Max Nation

3dsMax2014: Features and Improvements you might have missed.

chrismmurray — Fri, 03 May 2013 13:31:35 UTC

So one of the myriad of things I get to work on at Autodesk is to take what marketing thinks is important and message that to the masses in ways we can all understand. Face time (at tradeshows etc...) given to anyone product is usually at a premium so not all the new features in any given release are given equal time. Some, unfortunately get no face time.

In this post I want to discuss a little more in-depth about the 2014 release of 3dsMax and specifically the lesser known features and improvements that really didn't see
the light of day.

Here's a short list of what we will cover here. You can click on each one to jump right to that section.

Ease of use
Reliability
Data Exchange
Character Animation (Not Populate)
Pflow (not the standard New feature stuff)
Materials
Rendering
Viewport Performance (specifics)
File Handling
Already released New Feature Videos
Small Annoying Things

Ease of Use

Reorganized Main Menu: The main 3ds Max menu bar has been reorganized to be easier to use, and to make frequently-used commands easier to access. Icons have also been added. This includes the addition of the new Enhanced Default UI. Found here:

Mouse and Viewport Default Settings: Some mouse and viewport default settings have been changed to make 3ds Max easier to use; and in particular, to make it easier to select sub-objects. In particular:

Visual Style & Appearance panel (or the Rendering Method panel for legacy viewports)
Selection Brackets is now off by default.
Display Selected With Edged Faces is now on by default.

Background panel (In Viewport Configuration)

Aspect Ratio Match Rendering Output is now the default choice.

Mouse panel

AutoFocus Viewport is now on by default.
Zoom About Mouse Point (Orthographic) and Zoom About Mouse Point (Perspective) are both on by default.

Cycling the Active Viewport

You can now use (the Windows logo key) + Shift to cycle the active viewport.

When all viewports are visible, pressing +Shift changes which viewport is active.
When one viewport has been maximized, pressing +Shift displays the available viewports. Repeatedly pressing +Shift changes the viewport focus: When you release the keys, the viewport you chose becomes the maximized view.

http://screencast.com/t/ceos89XU [FLASH REQUIRED TO VIEW]

Unable to display content. Adobe Flash is required.

Interruptible Auto Backup

While 3ds Max is saving an auto backup file, it displays a message to that effect in the prompt line. If the scene is large and you don't want to take the time to save it at this point in time, you can stop the save by pressing the Esc key. (If the scene is not large, the prompt appears for only an instant.)

Changes to the Isolate Tool

The Isolate Tool is now on the Scene menu (in the Enhanced Menus), which has an option to Isolate Unselected as well as Isolate Selected objects. Also, Isolate no longer zooms viewports by default. To zoom as well as isolate, choose Scene Isolate Zoom Extents On Isolate before you isolate an object or selection.

[As seen in the Enhanced Default Menu]

Reliability/Stability

Mesh Inspection
The new Mesh Inspector checks Editable Mesh and Editable Poly objects for errors in texture channels and topology. This reduces the number of fatal errors that 3ds Max will encounter.

You can find options for Mesh Inspector behavior on the Customize menu of the Enhanced Default UI.

mental ray Renderer

If the mental ray renderer encounters a fatal error, 3ds Max continues to run, although to create a mental ray rendering again you need to restart 3ds Max. So what's the point? The point is that it gives you the chance to save your work and bring 3dsMax down gently as opposed to a lock up that causes you to lose work and potentially corrupt a file with a hard reset. File this one under the Lessor of Two Evils.

DATA Exchange

File Link Manager

When you link to a Revit or FBX file that contains a Daylight system, the File Link Manager now prompts you to add an exposure control to the scene. See File Link Settings: Revit and FBX Files Dialog.

VRML Import
You can now import VRML files with the 64-bit version of 3ds Max as well as the 32-bit version. You no longer have to use the 32-bit version for VRML import.

Send To
The Send To feature no longer links to Autodesk Infrastructure modeler (AIM).

Animation and Characters

Hair and Fur

A new Scruffle parameter has been added to give you more control over clumped hair.

Skin & track view & multi-object selection & hidden object evaluation

Wow, thats a lot. How are these things related? They have all had significant performance improvements.

Skin & trackview curveditor have had big performance boosts
Multi Object Selection: Previously there was a huge lag when selecting mutliple objects (by clicking with a mouse). The speed of selection has been improved.
Hidden object evaluation: Previously, when playing back animation in the VP, any hidden animated objects were also evaluated in the VP slowing it down. Now this has been improved so playing back visible objects in the VP has better performance (frame per sec) than previous releases.

What about Populate?

There is a lot more to this feature that will be covered in a more in-depth blog post in the near feature. But for now, in addition to whats been shown in the New Feature Videos. What may not be obvious about the feature (which is a testament to good design) is the following.

