This tutorial by Ryan Kittleson teaches you fast and efficient way to model a human head. This should be working great with any polymodeler.
To get best results, use references from www.3d.sk

In this tutorial we’ll learn how to make the following checkered tile floor seamless texture.

Step 1
Load Genetica and then start a new document.  If you don’t have Genetica already, download it here.

Step 2
Genetica will automatically switch to the Nodes tab.  With the Advanced Nodes category selected, drag a Synthesis node into the empty slot that can be found in the middle of the workspace.

The Synthesis node is the quickest way to get a texture started since it will automatically make seamless textures from photographs.
With our newly-created Synthesis node still selected, click the Edit button in the Properties panel.

Step 3
The Texture Synthesis dialog that pops up is a lot of fun.  With it you can create countless seamless textures from photographs, many of which take just a few seconds to create.
For this tutorial we’ll just pick one of the ready-made presets.  From the Rock category, select the Red Mottled Rock preset, and then close the dialog by clicking OK.


Step 4
If you look closely at the texture we’re creating, you’ll notice that the different tiles use the same base texture, but are colored differently.

Although we could copy and paste the Synthesis node, that would create an inefficient texture because the material would need to render twice.  Instead, drag the node to a blank spot in the workspace while simultaneously holding the Ctrl key.

This results in two Reference nodes being created, both of which refer back to the original texture.  A more detailed explanation of how this works is available here.

Step 5
Let’s modify the color of the second Reference node.  With the Color section of the Library panel selected, drag a Change HSB onto the Reference node.  In the menu that appears, select Insert Below.


This causes the output of the Reference node to be passed into the Change HSB node for further modification.  But the Change HSB won’t actually do anything until its properties have been adjusted, so set its Hue property to -42.


Step 6
Repeat the process, this time dragging a Change BCI node from the Library panel onto our newly created Change HSB, remembering to select Insert Below in the little menu that pops up.  Set the Change BCI node’s Brightness property to -20, and its Contrast property to 13.


Step 7

Now that we’ve created the two differently colored versions of the texture, it’s time to combine them.  Insert a Combine node below the first Reference node.

Then drag the disconnected branch into the Combine node’s second input.

Your node tree should now look like this:

Step 8
We need to tell the Combine node how to mix the two versions of the material together.  To do that, drag a Gradient node into the Combine’s third slot.  Then set the Gradient node’s Size property to 2 x 2, and its Gradient Type property to Dimples.

At any time during the tutorial you can click the Render Texture button to see how our texture is coming along.

Step 9
The checker pattern has started to take shape, but it needs to be sharpened.  Insert a Change BCI node below the Gradient node, following the example of step 5.  Then, set the Change BCI’s Contrast property to 3000.

Step 10

Now that our checker pattern has been created, let’s accentuate the effect by adding thin lines between the checker squares.  Start by inserting a second Combine node below the existing one.

Step 11
Insert a Gradient node into the newly-created Combine node’s last input.  Set the Gradient’s Size to 4 x 4, and its Gradient Type to Pyramidal.

Step 12
Again we want to sharpen the Gradient node that we just created.  Insert a Change BCI node below it, and set the Change BCI’s Brightness to 49, and its Contrast to 3000.

Step 13
Select the final Combine node by clicking it, then set its First Input property to Input 2, and its Opacity property to 0.4.

Step 14
Here’s the texture that we have so far:

If you want a newer-looking version of the texture you can stop here.  Otherwise, insert a Weather Lab below the final Combine node.  The Weather Lab can be found in the Advanced Nodes category of the Library panel.  Next, click the Edit button appearing over the Weather Lab, which will take you to a special tab containing the node’s properties.

First, select the Adjust Color section and set the New Color Strength property to 80.  This will give some parts of the texture a dirty, greenish tinge.  If you’d like to change the color of the dirty areas, experiment with the New Color property that is also found in this section.

In the Indent section of the Weather Lab, set the Depth property to 30.  This will give our texture a pitted appearance.  To change the shape or frequency of the pits, experiment with the properties found in the Area Selection section.

