January 2012
1 post
2 tags
139 (Max): Automatically Save VRay Render Elements
Activate and set up the render elements you’ll need for compositing. Next, activate the “VRay FRAME BUFFER”. Inside the VFB rollout, check the “SAVE SEPARATE RENDER CHANNELS” check box and click “BROWSE” to save your frames. When you click render, Max will prompt you with an alert about “saving a sequence with no output”, click “OK”...
December 2011
1 post
1 tag
138 (Max): Drag N' Drop Bitmaps
Quickly create Bitmap maps in the Slate or Compact material editor by dragging your file from any explorer window to the editor. If you drag it to a slot in the Compact editor, it will create a standard material with that map in the diffuse slot. If you drag it into the Slate editor it just creates a bitmap.
November 2011
3 posts
2 tags
137 (Max): Move Vertex Along Edge
If you’ve ever been working inside an Edit-Poly modifier and needed to move vertices along a non-ortho edge, you’ve realized it can be difficult. If you scroll down in the Command Panel and find the “Edit Geometry” rollout, inside you’ll see a set of parameters named “Constrain” with the options “None”, “Edge”, “Face”...
1 tag
136 (Max): Saving LDR Images with 2.2 Gamma
When saving out an LDR format, remember that your 2.2 gamma is only “previewed” in the VFB window. You can choose to bake the gamma in by overriding it in the “Save Image” dialogue. Alternatively you can go to “Rendering -> Gamma/LUT Setup…” and type in 2.2 into the “Output Gamma” field. Now every image you save will be baked with 2.2.
2 tags
(135) Max: "Pan & Zoom" While Drawing Splines
If you want more precision while drawing lines, go into PREFERENCES / VIEWPORTS and toggle the Zoom About Mouse Point options on. Now your middle mouse wheel will use your mouse as its zoom target.
September 2011
2 posts
2 tags
(134) Cinema 4D: Invert Camera Axis Orbit
If you think in an inverted Y-axis, for flying, video games, etc.
Edit > Preferences > Input Devices > Check “Reverse Orbit”
1 tag
(133) Max: Quick Select Camera Target
When working in a cluttered scene, it can be difficult to select your camera target. To easily select it, R-Click on the camera’s body and select “Select Camera Target”. This can also be reversly done by selecting the camera target.
August 2011
1 post
1 tag
(132) Max: Reverse Spline Animations
To reverse a PathDeform animation, simply edit the spline’s last vertex to be its first by selecting it and clicking “Make First”. This will make the first vertex the starting point for the animation.
June 2011
4 posts
2 tags
(131) Cinema 4D: Toggle Smoothing
Press the ‘Q’ key to enable/disable HyperNURBS (sub-d smoothing). Much faster than clicking the green ‘check mark’ on and off. Also, it doesn’t contribute to the undo/history chain.
2 tags
(130) Cinema 4D: Save Camera Start
Finally happy with your camera angle? Set a keyframe on frame 0 of the camera so you dont accidentally lose it. Life Saver!
1 tag
(129) Max: Quickly Add List Controllers
To quickly add a list controller to multiple objects, simply freeze your transforms. When you “Freeze” an object’s transform, it creates a two-controller list of which the second controller is the default for its transform.
1 tag
(128) Max: Viewport HUD
Hit “7” on the keyboard to display viewport stats including poly, and vert counts as well as a live FPS read out.
May 2011
6 posts
1 tag
(127) Max: Remove Material Assignment
Once you apply a material to an object in Max, you won’t be able to un-assign it. You can only apply other materials. To remove the assignment from all objects and revert back to the object color, type “Geometry.material = undefined” in your MaxScript Listener! To revert only selected objects, make selection and type “$.material = undefined”.
2 tags
(126) Max: Lock Selection
If you are working on a certain object(s) and find yourself accidentally deselecting the object(s) or selecting other objects in the viewport, you can use the Lock Selection button to prevent that from happening. Hit the Spacebar to lock/unlock the currently selected object and you will not be able to deselect that object or select any other objects until you unlock the selection. This is good...
2 tags
(125) Max: Selection Filter
If you are trying to make selections based on a certain type of object (i.e. bones, shapes, lights, etc) you can set the selection filter to that type and the viewport will disable selection on all other types of objects, making for easier selection. Comes in handy when setting up/testing rigs, when you don’t want to have to freeze your model geometry, but you can avoid accidentally...
2 tags
(124) Cinema 4D: Transfer Objects (P.S.R)
There are a couple routes to transferring or copying P.S.R of one object to another:
1. Copy & Paste: This works, but there must be keyframes in order to do this.
2. Parenting & RESET PSR: Make the receiving object the child of the main and use the “RESET PSR” command found in the Command Manager (or zeroing out each field in the attributes manager.)
3. Transfer: Located...
2 tags
(123) Maya: Show Reversed Normals
Go to the Lighting menu, then uncheck “Two Sided Lighting”. Every face with reversed normals will appear black.
1 tag
(122) Max: Create Camera From Perspective
Instead of dragging out a new camera and trying to match the perspective view that you like. Simply press “ctrl” + C on the keyboard. A new camera will be created from the active perspective view.
