cs+3ds;face xpresions & skin vs physique - 3ds;sudden view shift to dif cam in anim?

[Six Black Roses]

Also, can I select to render only certain objects in wireframe mode, while rendering the other objects normally?

[Six Black Roses]

Anyone? Hope I won't get in trouble for bumping this up.

[mouj]

Howdy !

Well, first off, may i ask why it is that you prefer NURBS modeling ?I'm asking that because before getting to know Max, i used Rhino a lot (when it was beta) and i would model everything in NURBS. Now i must say i use mostly polygons rather than NURBS for modeling, anyways it's all up to you - but i would say that polys in general should be easier to manipulate.
Also, as you mention, from Rhino to Max requires the IGES format, which is not that accurate at times, and it makes for heavily triangulated models; i remember there was a Rhino NURBS import plugin for Max, but it was buggy too.

Now, i'm no expert, but i would say that Max alone has the features you're looking for, and should let you achieve character animation and facials. Character Studio should let you achieve that even better / easier. I think scripting is always a good thing to know, but won't be necessary.

The Skin vs Physique issue i can't tell, i might miss out things, but basically Physique and Skin are the same thing, work the same way - the way i understand it, Character Studio is a whole, and even if Physique can be used 'alone', it all comes together when using Physique along with Biped.

Finally, as for your camera question, well there are different ways to do it, Video Post can let you define camera changes based on time, and will let you render the full thing with camera changes - also you could just split up sequences and stitch that back together in Premiere or VideoPost; also i think there is a script around to do just that. But, afaik, there is no way to have your full sequence play back in Max with camera changes (unless by scripting ?).

hope this could help.

mouj

[gaggle]

Although I've yet to try it myself, I believe there is infact a script out there already that supports camera-changes in the viewport and everything. I suggest hitting up scriptspot.com for that. The standard approch is to render out to seperate streams and then composite them together. By now that approch is habbit for me, handling it internally in MAX seems.. wrong. Somehow. I should give the script a try on the next project and see how it works, could turn out to be an efficient new way of handling that.

Anyway, hit up scriptspot.com :).

As far as Skin vs. Physique, choose whichever you feel is best. Skin is easier to use I think, and it seems there are more scripts available that extends what can be done with it, whereas Physique seems to still have the upper hand as far as feature goes.
Pick one. Then later try the other. Then decide. There's no magic answer here.

Regarding wireframes, check out in the Material Editor, the togglebox called "Wire". Turn it on and voila, the material renders as wires. This should form the basics of letting you render mixed shaded/wire objects.

And as always check out the helpfile for specifics on the features, such as the skin modifier, or the wire feature, or whatnot. The helpfile is thankfully quite helpful.

[Six Black Roses]

The replies were helpful, thanks.

Why NURBS, mouj? Well, I hope you can convince me to concentrate on either... but only on one. Here's what I need to do:

I mostly want to make art. I don't care too much for product design. What I want, however, is detail and accuracy. I want to be able to manipulate objects with ease. I'll be doing organic modeling. I'll also rig my characters just in case I'll want to render or try different poses to see which one fits best.

I've read so many horror stories about polygons being hard to animate/rig and change after the construction, and texture annoyances. How true is that in max? Does max offer a NURBS/poly hybrid where it could give me the best of both worlds?

I know NURBS to provide very smooth curves... and I know that poly's can do that as well, but at a high-poly cost. And the problem with so many poly's is skinning and animating them, or so I've read.

Which would be best and most efficient for what I do?

[Schnupps]

Hi, skin is a little bit faster than physique, while physique has more features and it takes a while to get used to it, but in the end you can get better deformations with physique, try both though.

For facial animations you might prefer using the morph targets intead of bones/splines. It a much faster way to get facial animations, you could use a combination too.

Why model everything in NURBS? It sure has its benefits, but on the other hand there are good reasons to use Sub-D modeling as well, actually most people including me do most of their work with sub-d. Especially for characters it´s a good choice.

For camera changes there should be a script somewhere, but in most cases it´s better to combine afterwards.

Have you tried power translator for the Rhino Max connection?
http://www.npowersoftware.com/index.html

Schnupps

[Six Black Roses]

So what sub-d does is simply increase the resolution of the mesh, right? In other words, it WON'T change the actual shape once applied?

Poly with smoothing seems exactly what I want, except that I'm still trying to decide whether or not I'll have a hard time adjusting a big part of the model... Does 3ds max have a... I dunno, a control point creator thing that'd simulate NURBS?

[Schnupps]

Well, give poly modelling a try, the horror stories you read are not really a big problem.
If you read just about NURBS but never use it you prbably hear a those horror stories about armpits opening and surfaces not sticking to the other.

Schnupps

[Schnupps]

Basically yes, you model your low resolution model and apply meshsmooth to it, of course it changes the shape slightly, since it´s smoothing it. Look in Meshsmooth, there you find ways to increase the strength of the ceratain vertices/edges.
Then you got softselection, and the ffd´s.

And don´t worry to much about the high resolution and skinning, you can apply the skin/physique below meshsmooth, to get fast deformations.

Schnupps

[mouj]

Schnupps has it right; i could not tell you for sure that one method is best than another, i think it's up to you to find which method works best for your needs, i think both NURBS and polygon models have their pros and cons - so at least polygon modeling is worth trying.

It's indeed more of a technical aspect of modeling to decide wether you'll be using this or that, i mean, you could also be using patches or surfaces, what's really interesting is the end result. I, for one, do use mostly Epoly, Max handles it better than it handles NURBS, imho, and Epoly offers great tools for designing accurate details, and managing geometry: as Schnupps says, you can - and most probably should apply physique/skin before the meshsmooth, this way you can rigg and animate the 'low poly' mesh, and then smooth it. Same goes for texture work.

Btw, Max does NURBS modeling as well, so you could also give it a try right in Max.

mouj

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