Fielding
08-23-2002, 03:06 AM
149. Thin Wall Refraction Map
-----------------------------
At 100% refraction and opacity, you can see no diffuse color or mapping, and there is not much illusion of a refractive material. The effect is invisible. In the Maps rollout of the parent material, set Refraction Amount to 50%, and in the Basic Parameters rollout, set Opacity to a value greater than 0.
150. Thin Wall Refraction Map
-----------------------------
If there is unevenness in the surface of the glass, there is a secondary refraction. Thin Wall Refraction generates this secondary refraction if the material also has a bump map present. The algorithm guesses at the scaling of the secondary refraction, and can create too large an effect. If this happens, scale the effect down by reducing this value to less than one.
151. Rendering
--------------
Smaller images render much more quickly. For example, you can use 320 x 240 to render draft images, then change to a larger size for your final work.
152. Object Motion Blur
-----------------------
If you want to obtain a smooth blur effect, use the maximum settings of 16/16. If you want to cut down rendering time, values of 12/12 will give you much smoother results than 16/12.
153. Image Motion Blur
----------------------
When blurred objects overlap, blurring doesn't work correctly and there are gaps in the rendering. Because image motion blur is applied after rendering, it can't account for object overlap. To fix this problem, render each blurred object separately, to a different layer, and then composite the two layers using the Alpha Compositor in Video Post.
154. Image Motion Blur
----------------------
Nor does image motion blur work on any of the following:
Anything with an Optimize.
Any primitive with animated segments.
MeshSmooth of any type with a "Smoothness" value (under iterations) other than 1.
MeshSmooth on polygons with Keep Faces Convex on.
Anything with Displacement Material.
155. Glow
---------
In many instances, you may want to apply different Lens Effects settings to different pieces of geometry or ID's. To accomplish this, add additional Lens Effects entries to the Lens Effects Parameters list. Then set each different Lens Effect entry to affect a different Effect or Object ID and proceed.
156. Depth of Field
-------------------
When additional Render Effects are being applied to an image or animation, the Depth of Field effect should be the last effect to be rendered. The order of the rendered effects is listed in the Render Effects dialog.
157. Combustion
---------------
Multiple apparatus objects can display the same combustion effect. For example, torches on a wall can all use the same effect. Assign a different seed to each apparatus to vary the effect.
158. Fog
--------
As a general guideline, set Far Range just beyond the objects, and Near Range to intersect the object geometry closest to the camera.
159. Standard Fog
-----------------
If you check Exponential, this increases the Step Size value to avoid banding.
160. Standard Fog
-----------------
If you want tendrils to really pop out, try making the density greater than 100.
161. Volume Fog
---------------
Don't set this value to 0. At 0, Soften Gizmo Edges can cause aliased edges.
162. Volume Light
-----------------
Possibly the best effect is to use white fog and then color it with a colored light.
163. Volume Light
-----------------
When your scene includes transparent objects inside a volume light, set MAX Light to 100 percent.
164. Volume Light
-----------------
With the Use Light Smp Range option, the higher the light's Smp Range value, the slower the rendering. However, with this option you can usually get good results with a lower Sample Volume % setting (such as 4), which reduces rendering time.
165. Volume Light
-----------------
Rendering Volume Light at some angles can introduce aliasing problems. To eliminate aliasing problems activate the Near and Far Attenuation settings in the light object that the Volume Light applied to.
166. Video Post
---------------
If you leave the Preview and VP Queue buttons active when you exit Lens Effects Flare, it will take several seconds to re-render the scene in the main preview window the next time you start Lens Effects Flare.
167. Lens Effects Focus
-----------------------
You can also choose your camera target as the focal object so its depth in the scene determines the focus.
168. NURBS
----------
When you use Zoom Extents, 3DS MAX displays the entire extents of a NURBS object, including its control lattice. Because CVs can be located some distance from an object, the curve or surface itself (the object's renderable geometry) is sometimes hard to see. If this happens, use Zoom Region or Field of View to zoom in.