Believable human motion that varies markedly in style and is free from typical crowd simulation artifacts, such as foot sliding, jerky collision avoidance and sudden unnatural body turning
Advanced dynamic obstacle avoidance when characters cross intersections and when faster walkers pass around slower ones.

Much more to come on this subject...

Particle Flow

Advanced Data Manipulation
Create customized Particle Flow tools with the new Advanced Data Manipulation toolset called Data Operators. Motion graphics artists and visual effects specialists can now create their own event-driven data operators and save results as presets, or as standard actions in the Particle View depot. With the new versatile, easy-to-use Particle Flow advanced visual editor, artists can combine up to 27 different sub-operators to create a huge variety of Particle Flow toolsets purpose-built to meet the specialized requirements of individual productions. (I will be covering this in depth in a future blog post)

Materials

In the Material/Map Browser, when you right-click a material or map, you can now copy it to a newly created library.

Normal Bump Map
The Normal Bump map has been updated to fix a bug that caused normal bump mapping to appear differently in 3ds Max viewports than it did in other rendering engines. In addition, the Preferences dialog General panel Normal Bump options now let you optimize the display of normal bump maps created by applications other than 3ds Max.

Rendering

NVIDIA® mental ray® Renderer
The mental ray renderer has a new Unified Sampling mode that is easy to control and renders much more quickly than the multi-pass sampling used in previous versions of 3dsMax.

IBL - Image Based Lighting

New Skylight options let you accurately generate shadows with IBL images. More than one map can be used as well!

Other Stuff

The String Options rollout lets you enter options as you would in a mental ray MI file.
If the mental ray renderer encounters a fatal error, 3ds Max continues to run, although to create a mental ray rendering again you need to restart 3ds Max. (as previously mentioned)

NVIDIA® iray® Renderer

The iray renderer now supports a variety of maps it could not render in previous releases. These include Checker, Color Correction, Dent, Gradient, Gradient Ramp, Marble, Perlin Marble, Speckle, Substance, Tiles, Waves, Wood, and the mental ray Ocean shader.
New solver method options let you turn on a sampler that improves the accuracy of indoor scenes, and a sampler that improves the quality of caustic lighting.
The Displacement settings have been moved to a rollout of their own.
When you use the Unlimited option, the Rendering Progress dialog now displays the number of iterations that have elapsed, and the progress bar shows an animated stripe rather than an absolute percentage.

Viewports

Nitrous viewports have been updated in a number of ways to improve performance speed:

Improved particle flow playback performance
Improved performance when the scene contains a large number of instanced objects
Improved performance with AutoCAD files
Improved playback performance for skinned objects
Better texture management. You can actually set the size you want for in scene maps!
Back-face culling in wireframe display
Nitrous viewports now fully support adaptive degradation, including the Never Degrade object property. See Display Performance Panel (Nitrous Drivers).

Support for Direct3D 11

For Windows 7 systems, Nitrous viewports can now use Direct3D 11.
The Nitrous Direct3D 9 driver is still available for Windows XP users. And for Windows 7 systems that don't have graphics acceleration, a Nitrous software driver is also
available. The Display Driver Selection dialog has been updated to reflect these changes.

File Handling

Automatic Gamma Correction for Bitmaps
When gamma correction is enabled, 3ds Max uses the gamma value saved with bitmap files it loads, and saves the gamma value with bitmap files it saves. If the file format does not support a gamma value, uses a gamma value of 2.2 for 8-bit image formats, and 1.0 (no gamma correction) for floating-point and logarithmic image formats.

Updates to the Log File
The log file now includes column headings, and entries include the process and thread IDs of the 3dsmax.exe process that added them. (All 3dsmax.exe processes running at the same time write to the same max.log file.)

Previously Released New Feature Videos

Here are the new feature videos of the highlighted features. These videos were released in early April, 2013.

Particle Flow/mParticles

[video]http://youtu.be/mOnUizVvLh4[/video]

Populate

[video]http://youtu.be/yo0Z_naWsMM[/video]

Viewport Pan and Zoom

[video]http://youtu.be/gRFDEDc0Stk[/video]

Perspective Match

[video]http://youtu.be/rswNzZoVLh8[/video]

Nitrous Viewport Improvements

[video]http://youtu.be/6MqULSrZTIo[/video]

Small Annoying Things

Here's the list of what specfic SAT's were addressed in this release. Some may already be mentioned above. This is just the list...

Cycle Viewports With Hotkeys
Escape Auto-Backup
Isolate logic has been improved
Unified Shortcuts with Edit Poly
Missing Plugins Management
Unwrap Performance
Copy Material Libraries
Caddies: Sliders Direction & Option for Old Dialogs
Max Scenes Thumbnails (Windows 7)

Be sure to follow me on twitter for future updates:

Follow @chrismmurray

Special Thanks to Louis Marcoux and Nicolas Holst for their contributions to this list.