Step 15
Our texture’s complete!  All that remains is to select our desired render size, to render the texture, and to export it.

(c) www.spiralgraphics.biz

Great news (hopefully)!

here comes another update to our site. New system, new design and its faster. We hope you like it, but thats not the end. We have some more news coming your way – very soon! So stay tuned!
BTW – there still may be a glitch or two, so please be patient. And if you find anything what you like, or dont like, whats working or not working, please just tell us!

Pavol

I have made a new Tutorial for beginners it is about sculpting hair from a ball.

(c) Timur Ariman, timur_ariman (at) yahoo.de, http://timurariman.jimdo.com/

written by Weiye Yin

Creation Process of 3D MAX Work “Joy Tree”

Creation Idea: “The wind blows away heavy mist in valley in the dawn, a shinning start flies across the sky and lands here, the bright light rises, which lights up red leaves of an ancient tree. The whole image is full of holiday happiness and exotic flavors. ”

As 3D work should be more precise than 2D work, the creation process should be longer also, and the effect is often represented only in the end; to avoid deviation from the original design in the long making process, I drafted the concept of vagueness so as to master such kind of atmosphere exactly.

According to the draft, there should be a tree as above: select “Banyan tree” in Foliage.

Set the tree on earth table that has been made.

Open the Compile menu, adjust to get a satisfactory shape, what we need to pay attention to here: by clicking the “New” tag on left of “Seed” in “Parameters”, a random tree shape will be generated, clicking repeatedly will be unfavorable for returning to original shape and comparison, I suggest using parameters on right to “Seed” to adjust basic model; secondly, options under “Show” are about groups of tree, and one can remove redundant groups according to his needs, for example, in this work, I need a quite thick tree, though Banyan tree has quite appropriate shape, its Roots need to be removed, such removal will be used more often in following process.

Adjust size of the work according to the draft, lock scale, and set up cameras. [Many artists like to do this step in anaphase, but as the work is oriented as “static”, a lot of unnecessary work could be saved if it is done earlier, for example, scene beyond the image becomes totally unnecessary to consider]

Open “Material Editor”, select a new shader, use “sucker” to suck materials of the “tree”, and we will find that the tree has 6 shaders, adjust the shaders accordingly.

Start from leaves: open shaders of leaves, we can find that there is only one alpha texture, and no color texture in default materials, click “magic tube” icon to display leaves cut by channels, and open channel map [this is a default image provided by MAX, and we can find location of the file by path]

After adjusting channels, adjust color of leaves, and get corresponding effect.

Use the same method to do: textures of trunk and branches, the texture has UV itself, texture is circular, adjust the cycle accordingly.

Circular texture is seamless texture that is circular in the upper and lower, left and right part. We can use “filter-translate” of Photoshop to create circular texture.

As density of leaves of Banyan Tree could not reach requirement of this work, I copied another two Banyan trees, and hide trunks, rotate them to different angles, the tree I need for the work is born at last.

Effect after primary rendering.

The next step is to make details of the earth table, draw an alpha texture of grass, method here is same as the leaves, only to put the circular texture on a different “plane”, color texture is same as leaves also, and use color in place temporarily. [What we should notice is that: the contour should be pure black, and there should be a black border where grass connects with grounds, or otherwise there will be sampling mistake]

Arrange the “planes” in picturesque disordered sector, and grassland appears when the camera is shifted to the angle near straight.

Add some stones on the earth table, to make the image richer, set up Omni at root as the main light source, and set up Skylight as the secondary light source. Select Mental Ray, open global lighting, and render to get effect as above.

Add special light effect (to represent the rise of bright light), we can use Omni with suitable light scope and Video Post to achieve such effect, or add in anaphase, which will be more convenient.

Make background elements: as they are elements besides the main body “tree”, it is unnecessary to make them highly detailed, or otherwise, they will surplus the role of the main body, and only become a waste of energy. Take stones in above image as an example, both shape and structure of the stones are simple and clear.