169. NURBS
----------
To improve performance while you animate your scene, make the surfaces in your NURBS model nonrelational surfaces. Modifiers treat nonrelational surfaces as if they were independent CV surfaces: you can animate the scene more efficiently, and then turn relational modeling back on before you render.
170. NURBS
----------
Shaded Lattice is a good option to choose when you use the modifier stack with nonrelational NURBS surfaces.
171. NURBS
----------
To improve performance still further, display surfaces as shaded lattices (see Display Controls for NURBS Models). With Relational Stack off and Shaded Lattice chosen, NURBS objects perform on the stack about as well as mesh objects do.
172. NURBS
----------
When you create a complicated surface, especially with the Lathe modifier, you often want to render both sides of the surface. Turn on Force 2-Sided in the Render Scene dialog to see both sides of the extruded or lathed surface. To see both sides in viewports, turn on Force 2-Sided in the Viewport Configuration dialog.
173. NURBS
----------
If Soft Selection appears not to be working, the Falloff value might be too small for the size of your surface. On the Soft Selection rollout, increase the value of Falloff so it encompasses other points.
174. NURBS
----------
Rows and columns are easily visible when the NURBS surface is planar, or nearly so. When the surface has a complicated curvature, rows and columns can be more difficult to see. The Row, Column, and Row/Column buttons can be especially useful in this situation.
175. NURBS
----------
It is a good idea to reparameterize after you have added CVs to a curve by refining.
176. NURBS
----------
You can increase the curvature of an indentation in a surface by increasing the weight of the CVs surrounding the indented area. This is easier and often more effective than moving the indented area's CVs.
177. NURBS
----------
Make Loft creates a loft with uniformly spaced curves. To make a loft with adaptively spaced iso curves, manually create the curves and then loft them with U Iso Lines, V Iso Lines, or U and V Iso Lines.
178. NURBS
----------
If you use the UVW Map modifier on an animated NURBS surface, be sure to turn on NURBS Only > Use Texture Surface to prevent the texture from shifting during animation. This is a new feature in 3DS MAX R3.
179. NURBS
----------
You can also use axis constraints by using SHIFT-clone at the Curve sub-object level.
180. NURBS
----------
If the fillet you initially create is in an error state. often this is because the radius is not large enough to bridge the distance between the two curves. Increasing the Radius value gives you a correct fillet. The fillet becomes an arc displayed in the dependent object color (green by default). When the fillet is in an error state it is displayed as a straight line in the error color (orange by default).
181. NURBS
----------
Loft and extrude surface sub-objects can be based on only a single curve. If you have dependent curves and want to use the set of curves (for example, two parents and a fillet between them) as the basis of an extrude or loft surface, first go to the Curve sub-object level and use Join to connect the curves.
182. NURBS
----------
U Lofts can be extremely dense surfaces. To improve performance while working with viewports, set the surface approximation for viewports to Curvature Dependent.
You can speed up U loft creation by making sure that the curves you loft have the same number of CVs in the same order (that is, the curves point in the same direction). Also, CV curves have a performance advantage over point curves.
Turning off display of dependent sub-objects, including the U loft itself, also speeds up interactive performance when you create a U loft. The default keyboard toggle for dependent sub-object display is CTRL+D (the Plug-In Keyboard Shortcut Toggle button must be turned on.)
183. NURBS
----------
If 3D Studio MAX doesn't create the multisided blend surface, fuse the points or CVs at the corners where the surfaces meet. Sometimes snapping the corners doesn't work, because of roundoff error.
184. NURBS
----------
Typically when setting up tracker gizmos you should create and position them all roughly in a zoomed-out view, then zoom in on one of them, fine-tune its position and bounds, then tab to the next gizmo and repeat.
185. Camera Tracking
--------------------
Even though the feature is first tracked to the nearest pixel at whole pixel increments and then tracked at the subpixel level within that one pixel range, the tracking time can increase significantly in proportion to the inverse square of the subpixel level. For this reason it's suggested that you set the subpixel level to as low as possible. Usually 1/8 of a pixel is adequate for features well distributed around the scene. Use greater levels if the features are fairly close together, or move very slowly within the frame.