3dsMax Tips and Tricks: Animated textures with a modifier

chrismmurray — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:51:42 UTC

Often times you may want simplify a way to control things that happen to objects-- like control rigs for bones or reaction manager setups. In this video, I take a look at a method where you can use a special modifier called Attribute Holder on an object to do the same thing. Not only do I show how to setup the modifier, we explore a couple of different solutions to the problem at hand: being able to animate the swapping out of diffuse maps on a character model.

Take a look:

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQkzsJnQulY[/video]

Modeling with spline cages and the Surface Modifier in 3ds Max

chrismmurray — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 18:06:07 UTC

Those that have been around 3ds Max for awhile know this technique and although its still a viable modeling method it doesn't get used as much (at least thats my perception). This technique isn't new buts very effective to certain types of organic or unusually shaped hard surface models.

Its called "Spline Modeling" or "Spline Cage Modeling". When it was introduced years ago it was called "Surface Tools". What ever you call it, its a great set of modeling tools in the 3ds Max quiver of arrows and deserves another look.

Before we jump into the videos, here is a quick before and after from a previous project I once worked on.

The image on the top shows the "cage-work" in progress. The image in the middle shows the preliminary surface applied. The last image is the final model. Yes, there were tons of steps in between, but the point is to show what a real deal spline cage looks like and what it can do for you model-wise.

Here is the completed model after additional poly editing.

Its important to understand the different ways this approach to modeling can work. For me, it's a starting point. I rarely use this method all the way through to completion. It usually gets me to a jump off point and then I commit the surface to polys and finish the model with other methods.

So here are a couple of tutorial videos that break down this method. Video number 1 is the basic how to. Video number 2 is the technique applied to a simple organic object.

Enjoy. (By the way, are you following me on twitter? I will tweet other new vids as I make them. @chrismmurray)

[video]http://youtu.be/fJbWMlqYy_0[/video]

[video]http://youtu.be/-cTdGjqJpeQ[/video]

3ds Max User Interface Primer for the New 3D Artist

chrismmurray — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:47:11 UTC

One of the most frequent comments I get from new users to 3ds Max is how complicated the UI is. Well, I'm not going to lie... it is complicated. But you must also realize that 3ds Max does complicated things. Many would like to think that 3d graphics and animation is so commoditized that its like desktop publishing was in late 80's. Well thats just not the case.

Sure, there are pro-sumer and hobbyist level tools out there to allow people to plunk around and do some interesting things. There are professional level tools as well that have a very different look and feel to the their UI.

But 3ds Max has been around for 20 years. Its a proven tool set and does serious (but fun!) things.

With 20 years of hindsight, sure there are UI elements I would do differently. Since I am at Autodesk I get to see and comment on new ideas surrounding workflow and UI.

Not knowing (or not saying ;) ) whether things will see the light of day I think its important to have a basic understanding of what I call the "10,000 ft.-Level" of the 3ds Max UI as it stands today. So in order to do that, I've created this UI primer for those artists that are new to 3ds Max. You can have any level of 3d expereince... this is really about organization and a little of the psychology behind the UI.

This video is about 15 minutes long, but I believe it might shave a couple of hours off your learning curve.

And now on with the show...

[video]http://youtu.be/ZJWYLlXcjdI[/video]

CASE STUDY: Network rendering vs Mental Ray’s Distributed Bucket Rendering.

chrismmurray — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 14:55:08 UTC

I recently had the chance to help out a friend with some rendering issues and what actually happened I thought would be an interesting case study here. This is NOT a how-to on acutally setting up and using Distributed Bucket Rendering (henceforth referred to as “DBR”). This is an exploration of one instance where it was a critical consideration in a very large render job. If you want the “how-to” of DBR. You can find it in the 3dsMax Help file here: http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/15/ENU/3ds-Max-Help/files/GUID-81270C05-C3D7-42A9-A129-459389FED064.htm

The Scenario (drastically summarized)

It was a huge rendering task for a “ride film”. If you’ve ever done anything thing like this, you know the image rendering and post processing is as big of a task as prepro and production. Rendering immersive environments frequently means rendering images to the specification of the projection system. In the case of my friend (and other ride films I’ve worked on) it usually a square image cropped from a larger one (1080x1080 cropped from 1920x1080 or some permutation thereof. Ok… that’s different. Simply and extra step right? Well, ride films are part of 360 workflows (a whole other blog post) which are almost always multi-camera rigs -- front, left, right, top, and back. You don’t usually need to render them bottom view.

