Week 5 - Reminder that you hand in work at the end of Week 6!!!

Just a small reminder that you will be handing in work on the 4th March - three models that you will be using in your James Bond animation placed on a disc or memory stick along with a print out of your blog.

Lecture 5 - Camera modify panel

Within the modify panel, you can specify which lens you wish to use, there is a choice of nine lenses. The smaller the lens, eg 20 mm the wider angle you will see. The larger ie 85 the smaller angle you will see. Try toggling these amounts to see the difference.

Field of Depth

When you place an object in the distance in 3DS Max you can see the background object just as well and in focus as the forground object. This is not what happens in real life. If you look into the distance it is harder to focus then when looking at closer objects.

With Field of Depth you can make the background objects blurr to give a true to life representation.

Lecture 5 - Cameras - Setting up your camera

When you set up your scene, you have placed your camera/s, and changed your perspective view to camera view, you will see that the little symbols at the bottom of the interface have changed and are now specific to the camera. What is nice about these functions is that you can animate them.

Dolly camera - This allows the camera to move backward and forward without changing the lens length.

Field of View (FOV) changes the lens length without moving the camera.

Perspective view toggles different combinations of view.

Walk through, allows the use of the up, down, right and left arrows on the key board.

Orbit - The camera rotates

Pan - Rotates the target around the camera.

Lecture 5 - Cameras - Setting up your camera

To access and place a camera in your scene you need to go to Create > Cameras.

3DS Max offers two types of camera, Target and Free.

The most useful is the Target camera, as you can position the target onto the scene you wish the camera to look at.

Free cameras are better for animation, i.e. fly through animation where the camera can be aligned to a path.

You need to be careful as to which viewport you initially place your camera within, as they can be misaligned.

Target camera is click and dragged in the top viewport, so that it is to the ground.

Free cameras should be clicked into the front view.

In order to see the view that your camera is providing, click on 'perspective' in the perspective viewport>cameras>camera 01 and your perspective viewport will now react to any changes that you make to your scene with the camera.

Lectrure 4 - Skylight system

In the create panel > lights > standard > Skylight. Click to add skylight in the front viewport.

With the light highlighted go to the modify panel and under the render panel click shadows.

Now render your scene - a lovely matt finish!

Lecture 4 - Gamma Correction

If you use photoshop you will probably know about the 'levels' adjustment that is offered there. This allows you to make your photograph darker or lighter, in other words it adjusts the Gamma of the image. Gamma correction is built into products such as computers and televisions and it is set at 2.2. Mac computers are set to 1.8.

The Gamma setting is built in to compress the information produced in shadow areas (light and shade). The Mental Ray rendered used for Raytracing has to know the correct Gamma, otherwise rendering can take longer than it needs to. Also the with the correct Gamma the colour of bitmapped shapes is richer and more saturated. Gamma does not affect ordinary colour, only the colour of the bitmaps in your materials as they appear applied to geometry.

You therefore need to turn the Gamma on:

Turning Gamma on

Go to the customise drop down, and click on preferences > Tab - Gamma and LUT (look up table).

Check enable Gamma,

Also under bitmap files - Output and input 2.2

Enable Affect colour Sections

Affecct Material Editor.

Toggle the UI setting in the render panel to see preference box where you can change settings for test renders which will decrease render time.

Under Limit trace depth keep Max reflections at 2 and Max refractions at 4.

Lecture 4 - Understanding Raytracing - Chrome & Glass materials

Raytracing is when light from a source or camera (in 3ds Max) bounces off other objects, and is reflected/refracted in and from the pixels in the scene.

To produce a chrome material

Open the material editor, select a slot. In the Maps rollout, click on reflection > in the maps rollout click Raytrace. Drag the material to the object, and render.

To produce a glass material

Open the material editor, select a slot, click on background so that your material shows up. Make sure that you have your diffuse colour as black. Go to the Maps rollout, click on refraction and choose Raytrace. Click and drag to the object and render.