The whole image consists of four parts: the first part is foreground, the second part is medium shot, third part is mist layer, and fourth part is background in distance. [While making overall scene, it is unnecessary to build the overall scene according to real scale, it will be too large then, we can build “large” scene in “small” area if we have concept of the whole, and abide by the perspective principle of “the nearer the larger, the further the smaller”.]

As is shown above in these two images: the mountain is not very far away, but it is scaled down to be very small, so when it is adjusted to camera angle, the simulated perspective effect is achieved.

Add some atmosphere effect at last, and the work “Joy Tree” is completed.

I make a fairly complete work with the basic functions of MAX, it has improved that software is just the tool, while artist’s original idea is the source of art creation. “Skillful control and artistic apperception” could make work more beautiful, but are not “preconditions” for “creating a work”.

Technical content of this tutorial is not high, but I hope I could convey a concept to you through creation process of the work.

written by Lee Johnson

So here’s the finishing touch for this Pin Box.  I am going to run through creating a camera, setting up lighting, creating materials, adjusting render settings, and getting a final render.  This tutorial comes from the direction of not doing any post production on a render.  If you take this process through to the next tutorial, you’ll really get a good idea of how much a help the compositing process is.

DOWNLOAD SCENE FILES

01.    So we are picking up where we left off from the last tutorial.  Or download the scene files on this page and open pinbox_animated.max.  Select PinBox, and rotate 90 degrees on the Y axis.

02.    Hit P to make sure you are in a Perspective viewport.  Right click over the “Perspective” label at the top left of the viewport and choose “Show Safe Frame”.  Tumble, Pan, and Zoom around the model until you get a view you are happy with.  While its not necessary to work within Action and Title safe when you are not working on broadcast television footage, it still is a good reference to frame the shot.  Ctrl + C  to create a camera from that perspective view.

03.    Create a plane in the viewport.  Align Z min to min with the PinBox.  Now increase the size of the plane and move it along the XY so that it fills the viewport.  Name it Ground Plane.

04.    Create an mr Area Spot light and position it as shown.  A good rule of thumb for light positioning is to place it directly opposite the object from the camera.  This will maximize your shadows and make the scene more interesting.  After playing with the settings a bit, I set the spotlight with the following parameters.  Check to turn on Shadows, and drop down and choose “Raytraced Shadows”  Under “Intensity/Color/Attenuation”, check to use Far Attenuation and set Start : 100 and End : 200.  Under “Spotlight Parameters” set Hotspot : 87 and Falloff : 96.  Goto your Render Dialogue Box, and  make sure you have the Mental Ray Renderer selected.  Note : This has pretty bad aliasing along the edges, but we’ll fix that later.

05.    Next create a Sky Light.  It doesn’t matter where you put it, just click in the viewport somewhere.  Now here you have several choices.  You can just set it up to use a color, or load a map.  I have loaded “Dock_Sphere.hdr” into the map slot.  This image is included in the .zip file, but you can find it and two other free HDRI images from HDRImaps.com.  Drag the map from the slot in the Sky Light to an empty material editor slot and choose Instance.  Set the Coordinates from Texture to Environ and Choose Spherical Environment as the Mapping type.

06.    Under the Indirect Illumination tab check Enable Final Gather.  Drag the slider to set FG Precision to “Low”  Under Trace Depth, set Depth, Reflections, and Refractions to 2.  If you have one mirrored surface facing another and you want to see reflections off to infinity increase these settings.  For almost any other setting 2 bounces is all you need visually and this will keep render times down.  Another setting to experiment with here is the number of Diffuse bounces.  Default is 0.  If you compare the two images, there is the slightest increase in illumination at the right side of the image.  But since this object is mostly black plastic, this is not really going to be visible.  Render time goes from 11 seconds to 16 seconds.  This may not sound like much, but proportionally it’s a 45% increase in render time.  For now, leave bounces at 0.

07.    Next we are going to create some materials.  I use the MR Arch and Design Shader for almost all of my materials.  This is a very flexible and powerful shader.  It is also just as fast to render as Standard or Raytrace materials, making it very cost effective in terms of render time.  Lastly these materials have some really useful presets that will get you close to most of the materials you will use in your scene.  In an empty Material Slot, change the name to “Black Plastic” and change the shader type from Standard to Arch & Design.  Change Diffuse color to 0,0,0 (solid black) and set Reflectivity to 1.  Apply this to Plastic Tray01, 02, Corner Post 01, 02, 03, 04, and Nut01-04.