Again, in the case of my friend, not only did he have to render 5 camera views, the sequence length was 2,800 frames. (note I did NOT say the film length). So quick math puts us at 14,000 frames—about 9 minutes if this were a linear piece… the segment is really only about 90 seconds. Because the design requirements have exorbitant detail and realism, the frames are rendering at between 30-60 minutes per frame. At this point the raging hordes jump in with better ideas and scene optimizations. But hold your horses! When you consider 5 camera sets-ups—just rendering the elements amps up the complexity almost exponentially. Sure, I concede that studios that only do ride films full time have an optimized system in place. So consider this a learning curve for those who don’t.

So while many of us are willing to tackle a 90 second piece without much concern, these 5 camera setups require lots of planning especially when it comes to rendering resources. Rendering time can frequently equal or surpass the entire production time due to the sheer volume of rendering. Heaven forbid there are changes—which there always are.

Finally, my buddy’s machines had limited RAM. The scene file took 16gb of RAM just to load the scene. It was swapping like crazy. As you will see below, DBR uses significantly LESS ram while still giving you access to the same amount of processing power. This is a critical consideration on a deadline.

Assumptions

Before we can dig into tackling the rendering task, let’s get some assumptions out of the way that are specific to this case study.

1.) Resolutions are fixed. We can’t really cheat upscaling lower res images because of special post processing required by the projection system

2.) The quantity of machines is more or less fixed—at 5. Meaning unless you’re a huge shop with unlimited (relatively speaking) rendering resources, you will most likely be rendering with what you have. Assume you can upgrade RAM and drive space. We’ll talk about that later.

3.) Mental Ray is a requirement. Some of this may apply with VRAY, but that is not part of the scope of this discussion. Since we’re talking specifically about DBR, you can assume MR is a requirement. DBR is not available in the other renderers that ship with 3dsMax.

4.) Render times or more or less consistently high--- about 30-60 min/frame.

5.) You know backburner and have used it successfully in some way. Without this context, this post may seem somewhat academic. Having firsthand knowledge of the issues surrounding network rendering will greatly assist you in trying some of these new things out.

Rendering strategy

OK here we go. This is why you are here. Why even consider anything but network rendering?

The answer to this question has direct correlation to assumption #2—machines are fixed.

Typically we’d just throw the frames at the farm and go home for the weekend. But rendering 14,000 frames requires a little more attention to planning. Saving as little as a 2 minutes/frame can equal up to 6 hours of time savings-- every minute counts.

But if render times are high (assumption #4) what options do I have? This is where DBR comes in.

Typically, DBR is a MR feature that is associated with rendering large single images. If you’re not familiar with what DBR is here’s a high-level explanation. Like net rendering it leverages machines on your network to render images. But instead of sending max files and scene data over and that machine rendering one whole single image…DBR leverages just the processor core to render portions of a single frame (called a bucket). You already seen buckets in MR, they are the little white corner squares that appear on an image when you render it. Each bucket represents a processor core. So if you have a dual quad-core, you will see 8 buckets. It’s pretty straight forward. With DBR, you can render a single frame on one machine faster if you use additional processors than with just that single machine’s processors. Those single machines are called “satellites.”

Render farm throughput: All frames are not equal

So how will we apply that here? When considering this method, you have to understand the math associated with the performance of your specific render farm. Every farm will be different. Everyone’s math calculations will be different. It is entirely possible that your math may lead you to conclude that DBR may not be beneficial. In other words, you need to know the capabilities of your farm per job. The only way to attain this is to experiment with these two methods.

In the case of my friend’s ride film, DBR made sense in some cases. What follows is specific to the render farm in question. These calculations will not apply to your farm. But the method of calculation will.

I use frames/hour as my final metric of rendering power. How many frames per hour can I write to disk? You can get caught up in swapping, memory latency, and all this other stuff. Those all mean something for sure, but ultimately, for me, it’s about fr/hr. And for this discussion see assumption #2 (again).

Many people, rightly so, are strict measurers of minutes or hours per frame. In the context of a single machine this is important. It’s also important to know this as part of our calculations. But it isn’t the best or final measure of the efficiency of the entire farm.

Understanding farm throughput

So for this rendering example we did some simple tests. We found “worst case frames”. Lots lights, geometry on full screen, etc… The frames we think would take the longest to render. Here's what we did.

· A series of at least 20 frames were rendered using the straight net render method. This should give you a good estimate about the number of frames per hour you can push through the farm.

· That same series of frames were rendering “locally” using DBR leveraging the processors of the other machines.

· Calculate the best option. Net render vs. DBR. The higher frames/hour count wins. Simple!

It’s important to recognize that as render jobs progress, the render times will change as well. This will impact the efficiency of the two methods differently. In some cases (like early on in the shot where the frame was partially black) straight network rendering was the better option. But in the middle, with all the intricate detail, lights and shadows DBR was by far the better option.