-----------------------------
At 100% refraction and opacity, you can see no diffuse color or mapping, and there is not much illusion of a refractive material. The effect is invisible. In the Maps rollout of the parent material, set Refraction Amount to 50%, and in the Basic Parameters rollout, set Opacity to a value greater than 0.
150. Thin Wall Refraction Map
-----------------------------
If there is unevenness in the surface of the glass, there is a secondary refraction. Thin Wall Refraction generates this secondary refraction if the material also has a bump map present. The algorithm guesses at the scaling of the secondary refraction, and can create too large an effect. If this happens, scale the effect down by reducing this value to less than one.
151. Rendering
--------------
Smaller images render much more quickly. For example, you can use 320 x 240 to render draft images, then change to a larger size for your final work.
152. Object Motion Blur
-----------------------
If you want to obtain a smooth blur effect, use the maximum settings of 16/16. If you want to cut down rendering time, values of 12/12 will give you much smoother results than 16/12.
153. Image Motion Blur
----------------------
When blurred objects overlap, blurring doesn't work correctly and there are gaps in the rendering. Because image motion blur is applied after rendering, it can't account for object overlap. To fix this problem, render each blurred object separately, to a different layer, and then composite the two layers using the Alpha Compositor in Video Post.
154. Image Motion Blur
----------------------
Nor does image motion blur work on any of the following:
Anything with an Optimize.
Any primitive with animated segments.
MeshSmooth of any type with a "Smoothness" value (under iterations) other than 1.
MeshSmooth on polygons with Keep Faces Convex on.
Anything with Displacement Material.
155. Glow
---------
In many instances, you may want to apply different Lens Effects settings to different pieces of geometry or ID's. To accomplish this, add additional Lens Effects entries to the Lens Effects Parameters list. Then set each different Lens Effect entry to affect a different Effect or Object ID and proceed.
156. Depth of Field
-------------------
When additional Render Effects are being applied to an image or animation, the Depth of Field effect should be the last effect to be rendered. The order of the rendered effects is listed in the Render Effects dialog.
157. Combustion
---------------
Multiple apparatus objects can display the same combustion effect. For example, torches on a wall can all use the same effect. Assign a different seed to each apparatus to vary the effect.
158. Fog
--------
As a general guideline, set Far Range just beyond the objects, and Near Range to intersect the object geometry closest to the camera.
159. Standard Fog
-----------------
If you check Exponential, this increases the Step Size value to avoid banding.
160. Standard Fog
-----------------
If you want tendrils to really pop out, try making the density greater than 100.
161. Volume Fog
---------------
Don't set this value to 0. At 0, Soften Gizmo Edges can cause aliased edges.
162. Volume Light
-----------------
Possibly the best effect is to use white fog and then color it with a colored light.
163. Volume Light
-----------------
When your scene includes transparent objects inside a volume light, set MAX Light to 100 percent.
164. Volume Light
-----------------
With the Use Light Smp Range option, the higher the light's Smp Range value, the slower the rendering. However, with this option you can usually get good results with a lower Sample Volume % setting (such as 4), which reduces rendering time.
165. Volume Light
-----------------
Rendering Volume Light at some angles can introduce aliasing problems. To eliminate aliasing problems activate the Near and Far Attenuation settings in the light object that the Volume Light applied to.
166. Video Post
---------------
If you leave the Preview and VP Queue buttons active when you exit Lens Effects Flare, it will take several seconds to re-render the scene in the main preview window the next time you start Lens Effects Flare.
167. Lens Effects Focus
-----------------------
You can also choose your camera target as the focal object so its depth in the scene determines the focus.
168. NURBS
----------
When you use Zoom Extents, 3DS MAX displays the entire extents of a NURBS object, including its control lattice. Because CVs can be located some distance from an object, the curve or surface itself (the object's renderable geometry) is sometimes hard to see. If this happens, use Zoom Region or Field of View to zoom in.
