Research Resource Discovery

UVW mapping is a coordinate mapping technique that enables artists to project 2D textures onto the surfaces of 3D objects. It's a key skill for all areas of the 3D industry, including film, gaming, and visualization. This course helps designers map geometry in preparation for texturing, using the powerful UVW mapping feature set in 3ds Max 2018, including the UVW Map modifier, UVW Editor, and Blended Box Map.

Instructor Joel Bradley explains what UVWs are, how they affect textures, and why they are needed. He also reviews the different mapping spaces that are available and how procedural maps are used in texturing. Then he progresses to the hands-on portion of the course, starting with mapping simple shapes and models with the UVW modifier. He also reviews advanced topics, such as unwrapping and editing UVs with the UVW Editor. Finally, he introduces blended box mapping, for when you need to get a model ready for texturing quickly.

3ds Max 2018 includes several new features for content creation and visualization. Notably, the Arnold renderer replaces mental ray as the high-end global illumination render engine. In this course, take a first look at materials, lighting, and rendering in Arnold. Examine the new features introduced in 3ds Max 2017 updates, such as the Data Channel Modifier and the Blended Box Map. Additionally, see how easy it is to customize the user interface. By the end of this course, you'll have received an overview of what's new in 3ds Max 2018.

3ds Max is best known for its modeling and rendering tools. These strengths come into play in architecture, manufacturing, game development, industrial design, and motion graphics. There are dozens of features and techniques to master, from sculpting and texturing to lighting and rendering. This course covers 3ds Max from the ground up, providing an overview of the entire package as well as essential skills that 3D artists need to create professional models and animations.

Learn how to get around the 3ds Max interface and customize it to suit your preferences. Discover how to model different objects using splines, polygons, subdivision surfaces, and freeform sculpting. Then, learn to construct hierarchies, add cameras and lights, and animate with keyframes. Author Aaron F. Ross also takes an in-depth look at materials and texture mapping, as well as options for rendering engines such as Arnold and ART.

Realistic lighting is easier, faster, and better than ever in 3ds Max. Photometric lighting and a choice of rendering options gives you the power to create a convincing illusion. This course focuses on architectural visualization, but the techniques apply to other applications such as motion picture production. Author Aaron F. Ross provides a conceptual overview of advanced lighting and rendering, then demonstrates how to construct various lighting scenarios in 3ds Max. He shows how to render scenes with exterior and interior daylight, practical artificial lighting, and manufacturer photometric data. The course includes a chapter on special effects such as light exclusion and lens effects. By the end of the course, you'll have seen how to control the powerful lighting tools in 3ds Max to achieve photorealistic results.

Physically based rendering (PBR) simulates the way light works in the real world. It achieves greater realism with less effort than traditional 3D rendering. This course focuses on PBR shading techniques in 3ds Max, using the Physical Material to achieve photorealistic surfaces such as stone, glass, and metal. Author Aaron F. Ross also looks at building shading networks, and combining and adjusting maps in interesting ways. Procedural maps such as ambient occlusion and substance deserve special attention, and you'll also see how to bake them out to bitmap files for cross-application and renderer compatibility. By the end of the course, you'll have a firm foundation in advanced shading workflows in 3ds Max.

Character Animation Fundamentals in 3ds Max demonstrates the basic principles of character animation that help bring simple 3D characters to life. Starting with an overview of the character rig, author George Maestri provides guidelines for creating strong poses and explains how to animate from pose to pose in an organized fashion. The course also covers locomotion—animating realistic gestures, walks, and runs; explores the basics of facial expressions and dialogue; and culminates with an animated scene built entirely from scratch.

3ds Max is a powerful 3D application with great rigging tools. This course covers the complete workflow for rigging characters for realistic motion and animation. Author George Maestri shows how to prep your model, draw a skeleton, and add controls: foot and leg controls, hip and spine controls, and controls that allow the animator to toggle between inverse and forward kinematics (IK/FK). Plus, learn to how to skin your character, and create hand and face rigs that allow for greater control over delicate hand movements and facial expressions.

3ds Max offers a full suite of powerful 3D camera features for design visualization, animation, and visual effects. This course covers core topics in camera rigging, animation, and special effects such as motion blur and depth of field. You'll apply the principles of live-action cinematography using the tools of 3D computer animation. Along the way, you'll learn best practices, both technical and aesthetic, in virtual cinematography. These techniques save time and effort by streamlining the camera animation process. The goal of this course is to help you more quickly and easily achieve professional results from the 3ds Max camera tools.