The ILLUSTRATION below is intended to demonstrate when we used old-school net rendering and when we chose to use DBR. The RED LINE indicate scene complexity. The brackets across the top indicate when we use each method. The blue boxes across the bottom indicate the progression through the animation in frames. It is not EXACT as no specific measurement is provided. Its merely an aid to visualise the decision making process for each rendering method.

What about adding more resources?

RAM

RAM is a logical place to add resources to an existing farm. But in this situation there is an interesting thing about RAM usage. The scene file needed 16GB of RAM just to load (not even mentioning rendering and swapping yet), but the DBR method only uses 3-4 GB to RENDER on the host machines. So while adding more RAM may impact overall single frame rendering per machine, adding RAM with the DBR method is negligible because of its low resource overhead.

Machines

Adding machines will definitely add to your frame throughput in single frame situations. One thing about DBR is that it has a 4 satellite limit (total of 5 machines, your workstation plus 4 others). But now you can begin to make some smart choices given what you now know about RAM usage and the DBR method. It may make sense to add a few bare-bones high-end CPU’s with minimal RAM to push through the DBR frames and still leave you room to upgrade them later. Remember, you can pick and choose which satellites to use. As you add faster cores, you can drop slower ones off the satellite list.

Lastly, there is a 4 satellite limit to using DBR per licensed copy of 3dsMax. If you want to use more than 5 machines, you need to have an additional license(s) of 3dsMax.

Drive Space (for swapping)

There is another area where people tend to spend some dough; adding drive space for swapping. While this is a decent idea as drive space is SO cheap, I find it unlikely that, unless your render farm also houses your ripped movie collection, you are lacking for drive space. I don’t think this a really a great investment unless it’s really needed for other reasons.

Why not use DBR and Backburner all the time?

As I mentioned there is a limitation to DBR. You can only use 4 “satellite” machines (regardless of the number of cores). So even though you may have 10 machines, you can’t leverage all ten on a single machine for DBR rendering. But there is a way slightly more complicated way to do that that is best visualized in the chart below.

Basically, you pick and submit only the licensed host machines to Backburner. NOTE: Each host machine MUST be a licensed copy of 3dsMax. Each host machine that you submit then refers to its own satellites (make sure they aren’t a satellite of another machine already!)

Conclusion

This solution is not for everyone. This bigger picture here is help you understand where the bottlenecks may appear in your network rendering project and what you can do about it. Sometimes, merely adding more resources isn't the best solution depending on your situation. Since this was a case study from a very specific project, I concede that there maybe some other limitations or factors we didn't cover here. Again, this wasn't intended to be an all encompassing exploration of the in's and out's of DBR. I'm sure you'll let me know about them in the comments section. But please do! I always have something to learn.

If you're not doing so already, I invite you to follow me on twitter at @chrismmurray.

SIGGRAPH 2012 Cometh. What do YOU want to see?

chrismmurray — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 14:40:04 UTC

I love this time of year and I hate this time of year.

I love this time of year because SIGGRAPH is almost here. I know I will see many friends I haven't seen since last year, I know I will hit Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles on Gower in Hollywood. I know I will get my son the latest Pixar movie poster (i've given up on the teapot. I have a life).

I hate this time of year becasue there is never enough time. I'm working on some cool demo content this year and its been six months in the making. We have original content that we shot specfically for MAB and SIGGPRAPH. Its going to be really fun. Here's some images from the shoot.

But I never have enough time to do everything I want. I know SIGGRAPH is no surprise but there are things I can't write here that put constraints on what and how long I have to show or talk about stuff.

But you have a say too! I will be doing an "Area Community Presentation" again this year and I would like to hear from YOU about what kinds of thisn YOU would like to see. I can do anything I want... training... tips and tricks... what ever. But I want to see what kind of things you would like to know about. Maybe I will add them to my presentation!

I'm figuring out what this presentation will be right now... so if you want to see something specific... TELL ME NOW. even if you aren't attending SIGGRAPH, I will most likely post a video of it... so don't hold back. Post your wish list items here on this Blog post.

In the mean time, here are some behind the scenes pics of your production shoot for this year's demo content. Big UPS to my friends at Full Sail University in Orlando Florida for having me over for the geek fest. Check them out. (Full Sail University)

We cast Ginger Leigh as the Heroine of our show.

Smoke Artist Ken Larue and Softimage AE Mark Schoennagal keeping the PA's busy with food runs.

Your's truly shooting on the cyc. The day 2 shoot was out on Full Sail's back lot.

3D Artist Profile: Ryan Tow, PUSHpixel

chrismmurray — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 17:47:56 UTC

Tell us a little about your self. In a few brief sentences, what are broad strokes of the path that have brought you to this point in your career?

Studied landscape architecture. Landed first job at Yung Design Group in Branson, Missouri in 1997, where I used the wierdest hybrid of AutoCAD 3D models, mylar, markers, and ink pens you've ever seen to create architectural renderings for resort marketing.