169. NURBS
----------
To improve performance while you animate your scene, make the surfaces in your NURBS model nonrelational surfaces. Modifiers treat nonrelational surfaces as if they were independent CV surfaces: you can animate the scene more efficiently, and then turn relational modeling back on before you render.
170. NURBS
----------
Shaded Lattice is a good option to choose when you use the modifier stack with nonrelational NURBS surfaces.
171. NURBS
----------
To improve performance still further, display surfaces as shaded lattices (see Display Controls for NURBS Models). With Relational Stack off and Shaded Lattice chosen, NURBS objects perform on the stack about as well as mesh objects do.
172. NURBS
----------
When you create a complicated surface, especially with the Lathe modifier, you often want to render both sides of the surface. Turn on Force 2-Sided in the Render Scene dialog to see both sides of the extruded or lathed surface. To see both sides in viewports, turn on Force 2-Sided in the Viewport Configuration dialog.
173. NURBS
----------
If Soft Selection appears not to be working, the Falloff value might be too small for the size of your surface. On the Soft Selection rollout, increase the value of Falloff so it encompasses other points.
174. NURBS
----------
Rows and columns are easily visible when the NURBS surface is planar, or nearly so. When the surface has a complicated curvature, rows and columns can be more difficult to see. The Row, Column, and Row/Column buttons can be especially useful in this situation.
175. NURBS
----------
It is a good idea to reparameterize after you have added CVs to a curve by refining.
176. NURBS
----------
You can increase the curvature of an indentation in a surface by increasing the weight of the CVs surrounding the indented area. This is easier and often more effective than moving the indented area's CVs.
177. NURBS
----------
Make Loft creates a loft with uniformly spaced curves. To make a loft with adaptively spaced iso curves, manually create the curves and then loft them with U Iso Lines, V Iso Lines, or U and V Iso Lines.
178. NURBS
----------
If you use the UVW Map modifier on an animated NURBS surface, be sure to turn on NURBS Only > Use Texture Surface to prevent the texture from shifting during animation. This is a new feature in 3DS MAX R3.
179. NURBS
----------
You can also use axis constraints by using SHIFT-clone at the Curve sub-object level.
180. NURBS
----------
If the fillet you initially create is in an error state. often this is because the radius is not large enough to bridge the distance between the two curves. Increasing the Radius value gives you a correct fillet. The fillet becomes an arc displayed in the dependent object color (green by default). When the fillet is in an error state it is displayed as a straight line in the error color (orange by default).
181. NURBS
----------
Loft and extrude surface sub-objects can be based on only a single curve. If you have dependent curves and want to use the set of curves (for example, two parents and a fillet between them) as the basis of an extrude or loft surface, first go to the Curve sub-object level and use Join to connect the curves.
182. NURBS
----------
U Lofts can be extremely dense surfaces. To improve performance while working with viewports, set the surface approximation for viewports to Curvature Dependent.
You can speed up U loft creation by making sure that the curves you loft have the same number of CVs in the same order (that is, the curves point in the same direction). Also, CV curves have a performance advantage over point curves.
Turning off display of dependent sub-objects, including the U loft itself, also speeds up interactive performance when you create a U loft. The default keyboard toggle for dependent sub-object display is CTRL+D (the Plug-In Keyboard Shortcut Toggle button must be turned on.)
183. NURBS
----------
If 3D Studio MAX doesn't create the multisided blend surface, fuse the points or CVs at the corners where the surfaces meet. Sometimes snapping the corners doesn't work, because of roundoff error.
184. NURBS
----------
Typically when setting up tracker gizmos you should create and position them all roughly in a zoomed-out view, then zoom in on one of them, fine-tune its position and bounds, then tab to the next gizmo and repeat.
185. Camera Tracking
--------------------
Even though the feature is first tracked to the nearest pixel at whole pixel increments and then tracked at the subpixel level within that one pixel range, the tracking time can increase significantly in proportion to the inverse square of the subpixel level. For this reason it's suggested that you set the subpixel level to as low as possible. Usually 1/8 of a pixel is adequate for features well distributed around the scene. Use greater levels if the features are fairly close together, or move very slowly within the frame.