If you want to visualize and sell your product, architectural, engineering, or landscaping designs to your clients before they are built, then 3ds Max is the tool for you. Learn how to use this incredibly sophisticated 3D modeling and rendering program to visualize almost anything you can imagine.

In this course, author Scott Onstott shows you how to build walls, doors, windows, stairs, railings, moldings, cloth, pottery, furniture, grass, trees, landscapes, and much more, using splines, modifiers, Booleans, and NURBS modeling. You'll also learn to texture-map objects, light them with both direct and indirect illumination, place virtual cameras, render, and animate scenes.

Explore the world of modeling and texturing game props and assets in Autodesk 3ds Max. Author Adam Crespi demonstrates how to create both small and large props, from tools to shipping containers. The course begins with cloning and instancing objects for ease of modeling and unwrapping, and segues into multiple methods of unwrapping and painting texture by hand in Adobe Photoshop. Adam looks at various plug-ins that assist with normal map generation as well as sculpting in Mudbox, a digital sculpting application that can add realism and detail to your models. Finally, the course shows how to add lights to a scene and preview the objects in-game.

Note: A familiarity of basic modeling and unwrapping techniques in 3ds Max and a working knowledge of Photoshop will help you get the most out of this course.

Hard surface modeling is all about designing man-made objects: machines, vehicles, tools, weapons, and so on. Because the edges and angles are distinct and the surfaces are typically smooth, there are many opportunities to use 3ds Max's built-in tools to make your modeling process more efficient. 3ds Max: Hard Surface Modeling Basics helps you learn the tools and techniques to model a high-poly mesh—in this case, an old deep sea diving helmet and shoulder guard—as quickly and efficiently as possible. The assets you produce as a result of this course can be used in games, product visualizations, and more. Join Joel Bradley as he shows how to set up your environment for maximum efficiency and use a variety of techniques to execute the final design, including spline modeling, welding, component modeling, extruding from primitive objects, cutting, and box modeling. Plus, learn how to use the power and flexibility of the modifier stack to refine your hard surface models.

3ds Max—combined with its rendering engine, Arnold—can help you create dynamic content for the presentation of product ideas and concepts. In this course, learn how to use 3ds Max and Arnold to create compelling product visualizations for medical devices. Instructor Duane Loose starts by showing how to set up 3ds Max 2018 for Arnold rendering, and how to import CAD assets. Duane then covers materials, how to build a material library, and how to light and render your scenes. To wrap up, Duane discusses compositing and output, including how to leverage Photoshop and After Effects to prepare your imagery for marketing and promotional materials.

In this course, author Adam Crespi takes you through the full production pipeline for lighting, rendering, and compositing the exterior of a house in 3ds Max. First he'll show you how to create mental ray materials like wood, metal, and glass; customize the Daylight system for realistic daytime lighting; and adjust the lighting for dusk and nighttime shots with photometric lights. Then he'll render the scenes, optimizing and styling the bounced light with Global Illumination and Final Gather. Finally, Adam takes the image into post, adding the final polish required at the end of the pipeline with Nuke and After Effects.

Learn how to use the extensive range of tools in 3ds Max to render out elements for compositing. In this course, Joel Bradley shows how to break a project down into manageable pieces with 3ds Max's Render Elements feature and manage the render passes with the State Set tools. He explores this pipeline via three mini projects that take a shot from breakdown to final composite. First, he sets up and renders the elements in 3ds Max. Second, he "pre-composites" and outputs the files using the Compositor Link panel. Finally, Joel jumps into After Effects, where he adds post-production effects such as per-object color corrections, reflections and refractions, atmospheric haze, and motion blur.

Learn how to replicate three unique lighting setups in interior scenes, starting with direct daylight, with 3ds Max. Adam Crespi shows how to create and apply materials such as paint sheens, metallic finishes, glass, and wood—textures you would find in any home. Then he shows how to create a daylight system, adding in photographic exposure to see light like you would through a camera. Then learn how to use interior lights and sky portals to light dusk and night shots. Finally, Adam shows how to add post effects and composite the rendering in After Effects and Nuke.

Arnold is a high-quality rendering engine in 3ds Max 2018. Realistic rendering is easier than ever with this brute force Monte Carlo ray tracer. The physically-based rendering of Arnold accurately simulates light in the real world, but allows the breaking of physical laws to achieve artistic styles. This course is an overview of the core features of Arnold for lighting, materials, and rendering in 3ds Max.