Based on a client request, I made the jump to 3D Studio VIZ R1 in late 1998, and started down the path of the architectural visualization world. Have lost track of how many hundreds of renderings and animations I've done over the years.

Opened a dedicated graphics studio for Yung Design Group in Des Moines, Iowa in 2002, which also brought me closer to home. Continued there until striking out on my own in 2010 to found PUSHpixel, which has allowed me to chase some work that was outside of the traditional architectural marketing work I'd done for the prior thirteen years.

What (or who!) were some of your major influences along the way?

The first several years of my work in the 3D world were pretty isolated. Being the only guy in the office or even the area code who knew how to do what I was doing forced me to be very self-dependent. While this was extremely frustrating (there is a list a mile long of things I wish I'd known in the first five years that were there all along), it also challenged me to have the confidence required to perform the work at an extremely high level of quality.

A foundation in design rather than in the technical aspects of the software caused me to see 3dsmax (and VIZ before I switched over in 2006) as a tool more likened to a pencil. A very expensive and complicated pencil. Once I was at the point where I wasn't fighting the interface or my skill set any longer, it was simply a matter of using this special pencil to apply the things I knew about design to my illustration and animation work.

What is favorite non-computer related creative outlet?

I have too many hobbies. I can't stop. Highlights are;

- Time with my family (wife and three kids)
- Woodworking
- Remodeling our house
- Brewing beer
- Photography
- Cooking
- Camping

What is your favorite aspect of 3dsMax and why?

My happy place is finding the tricks that let me way, way, way over-deliver for my clients while meeting their budgets. Since I have always been in a small operation (largest group of artists I've had on staff in my career was four), the challenge has always been to squeeze more out of less.

Finding solutions for my client that don't just look good, but fit within their budget requirements, make them look better, and ultimately make THEIR project or product more successful is probably the thing I like most about 3dsmax.

I guess I didn't really talk about the software itself, though. My favorite part of 3dsMax itself is the fact that for any given problem, there are probably at least five ways to solve it. The marriage of the highly technical with the highly aesthetic is hugely pleasing to my need for feeding both right brain and left brain. The entire interface, from the modifier stack to the new Slate material editor, are in essence to me an extremely complex puzzle to solve. Solving that puzzle in the most efficient and aesthetically pleasing way is what allows me to provide my clients with images and animations that bring their ideas into focus and ultimately make them more successful.

What non-cg talent or skill has proved the most beneficial in your cg-career (skill, ability, philosophy, what ever....)?

Being willing to put the needs of others - clients, co-workers - ahead of yourself. Never being satisfied that your work is good enough, but also knowing how to temper that with profitability and appropriateness (not ever project needs a feature-film level of detail).

It's not a new saying, but there are, as always, three variables to this work. They are time, quality, and money. Pick two of them.

What advice would you give to someone starting to learn 3D in hopes of building a career in 3D or VFX?

Even the simplest projects can teach you a ton. I wrestled for years with the frustration that I wasn't doing visualization work for higher profile projects. I must have built a hundred four story, twelve unit condo building models. Over and over and over, it was variations on a theme. It took me getting away from those to realize how much they'd taught me about efficiency, quality, and the process of continual refinement of my skills. Learning that there weren't projects that were "beneath me" was a big deal.

With apologies to all who make their living writing them, tutorials aren't going to teach you much beyond the nuts and bolts of the interface. Put the tutorial book down and make something. Make your desk, model your car, do an animation of an alien ship landing in your backyard, but make something.

The most beautiful images you've ever seen aren't commercial viable if someone isn't willing to pay you for them. Knowing when to stop is a vital component of this work. There is definitely a place for non-commercial art, but it doesn't pay well.

What do you want to tell me (and thus the world) that I didn't ask!

What has made me successful (wait, I'm successful?) in this business has been my ability to find a niche and do the best possible work I can in that niche. I can't animate a character to save my life. About every six months, I decide that THIS is the year I'm finally going to master particles or maxscript or NURBS or Feature X. Coming to grips with the fact that I can't do it all was a powerful thing. Knowing what I don't know frees me up to excel at the things I do know. Ultimately, that brings me back to that theme of then allowing me to make my clients more successful. Having fun doing it along the way doesn't hurt either.

How do our readers find you (assuming you want to be found)? (Twitter handle, URL, Facebook, Google+, etc...)

Ryan Tow
Owner | Artist | Animator
PUSHpixel, LLC
http://pushpixel.com
http://twitter.com/ryantow

Is that enough? don't want to do the social media overload thing. I'm a nerd. I have them all

Submitting sessions for Autodesk University because its good Karma

chrismmurray — Fri, 11 May 2012 20:00:00 UTC

Its that time of year... NAB is over. SIGGRAPH is looming over the horizon... but all is quiet in the world.... that can mean only one thing...AU Submission time... au.autodesk.com/

AU is one of the most underrated but best shows of the year... Media and Entertainment are the late comers to this particular party but thats changing. More and more visual artists, animators, and VFX types are seeing AU as a true creative intersection.