08.    In the next slot, create another Arch & Design shader, and name it Plastic Lid Top.  In the template drop down choose “Glass (Thin Geometry)”.  Now change the Refraction Transparency to .9, and change the color from a light blue to pure white.  In the next slot create another Arch & Design Shader and name it Plastic Lid Side.  Choose the template “Translucent Plastic Film, Opalescent”.  Now change the Refraction Transparency and Glossiness to .65.  Set the Refraction Glossy Samples to 16.  Change the IOR to 1.75 and the Translucency Weight to .35.

09.    Select the Plastic Lid Object.  Goto the polygon mode, Ctrl + A to select them all.  Set the material ID to 1.  Now goto edge mode and select an edge around the outer edge of the plastic lid and one in each of the openings, if you modeled them.  Don’t forget to grab an edge in the chamfers of the outer edge as well.  Right click and Convert to Face.  Set the Material ID to 2.

10.    In the next material slot create a Multi-Sub Obj Material, and set the number of Id’s to 2.  Drag Plastic Lid Top into the slot for ID #1, and Plastic Lid Side into ID #2.  Make both Instances.  Apply this to the Plastic Lid Obj.

11.    Create another Arch & Design Material and name it “Pins”.  Choose the template “Chrome”.  Adjust the Diffuse Color to a Light Grey.  Change the Reflection Glossiness to .75 and the Glossy Samples to

12.    Ok, last material, we are going to have some fun with this one.  We need the pinbox to be sitting on something interesting.  How about a nice big slab of rock?  Create one more Arch & Design material and name it Ground Plane.  Set the Diffuse Roughness to 1.  Set Reflectivity to .5, Glossiness to .35 and check Highlight + FG Only.  Apply this to the Ground Plane.  In the Special Purpose maps, goto the Displacement slot and create a Noise Map.  Set the displacement amount to .75.  Now you will need to move the ground Plane down the same amount that you will be displacing it.  Move it Z -.75.  Displacement in Mental Ray is dependent upon the geometry. You need a regular grid of polygons to get good results.  Since my plane would up being 400×500, I set the segments to 40 and 50.  Change the Noise type to Fractal and the Levels to 5.  Adjust the Noise Size to 10 and the High and Low Threshold to .75, and .35.

13.    Next we are going to create the Diffuse Texture for the Ground Plane.  Open RockMossy0021.jpg in Photoshop.  This image was downloaded from cgtextures.com, a great resource for high res textures of just about anything.  Lets get rid of the purply red though. Goto Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation.  First Switch from Master to Reds and adjust to a green color.  Now Switch to Yellows and do the same.

14.    Use Filter -> Offset to wrap the image.  Now use the clone stamp to get rid of the seams and make your texture tileable.  Save this as RockMossy0021_Tiled.jpg

15.    Desaturate the image and play with your Brightness/Contrast settings to get something like this.  Save as RockMossy0021_Bump.jpg.

16.    Load the RockMossy0021_Bump.jpg into the slots for Bump, Diffuse Roughness, and reflection Glossiness.  Load RockMossy_0021_Tiled.jpg into the Diffuse Color slot.  Now Select the Ground Plane Object, and apply a UVW map.  Goto Bitmap Fit, and choose the RockMossy0021_Tiled.jpg.  Now, goto the Gizmo Sub Obj, and use the scale tool to adjust the map size to your liking.  I would up scaling to 20% of original size.

17.    Time to play with light settings.  For more contrast in the  image, decrease the Sky Light Multiplier to .5.  Increase the mr Area Spot multiplier to 1.5.  Also no light is pure white (well except maybe LED’s) so add a tiny bit of yellow to the Spot Color.

