact I would heavily recommend seeking help if you get stuck. if not here then try CG Talk.
No, I’m not talking about using outside help, getting help is what this is all about, getting people to learn. What you’re not supposed to be doing is actually using someone elses work that isn’t on your animation team. Like, those CAD models.
Read the consent form, you can read it in the awards.pdf document on the first website, I quote:
“The entrant represents and warrants that the material is by the entrant free of any liens or claims of any third party.”
I don’t even know why you would use something not your own to showcase your team’s talent.
does this include 3rd party renders…like the one u posted 
I seriously don’t think it’s a problem to use parts from FIRST Cad Library in your animation… if you wanna take the time to make a motor or whatever… and waste time, then fine, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to get on that website and download them.
3rd party accessory programs are usable, some people I’ve seen use Cebas|Final Render, Brazil, Mental Ray before it was fully adapted into MAX. People out there use Maya, Blender, etc, and that’s fine. However, if you go somewhere, say like 3Dcafe, and take a model and put it in your animation, that is laying claim to a third party, even if it is free. The only option I’ve used with Brazil is the global illumination and the bucket rendering, both of which can be done in the MAX 6 version with mental ray.
What’s to stop people from saying that about a car or something? “Well, looks like I can’t make this, so I’ll just take it and put it in the animation.” It screws over people who actually did all the work, like the teams agreed to when they sent in their consent forms.
Ryan Dognaux-
"if you wanna take the time to make a motor or whatever… and waste time, then fine, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to get on that website and download them. "
umm… sure it would… how bout asking some1 else to do your animation… that’d be alot easier for you…
the whole point of doing an animation as a student is not only to represent your team, but to also learn and overcome the learning curves and challenge yourself. Sharpen up your skills, and to be creative. Downloading free objects is a waste of time and it doesn’t benefit you, it only benefits the completion time of your animation. One of the challenging aspects of animating is modeling the objects. I take pride in all the models i create.
However, to be honest, i often do download free obj., but i only use them for test renders and to get a feel of how the scene make look. In the end, i still model the object i need.
personally, i believe using third party renderers is cheating.
lol
its too easy to make a scene look real in Brazil. All you have to do is enable GI, skylight, and add the Brazil plane. It doesnt matter what the mats look like, the object will look real.
and again…
good luck animating!
-kevin
If it was last year, I would have not used Brazil because Mental Ray was not a part of 3DSMAX yet. However, this year, everyone is afforded the same opportunities rendering wise. Enabling just the global illumination does crap to make your scene look realistic. The GI skylight creates quick lighting, and on this years animation I’m not even using it, I’m using it for bucket rendering speed wise.
I would agree that a 3rd party renderer would be considered cheating if people didn’t have Mental Ray, but global illumination is just as good in Mental Ray as it is in Brazil or Final Render. It definately does matter how what materials you have, I’ll post an example later.
We used to have an animation team two years ago, but last year our focus shifted on our robot… thus, we had no animation team, but this year three freshmen have stepped up and shown an interest in learning this… I really don’t see the harm in letting them learn how to use the program, its actually pretty awesome to see animation be reestablished… It’s just like a new rookie team using FIRST’s gearboxes to learn how the game works…
those images were made using brazil. standard mats. it may not look like “real” or professional work, but its still convincing.
Now, comapre that to just using the scanline renderer, there’s a difference.
i’ll take my word back about the mats, i mean, if you really screw up on the mats, then of course the object is less convincing, but what i should’ve said was the use of only standard materials.
well, anyway, i think we’ve gotten way off topic.
lol
80/20 has a CD that has a lot of Autocad representations of their parts. Call them and ask them for it. For aluminum extrusions, i would just recommend going to Firstcadlibrary, downloading the 1x1, taking a section of it to make a spline, then just extruding that spline to whatever length you want.
Enjoy!
I personally see no problem with use of FirstCAD Library. Its not like any of the models posted there are amazingly complex, or spectacular visually. You have to do quite a bit of work to make them look right after you download them, like filleting the sharp edges, simplifying excess detail, and mapping with good textures. Modeling any of those would not benefit my 3d skills, since most of them are pretty trivial, and there is no challenge in doing them - just time effort.
There is a big difference in downloading a car model from 3dcafe and downloading a metal extrusion from FirstCAD library, because in the first case you are downloading it because you dont know how to make the model yourself, but in the second case you download it just to save time on grunt work. It takes skill and creativity to model a car. It takes simple ability to follow a blueprint to model a robot part in Inventor. I would download the FirstCAD Library model so that i have more time for tasks i find challenging - like complex model, realistic lighting, and detailed textures.
About the rules. That line in the consent form was always there. Yet autodesk did offer in past years kit parts modeled in inventor for download for use in animations. I dont see how using FirstCAD Library is any different, even more so since more people know about FirstCAD Library than about the files Autodesk gave away - its a resource available for everyone.
So here is the bottomline in my view - if you think that you could learn something by doing the model yourself, you probably should. Otherwise, i dont see much point in doing gruntwork models such as kit parts.
There is a difference between letting people learn the program, which is what I’m trying to say here, and outrightly taking someone elses work and putting it in an animation.
KCY, yes, there is an enormous difference between the scanline and the Brazil renderer, but I’m talking about Brazil vs. Mental Ray, which comes with MAX 6. Turn off the GI and it looks completely different, personally I feel the GI makes objects look like play-dough, but that’s just my opinion.
yeah - in many cases specular highlights are missing. It is most noticeable when using max’s lighttracer. Cranking up specular values and adding some light other than skylight usually fixes that.
http://atrax.goatpower.se/pubup/upload/Default.jpg
Default, like scanline.
http://atrax.goatpower.se/pubup/upload/GI.jpg
Play-dough.
http://atrax.goatpower.se/pubup/upload/Mine.jpg
My lighting, textures, etc, no GI.
There is a big difference I feel.