Don't miss out this year. You won't be dissappointed.

3D Artist Profile: Jamie Gwilliam

chrismmurray — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 19:00:00 UTC

Hi Jamie! Thanks for your time today. Tell us a little about your self. In a few brief sentences, what are broad strokes of thepath that have brought you to this point in your career?

"Ive been creating 3D professionally since 2000. I’ve always been interested in design, whether it’s architecture, products, or street art. This steered me towards positions as a product designer, a graphic designer, followed by various roles in the architectural world. In one way or another, 3ds Max has been a part of every professional job I’ve had. It’s crazy to think how much I’ve relied on this product over the years."

What (or who!) were some of your major influences along the way?

"Snowboarding videos seem to have been an influence on me recently, I particularily like the unique style they have, mainly due to the footage grading and cmera moves. the three main non-cgi influences have probably been Stark, Banksy, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. With the job I do, I'm lucky to see a broad range of 3ds Max users. It's rare not to find at least one piece in their portfolio that doesn't give me some inspiration.

As a child then their was no better inspiration than Lego.I think nurtured my imagination, and hunger for constructing things in CG."

What is favorite non-computer related creative outlet?

I'm sure every person featured on your site will say photography. It's almost a standard in the CG world now that you must understand how a real-world camera works to work in a CG job. (Sorry Chris but I'm running a Canon 7D currently.) I try to get all I can in the image, but will always do some minor post. I also try to keep a folder of imagery on my computer for inspiration. This is my only creative outlet. My main hobbies are mountain biking and snowboarding. The latter, I tend not to do as often as I would like. You can find me most Saturdays out in the forest. This allows me a chance to switch off and de-stress.

What is your favorite aspect of 3dsMax and why?

"My favourite aspect of 3ds Max is the community of users it has gathered. For me there's no other 3D application out their that has such a strong community of artists that are willing to freely share tips, tools and workflows. It's very rare to find such high quality free tutorials and files. This is how I developed most of my workflows and resulted in me starting my own blog to give back to this exceptional community.

If we were to focus on just one feature in 3ds Max then I would be inclined to choose the 'Flex' modifier. It's such a simple tool, but is amazingly powerful for all types of projects, by adding a secondary level of motion without any complex knowledge."

What non-cg talent or skill has proved the most beneficial in your cg-career (skill, ability, philosophy, what ever....)?

My awareness of needing to market my skills and share knowledge arrived late to me. I wish I had started this sooner, as it has certainly helped in my career. It wasn't until mid way through my production career that I started to share imagery and animations with software developers. This led to some freelance work as well as leading to me being a beta tester for various products and plugins. The first image I created and shared was for Cebas' finalRender for Siggraph use. This must of been around 2005. This one simple image led to be included in various publications and as result leaded to some job offers. There's a wealth of talented 3ds Max artists out there, but it's often difficult to find them, particularly when language is involved. Sharing your work with people like Autodesk for showreels, or publications like 3dArtist or 3dWorld will instantly raise your profile, and you never know where this may lead.

What advice would you give to someone starting to learn 3D in hopes of building a career in 3D or VFX?

"Attend 'meetups' or CG gatherings. You will learn more in one of these meetups than you can learn in a week of book reading or trawling the internet. I try to attend the London 3ds Max User group, The monthly London User Group is regularly attended by 50-60 high-profile users, and has been going for at least five years. The evening is an informal gathering held in a pub, which probably helps the sharing of knowledge. It’s also great to hear that more user groups are starting to appear, so keep an eye on my blog for more info.

I would also add, (perhaps controversially) to not believe everything you read or watch on the Internet. Try out different work-flows and tools, and make up your own mind. What work-flow that suits someone else may not suit you or more importantly your style of work. Try not to copy other peoples work, but build on the style and make it your own.If your making a show-reel, then choose some music that is not in well known. The ones I enjoy watching are enhanced by the music which is unique in itself. Don't repeat clips to fill the length of the track. If you don't have enough projects, then just make it a shorter show-reel. For me there's nothing worse than keep seeing the same model or image appearing. (My first show-reel was extremely guilty of this.) I also recommend including a small text description at the bottom of each clip in your show-reel that describes what you did on it. Particularly if you've just graduated and have some joint projects showcased. Don't be worried about saying you only did the texturing on that shot. This reduces any confusion and shows honesty. Finally, I would also say to explore all types of 3d work. the CGI world is merging and the skills needed are merging from each industry. An awareness helps you develop as a skilled artist. Using social media like Twitter can certainly help. You can follow me using the hash tag @3dsjamiesjewels."