Discover how to efficiently take a model from Autodesk Revit into Autodesk 3ds Max. In this course, Adam Crespi goes beyond basic exporting and importing to show a streamlined workflow that optimizes Revit models for flexibility in rendering and design with 3ds Max. As part of this workflow, Adam covers optimizing a Revit model for export, breaking up large meshes, and best practices for export. In 3ds Max, he discusses importing a Revit model, applying smoothing groups, adjusting UV coordinates, integrating substances, fine-tuning materials, and creating test renderings.

Design visualizations can help you clearly communicate your ideas to your stakeholders, and get them excited about bringing your concepts to life. By adding tasteful special effects to your design visualization projects—such as billowing foliage and movie-style camera effects—you can make your designs even more compelling. In this course, discover how to use special effects and techniques for 3ds Max to enhance the production quality of your design visualization projects. Instructor Chris Murray demonstrates how to add wet looking materials and masks, unroll and unfold objects with Bend, create mood with atmospherics, use 3ds Max cameras like real-world cameras, and more.

Stylized art is used for both games and films, and in both scenarios, the intricate, detailed final animation often starts with a reference image. That's where this course starts too—analyzing a reference image to kick off an animation workflow in 3ds Max that results in a fully stylized, animated environment. Join Zaheer Mukhtar as he takes you through each step.

First, Zaheer explores artistic ways to block out the basic forms of your structure, such as using exaggerated proportions and irregular, tilted shapes. Next, he shows how to add details to the forms. Then he demonstrates how to add the more stylized elements including textures, imported materials, color refinements, and lighting. He wraps up the course by wrapping up the workflow, making final render passes and preparing the scene for export. Along the way, he covers art creation, modeling, compositing, and more.

Substance tools are now an industry standard when it comes to texturing 3D geometry in all areas of 3D. As Autodesk now includes the Arnold renderer as part of the base 3ds Max package, understanding how to use these two toolsets together is a must. In this course, discover how to use the substance-based toolset from Allegorithmic in conjunction with the Arnold renderer in 3ds Max. Instructor Brian Bradley explores the various workflow requirements and options for using the Substance Bitmap2Material and Designer applications with 3ds Max and Arnold.

Discover how to leverage the substance-based toolset from Allegorithmic with V-Ray in 3ds Max. In this course, explore the various workflow requirements and options that are available when using the Substance Designer, Substance Painter, and Bitmap2Material applications with 3ds Max and V-Ray. Brian Bradley explains what substance-based tools are, and how to use them with the 3ds Max application. He also demonstrates how to create materials from photographic assets, how to work with substances and maps from Substance Designer, and how to export maps from Substance Painter.

3ds Max is a powerful, deep, and multifaceted program, so there's always more to learn. This weekly series aims to keep you on top of the latest tools and techniques, and introduces fresh perspectives on traditional methods for architectural and product visualization, animation, visual effects, games and virtual worlds, and motion graphics. Instructor Aaron F. Ross presents a new topic every week, spanning the full range of 3D graphics tasks, including modeling, rigging and animation, shading and lighting, camera operation, and rendering. He gives special attention to streamlining workflows, such as automation of time-consuming tasks, so your productions run more smoothly and efficiently. Come back every Wednesday for a new tutorial to expand your 3ds Max knowledge and skills.

UVW mapping allows you to take a mathematical, coordinate-based approach to mapping 2D textures to irregular 3D objects in 3ds Max. The tools might seem complex, but this course will help you master them and put UVW mapping to work in your own projects. Author Joel Bradley starts with the basics—defining UVW space and coordinates—and introduces the UVW Map modifier, the key to applying map coordinates and adjusting map placement. From there he looks at the source wrapping options in the bitmap and procedural map nodes, and at the differences when mapping to static and animated meshes. Chapter three covers the powerful Unwrap UVW modifier and its selection, peel-, and pelt-mapping tools. The course concludes with an overview of the options in the Edit UVW window.

Whether you're working with a team or on your own, understanding how to efficiently use 3D tracking information in compositing can help you speed up your workflow. In this course, learn how to use 3D tracking data to add 3D objects to a 2D shot in Adobe After Effects. Brian Morse shows how to export your cameras to Maya and After Effects from SynthEyes, and explains how to set up your 3D scene once and use it for all of your shots. He also demonstrates how to render your final project so that all of the composites work fluidly.

Whether you're working with a team or on your own, understanding how to efficiently use 3D tracking information in compositing can help you speed up your workflow. In this course, learn how to use 3D tracking data to add 3D objects to a 2D shot in Fusion. Brian Morse shows how to export your cameras to Maya and Fusion from SynthEyes, and explains how to set up your 3D scene once and use it for all of your shots. He also demonstrates how to render your final project so that all of the composites work fluidly.