Some Questions about 3DS: would appreciate any answers

[erilaz]

Dare I mention the famous four-letter abbreviation?:D You really can get most of these answers quite quickly via the manual, either in book or helpfile. but, for user-friendliness sake, here's a couple:

You can render in PNG format simply by typing it into the save file dialog box in the render panel. (eg. myrender.png) I am vague on how flash incorportates it's backgrounds, but if it works on the similar macromedia principle of pure-white equalling transperancy, then just go to your enviroment settings and change the background colour to pure white.

Skin is pretty much the only way to deform a character efficiently in max alone. There are a few plugins, character studio for example, that offer extended tools, but it all comes down to practice. I haven't used skin for a while (I use character studio's physique), so someone else may be able to field that question for you.

Meshsmooth/rig or rig/meshsmooth? Whatever works best for you! If you've got the CPU speed to animate a meshsmoothed rig, then by all means, take that method.

how are ALL those beautiful renders created in teh gallery?

Pure talent and experience. :p

Light coming off objects is generally done with some sort of volumetric light (check out "effects" in the manual). Objects that appear to emit light usually have self illumination in their materials.

Video Post is used to apply effects to a render after the objects themsleves have been rendered, for example sticking a starfield in the backrgound of a bunch of planet objects.




I've been very broad here. If anybody wants to correct me on anything I may have misconstrued, then feel free!

:D

[Kuang]

thx for the info! cleared up lota stuff for me

as for PNG, i realized i can render the image in many kinda formats, including PNG, but hte problem is, the render output does not have a transparency background. What I mean is, I usually hafta import a image such as jpg to photoshop, delete the background white color, revealing the transparency, then save as PNG format. Thus transparent background in PNG is actually transparent, not by means of alpha with a specific color channel, but havent been able to find out how to do this straight from MAX.

for the 2nd question I guess I was not clear enough. Is it possible to do the skin modifier before applying the meshsmooth? well the rig still influence the meshsmoothed end product correctly?

ah I c... a self illuminating material will make itself more bright, but what if I want to create a fluorescing halo (spelling?) around an object as if itz giving off volumetric light?

and since I am on the spot, here are few more questions regarding meshedit I cannot find in the help file...
how come when I use a slice plane to add more segments, they produce unwanted vertices (divide up some extra edges), if itz not clear maybe I will do a screen shot)
also is there a way to REMOVE a vertice in meshedit, wut I mean is not delete a vertice but remove a single vertice while leaving the intersecting planes intact, without using welding?

sorry for my bombarding questions, you guys dun hafta answer all of it
but again any help will be appreicated

[erilaz]

It's a bit odd the alpha doesn't save out in the png. Try saving it in TIF instead.

You can apply the meshsmooth after the skin, but it can be trial and error. The best thing to do is not use the meshsmooth, and use NURMS subdivision instead, under the editPoly panel. Alternatively, apply the meshsmooth right after applying skin, then turn on the "show end result" button in the modifer stack, so you can see the effects while you work.

For the rest of your questions it would help to know what version of max you are running. (Personally, I avoid slice plane like the plague and use edge connects instead).

[mouj]

Howdy !

i would not want to knock you off here, but imho you should reallly try out for yourself a little, and whatsmore, use a little more initiative to find answers.

I understand that you may be puzzled by stuff, or just'd like to hear from others, still, it also looks like the more we answer, the more you ask : ) and some of your question should not end up here in the first place (- "what is video post ?"), Max has a great help file, pops up when you press F1 and gives a lot of answers !

What i mean is, we'll all be very glad to help you out once you run into something you really can't figure out, or really need help finding how-to's, but in the meanwhile you should also really try to figure out things by yourself. Use this forum, perform search on it, use the "Tutorial Galore" thread that's sticky...

my 2 cents

mouj

[gaggle]

What? NURMS rollout instead of the Meshsmooth modifier? I.. uh.. respectfully disagree :)

Yes you should be able to use Skin before Meshsmooth, infact that's the only way I'd ever consider rigging. Egads, it's tough enough getting things to deform properly even on the low-poly model, why increase that burden?
If your verts aren't following properly when you meshsmooth, then.. uh.. well make a seperate post about that, with images and a more detailed description of what's going wrong. It shouldn't happen.

The .png issue seems a little overthought, and it almost brought me to tears when you mentioned you've been using .jpgs instead and erasing the background. If .png's can't be directly rendered to, render out as .tga! Set the background as pure black, set the tga settings to 32-bit (it pops up the tga settings by itself when saving to that format), and have the Multiplied Alpha thing checked (you always want it checked and you always want to render out with black background, it's a "thing" when it comes to alphas). Pull that image into Photoshop 7, and presto, image with transparency you can save to whatever format you want.

Actually even that's probably going too far, try just hitting the tga with an "import to library" from Flash.. I seem to remember that works very nicely..


You can get some nice effects with the Blur effect (found under the Effects window), by toning down how much it blurs and instead setting it to increase brightness. It's more processor-intensive than the effect "Glow", but it's, imo, a better solution nontheless for various reasons. Play with it yourself, and check out what the helpfiles has to say on it.


The way to remove a vertice is to weld it, so just enable Target Weld and drag it over a nearby vertice. It works nicely I think. You mention unwanted vertices with the slicemodifier, which makes be think you're using MAX4.2? I can say that MAX5 has an extremly cool "quickslice" tool that's fast, easy, and produces predictable results. Is this an EditMesh or EditPoly object?, I do seem to remember the Slice thing working much much better on an EditPoly...

You can collapse back and forth between Mesh and Poly btw, there shouldn't be any problems with that.


And as for the VideoPost thing I just want to mention that, as far as I know, it's considered an outdated feature. It's been replaced by the Effects window.
I still think it's pretty handy for batchprocessing of things, but as for adding effects I tend to use the effects-window if possible.

[erilaz]

What? NURMS rollout instead of the Meshsmooth modifier? I.. uh.. respectfully disagree

What's wrong with it? :) I've always found it quite useful.

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