Thanks Jamie! How do our readers find you (assuming you want to be found)? (Twitter handle, URL, Facebook, Google+, etc...)

"Jamie Gwilliam, Autodesk, @3dsjamiesjewels, www.jamiesjewels.typepad.com

I am a 3ds Max Application Specialist, based at Autodesk London. The territory I look after is a varied one, classed as EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). The job involves looking after a number of Media & Entertainment Division products that fall into the Entertainment Creation Suites. My core focus is around 3ds Max, and this is certainly my favourite product. I shouldn’t really have a favourite program, but it’s difficult to not warm to it, considering I have spent a third of my life working with this creative tool. My role requires me to liaise directly with customers, and also helps our channel partners with their sales activities."

Is there an artist you would like to learn more about? Let me know... comment below and provide links to their work. Don’t recommend your self please. You can also tweet me links and suggestions @chrismmurray

Bob Anderson, Sword Master, Dies

chrismmurray — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 19:00:00 UTC

In our creative world where so much is fake, when something on-screen that is real is absolutely fantastic we-as movie goers- share in the awe of the human performance and frequently contemplate how we can bottle some it and bring it into our work.

Bob Anderson was a person you don't know, but were in awe of his work. Kind of like Gollum made Andy Serkis a celebrity in his own right, Bob Anderson would have been in the same camp. He was a master swordsman that has made many a light saber battle breathtaking and completely believable. Besides actually playing Darth Vader on screen while fighting Luke Skywalker in Star Wars Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, he managed to bring numerous other epic battles to life on-screen such as Princess Bride, Mask of Zorro, Highlander (there can be only one!!), Pirates of the Carribbean, and, none other than Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring.

This blog may not seem to be a place where you’d expect homage to a master swordsman. But now in his absence, animating anything close to his work, without the master to guide you, just got infinitely harder.

With respect, RIP Bob Anderson. You can read a full obit in the NYT. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/movies/bob-anderson-sword-fight-choreographer-dies-at-89.html)

And here is the master at work: http://youtu.be/wRY5dl_oxvo

Production resources for the beginning, not the end.

chrismmurray — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:00:00 UTC

Its been awhile since I’ve blogged. The last time in earnest was prior to me joining Autodesk so I’m still shaking loose the rust a bit. In fact, its kind of like starting from scratch-- as if I’ve never blogged before. How do I start blogging again? Where do I begin (again)?

These questions reminded me to take the same approach to this endeavor as I would a CG project. Follow a plan.

In production, there are several ways to do any one single thing, but ultimately, all successful projects work a plan. (some better than others!)

So I figured this would be a good place to start to serve you, my reader.

In the spirit of beginning new projects, I want to introduce you a great resource for all things animation: www.animationmeat.com.

The site may not be filled with pretty pictures, but I assure you that its what under hte hood that matters here. The majority of these things are not necessarily specifically for CG either. But the principles of animation are sound methods and processes regardless of the final media. There are a couple of things I will be exploring more specifically from this site. There are several significant animation gems here. Poke around and see what you can find. You won’t be disappointed.

By the way, are you following me on twitter? @chrismmurray

Coming up next.... AU2011 recap from my HDR acquisition class...

3dsMax Guilty Pleasures

chrismmurray — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:00:00 UTC

"Dear Chris, great news! you're doing an AU class this year, we need you reach out to development and see how things are going and we're giving you a blog, Kthnxbye - Shawn"

Well, not exactly, but working with Shawn Hendriks can be rapid fire. Wait a minute... that last thing was new.... a blog? on the Area? OK. Roger that!

And 3 weeks later, here I am. My name is Chris Murray and I will be writing about 3dsMax of course but hopefully so much more.

I chose the name "MaxNation" because I think one of the things that makes 3dsMax so great is not us-- the great mother ship that is Autodesk, but you-- the great customer, artist and product fan. I hope to use this blog to shine the light on you. I want to hear from you. I want to talk about you. Maybe, just maybe we will squeak in 3dsMax (duh! of course we will!)

The good news is that I have blogged before. Once I joined Autodesk in 2008 I kind of shut it down to focus on my new job as Technical Marketing Specialist. If you want ot see who you'll be reading you can check it out here: 3dguru.wordpress.com/

Eventually you will learn about me, But as this is my first blog posting and not only am I a 'Desker but I am also an ardent fan of the software, I thought I would start by sharing you some my guilty pleasures surrounding 3dsMax. I'm posting this video from the Area I created for SIGGRAPH 2011. You actually get to see me and hear me. A fitting introduction I think. Soon I will writing more stories about you-- and your guilty pleasures in 3dsMax. Until then...See you round.

Oh!! Besides this Blog, please feel free to connect with me on twitter @chrismmurray

Now on with the show....

area.autodesk.com/siggraph2011/demos/chrismurray