18.    With a light source like this there will be some softening of the shadow edges.  Under Area Light Parameters, Check on.  Set type to Disc, and adjust the radius to 2.5

19.    Now time to start adjusting the quality settings.  First fix those jaggies.  Under the Render tab of the Render Dialogue, set the Samples Per Pixel to Min : 1 and Max :16.  Switch to the Indirect Illumination Tab, and adjust the FG Precision to Medium.

20.    For the final step (if you really want to get crazy with the render times) goto the  Multi-Pass Effect section of the Camera Settings.  Check enable, and drop down to Depth of Field (mental ray).  Set the f-Stop to 2.5 for a small blur.  Grab the camera Target, and set the UCS to Local.  Move the target to wherever in the scene you want the focus to be.  You may have to increase your anti-aliasing settings to remove the noise from the blur.

http://www.jtwo.com/

written by Lee Johnson

I created this tutorial after reading “How do I animate a pin art desk toy” in issue 106 of 3D World. It also reminded me of the really cool video for Nine Inch Nails’ “Only”. However the tutorial was setup in Maya, so I decided to take a crack at it in 3ds Max. This tutorial was the inspiration for the other two Pin Art Tutorials on this site. As I state later in the tutorial, this can be setup with any B/W image or video clip. I am just using a procedural texture to make things easier. I’d also like to give a big thanks to Anton Vasilescu for writing the MaxScript for this tutorial. You can find more of his scripts at
www.75ive.com

DOWNLOAD SCENE FILES

01. Alright, so we are going to start off with the model from Step 42 of the Modeling tutorial, or download the file on this page and open Pinbox.max. First we are going to do a little file cleanup. Goto the Display Panel and hit Unhide All. Now goto your Layer Manager (looks like sheets of paper, just right of the Align Tool). In the dialogue box that opens use the button at the top left to create 3 layers. Name them Casing, Pins, and Original Shapes. By selecting the appropriate object, and highlighting the layer and hitting the Plus button, you can assign objects to each layer. After all geometry has been assigned, you can toggle the Hide icon to turn off whatever you want in the scene. Activate the checkbox next to Layer 0, and Hide all other layers to give you an empty scene to work with.

02. Create a plane in the perspective viewport. Set the dimensions to Length : 28 Width : 17.5. Now set the number of segments to Length : 28 Width : 20. Move it to XYZ, 0,0.25,1. Convert the plane to an Editable Poly and go to the Edge Sub object. Select the first edge at the corner on the short side of the plane, and hit Loop and then Ring to get the following selection.

03. Bring up Connect Settings. Leave the number of edges at 1, but adjust the Slide setting to -90

04. Go back to your edge sub object mode and now select every other edge along the short axis. Use the Ring select, and then right click on the move tool icon. In the Offset World Column, enter -.5 in the Y-axis field. Rename this to Animated Surface. Now you should have every other row nicely offset by one half of a grid box.

05. Goto the Layer Manager and unhide the Pins layer. Select Pin01, and goto the Motion Panel. Under “Assign Controller” highlight Position, and click on the Assign Controller button (has a question mark on it). Choose Attachment and click OK.

06. Now click on “Pick Object” and click on the “Animated Surface” The pin should jump to the center of the plane. Now click on “Set Position” and set the face number to 2 and the A Coordinate to .5, and B to 0. Make sure that Align to Surface is unchecked. Now goto the Layer Manager and activate the checkbox next to the Pins layer.

07. In this step we are going to use the script written by Anton Vasilescu. Goto MaxScript –> Run Script, and choose “PinboxCreator11.ms” You will see a small dialogue box pop up. Hit the “Pick Box Object” button, and click on “Animated Surface”. Now hit the “Pick Pin Object” button and choose “Pin01”. Now click on the “Make Pinbox” button. Depending on the speed of your computer you will have to wait just a moment for this script to run. It will be creating 560 pins so give it about 5-10 seconds. Note : This step can be done without doing step 6, the script will actually create the attachment controller, but I wanted to show you how this works rather than just letting the script do ALL the work. In the layer Manager activate the checkbox next to Layer 0 again, and hide the Pins layer.

