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Link: SubdivisionModeling.com
Price: 3495.00
Reviewer: Adam Allen-Foord
Posted By: kurv
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 tech
specs in
PDF format
Every
3D artist has heard of 3DS Max even if they haven’t
used it. In fact it’s one of the few programs that non-3D
people have heard of.
Why
is it so popular (especially given its price tag)? It’s
been around for a long time and it used in lots of studios,
particularly in games companies, but this is slowly changing.
For this reason, artists hoping to get into the games industry
feel that they have to know Max. Because so many artists use
and know Max, the studios use it. And so on... |
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How does your average 3D beginner afford it? Put simply,
they don’t. There are a few options to learn Max.
There is a 30 day download from Autodesk which you may
also see cover-mounted on magazines. I use it at college
(for free), but if you are a student in a college without
it, you can buy a two year license from Autodesk.
I got a copy from the Autodesk website for £88 (about
$ 155) and there are no saving or rendering restrictions
but you may not use it for commercial work. This cannot
be upgraded when a new version comes out but I think it’s
a pretty good price if you are serious about learning
it and I would recommend it.
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OK,
enough of the introduction. Here’s my view as a beginner
of Max’s modeling tools. I won’t go into all the
other features, such as character animation, physics, cloth,
renderer etc. Max can probably do just about anything if you
know how to use it. A lot of the extra features in Max have
been bolted on from either other programs or plug-ins. It
tends to have a bit of a dis-jointed feel to it because of
that and opening the hair module for example seems almost
like opening another program.
The
first thing you see when you open Max is four viewports, top,
front, side and perspective. You can enlarge or reduce these
by moving the dividers about or you can just concentrate on
one window. The views have options to display everything from
wireframe view to shaded, textured objects. If your graphics
card is a bit on the slooow side like mine, you may want to
keep the detail level down. You can also have background images
for reference images. |
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You
also notice all the toolbars. You can move these around or turn
them off, but you’ll soon wish you had a bigger screen.
I want to concentrate on the sub-div side of things (you can
also use NURMS, NURBS, patches and meshes) so I’ll give
you my impressions of these particular tools which are mostly
found in your right toolbar, with other toggles like move, scale
and rotate at the top. You’ll save a LOT of time if you
learn the keyboard shortcuts for these and other things like
shifting between point, edge and face selections. Keyboard shortcuts
are all editable, as are toolbars and right-click menus. I would
maybe bother to change these if I was some sort of modeling
Einstein, but as I’m not, they are unchanged on my version.
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To get started, there are primitive elements like spheres,
cubes and teapots (always handy, the teapot) which you can
then right-click and turn into an editable poly. Once you
have converted it, the object can be selected in different
ways; vertex, edge, border (an open edge loop), poly and object.
Selections can be made by clicking, drawing a border around
an object or painting which is useful. You can use then move,
rotate, scale whatever is selected. If you want to use soft
selection, you can turn it on in the right hand menu. For
symmetrical objects, there is a seam-free mirroring option.
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Max
has a system for modifying, tweaking and smoothing called
the stack. Situated in the right hand toolbar, it’s
a little confusing at first, but basically you can layer different
effects onto your basic mesh and turn them on or off via a
little lightbulb symbol. If you want to bend an object, you
scroll down a massive list to the bend modifier, set the parameters
using little arrow buttons or you can enter a number. You
can then add another modifier on top of that. There are a
huge number of modifiers ranging from melt and inflate to
turbosmooth and a couple of handy free-form distort cages.
When you are happy with the results you can collapse the stack
so you are left with a plain editable poly object.
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For
the non-organic modeler, there is crease and edge weighting.
Different areas can have different smoothing groups so hard
and soft edges can be mixed. I found this fiddly to use, but
that could just be me. Architects are well served with a batch
of primitives like doors, windows and stairs. These can be
quickly altered to specify hinges, number of steps and so
on.
There
are edge loop and ring selection options and also plenty of
slice, merge, bevel and extrude tools which change slightly
depending on whether you have points, edges or polys selected.
These can be tweaked with the mouse or you can enter numeric
values for more accurate results.
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For the beginner, Max has a robust set of poly-modeling tools.
The built-in user tutorials (accessed via the help menu) are
particularly good and should get you started off nicely. There
are also huge amounts of Max tutorials available on the web
and DVD which all go in its favor. I wouldn’t say it’s
the best or easiest modeler I’ve used but it’s
certainly not the worst.
It’s not the perfect beginner’s modeling tool
but that’s not really the market Autodesk are aiming
at. Max comes into its own as a complete solution so if you
need a do-it-all professional level program, and you’ve
got the money, go for it.
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Adam
Allen-Foord January 2006
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