08. Now we are going to create an animated texture to move the pins. You can take any image sequence and convert it to B/W and increase the contrast to use, but for the time being, we’ll just create our own. Bring up the Material Editor and in the first material slot click on the Diffuse Map slot and choose Gradient Ramp. Now Left click on the Gradient Ramp label and drag it into the box for material #2 and choose instance.

09. Change the gradient type from Linear to Radial. Set the color of all 3 existing flags to white. Create 2 new flags in between the 3 existing flags (at position 25 and 75) and set the color to Black. Now create two more flags just inside the two outer flags (at position 2 and 98) and set their color to white.

10. Set the time slider to 50, and turn on Animate. Slide the time slider to 0, and move the flags to position 2,4,6,8, and 10 respectively. Hit Auto Key. Now move the time slider to 100 and move the flags to 90,92,94,96, and 98. Hit AutoKey. Turn off Animate, and play the time line, The rings should expand outward.

11. Add a UVW map modifier to the Animated Surface and leave it set to Plane. Goto the Gizmo sub object in the modifier stack, and rotate the UVW Gizmo 90 Clockwise and hit Fit, so that the top tag of the UVW map is on the long side of the Animated Surface.

12. Add a Vol. Select Modifier to Animated Surface. Set the Stack Selection Level to Vertex, and under the Select By group, Surface Features, Texture Map, drag the Gradient Ramp map from the Material Editor to the empty slot, and choose Instance.

13. Now Add a Push Modifier to Animated Surface and give it a Push Value of 6.75.

14. In the Layer Manager, hide Layer 0, and unhide Pins. If you scrub the time slider back and forth, you can see how the animated texture will move the pins.

15. In the Layer Manager unhide all the layers except Original Shapes. Select the Animated Surface object, Right Click and choose “Object Properties”. Uncheck “Renderable” and click OK. . Ctrl + A to select all and go to Group –> Group, and name the group PinBox. Save as Pinbox_Animated.

http://www.jtwo.com/

written by Lee Johnson

For this tutorial I am going to avoid using Mesh/Turbo Smooth, and any of the Boolean Operations. Some of these steps may seem overly precise, but if you can manipulate mesh efficiently without mesh smooth, it will help you be able to model with it later. The same goes for Boolean operations. If you can model without using them, you will be able to get further than by using them alone. Also some of the techniques for controlling the UCS icon location for scaling, rotating or mirroring are very helpful in many other situations. I am hoping you’ll find a few things in here besides just how to model a Pin Art Toy.

Model a Pin Art toy in 3ds Max 2009

01.    Ok start off by creating a rectangle, Length : 34.5, Width : 24, Corner Radius : 2.6.  Move it to XYZ, 0,0,8.5.  Change the Rectagle’s Interpolation to 12, and put an Extrude Modifier on the rectangle and set it to Height : 2.  Convert to an Editable Poly, and name this object “Plastic Lid”  Note : By right clicking over the Move Tool, you can bring up a floating window to type in exact coordinates or relative distances.

02.    Goto polygon sub object mode and select the top polygon, and use the Inset tool with an amount of .5.  Now delete the large remaining polygon.  Create an Arc with the two endpoints being the ends of the curved edge of the Plastic Lid, and increase the radius so its out away from the geometry.  Rename the arc to Corner Center Point.  This will be used for selection purposes in a minute.  Now the next several steps are about creating the geometry for the hole that the Corner Posts will make in the plastic.  You can just have the Corner Posts penetrate the Plastic Lid object, but if you want to be SUPER PICKY and see the interaction of the surfaces correctly in the render go on to step 3.  If its not that big a deal, don’t delete the polygons after you inset, and skip to Step 16.  Really this is a very tiny detail and will only be noticeable if you are looking REALLY close at the render.  If you skip to step 16 you will notice that your Plastic Lid lacks A LOT of the geometry shown in the example, don’t worry about it.

03.    Goto the Reference Coordinate System (RCS) which is located on the Main Toolbar just to the right of the Scale Tool.  Drop down from View to Pick. With your activated mouse cursor, pick the Corner Center Point, now you’ll see that name in the RCS Window on the Main Toolbar.