April 2011
28 posts
2 tags
(121) Cinema 4D: Advancing and Jumping Frames
To move frame by frame on your timeline, Pressing the ‘f’ key will move 1 frame back, pressing the ‘g’ key will move 1 frame forward. Hold down the CTRL(CMD) key while pressing ‘f’ and ‘g’ to jump between keyframes (back or forward). Its a big time saver!
1 tag
(120) Cinema 4D: Target Depth
If you’re having trouble controlling depth of field on a moving camera or focusing on a moving object, adding a target tag to the camera may help solve this problem. Adding this tag makes the “Use Target Object” option available under Depth in your Attribute Manager. When enabled, anywhere your target is, your Target Depth will be set to.
1 tag
(119) Max: Remove Material Assignment
To remove the material assignment and revert back to your object color open up the Maxscript Listener and type ” Geometry.material = undefined “. The object will then switch back to its object color.
2 tags
(118) Cinema 4D: Switch Modeling Modes
Hit return to switch between point, edge and poly modes while modeling.
1 tag
(117) Max: Hide/Unhide Edit Poly Geometry
Sometimes things can get very crowded with modeling inside an edit poly. While “Ignore Backfacing” helps most of the time sometimes you just don’t want to see the geometry you’re not editing.
Within the edit poly you have the option to hide and unhide geometry. This works in vertex, polygon and element mode.
NOTE: All parts of the model will still render even if...
1 tag
(116) Max: Textually Change Project Folder
Change the project folder in Max without booting the program by navigating to
“C:\Users\ {your user name here}\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2011 - 64bit\enu\3dsmax.ini”
Open the file and locate
[Directories]ProjectFolder=C:\ {add location here}
Remember to always save a copy of the original in case you mess anything up!
1 tag
(115) Cinema 4D: Working with Splines
To make your life a lot easier when working with splines, try turning off the Display for your Axis. An unobstructed view makes a world of difference, especially when laying out a new spline. Go to Filter -> Axis, then set to unchecked.
5 tags
(114) Max: Store Different Camera Angles On...
Say you want to render a character from several angles for presentation purposes, and for this you render one perspective at the time, and you have to wait for it to finish before you start the next. Instead, try to use only one camera, but store the different camera positions for each render in a keyframe. This makes the scene easier to manage with only one camera, and you can set software to...
2 tags
(113) Cinema 4D: Negative Light
Want to make some crazy effects? Try making the brightness of a light negative and suck the light back out of your scene. Works well if you add falloff to the negative light.
2 tags
(112) Cinema 4D: Spot Lights Instead of Omni...
Try and use spot lights whenever possible. A spot light only calculates a single shadow map, but an omni light has to calculate 6!
2 tags
(111) Cinema 4D: Splines Optimization
Curved Spline primitives default to a 5˚ subdivision but this is often an unnecessarily high poly count. Set your default “angle” to higher number to help keep your scenes from getting too heavy. 25˚works well.
2 tags
(110) Cinema 4D: Fix Spline Wrap problems
Getting funky Spline Wrap results? Animating something inside a Spline Wrap and it’s giving you trouble? Make a cube that encompasses everything affected and include it in the hierarchy. Then you can check the cube off!
2 tags
(109) Cinema 4D: Quick reset value to default
Instantly revert any value to it’s default by right clicking a parameters up/down arrow to the right of the edit field. Bonus tip! Select more then one attribute and Ctrl+Right click on any of the selected up/down arrows to reset them all to default.
1 tag
(108) Max: Wrap Cursor
Some spinners in Max can be spun to very high or low values. By default Max will wrap your cursor to the top and bottom of your monitor. When you’re done spinning, it can be a little disorienting to find it again. Fix this by going into Customize -> Preferences -> General -> Spinners. Click the “Wrap Cursor Near Spinner” and that’s that!
2 tags
(107) Cinema 4D: Duplicate Keyframes
When working in your track view, you can easily duplicate keyframes. First, select the keyframes you want to duplicate. Then, while holding control, drag the keyframe out and place it where you’d like.
1 tag
(106) Max: Shortcut Override Toggle
Every wonder why your keyboard shortcuts aren’t working while working inside a special part of Max? When the overrride is off, only the main user interface shortcuts are recognized. Turn it on when inside a special area of Max for the shortcuts for the respective area to be active.
1 tag
(105) Cinema 4D: Retiming Keyframes
When working in your track view, you can easily retime a group of keyframes, while retaining your spacing. First, select 2 or more keys. Then, while holding alt/option, drag one of corners of the top highlighted bar, above your selection (very similar to after effects.)
2 tags
(104) Max: Animate Bones While Skinning
When you’re skinning a character to the bone rig, it’s useful to add animation to the bones before you start the skinning process. Animate the rig to do common movements, but push it to the limit. Animate the arm to stretch up, then all the way down. Bend the knee all the way, and so on. This will stress-test the skinning, you can drag the slider on the timeline while skinning to see...
1 tag
(103) Max: Sub-Object Level Quick Access
Instead of hitting the “+” arrow on any object to access its sub-object level parts, hit “1, 2, 3, 4, 5” on the keyboard to access the corresponding part in decending order. For instance, in an Edit Poly you can go all the way to 5 because it has 5 sub-objects. In an Edit Spline, you can go to number 3 because it has 3 sub-object parts.
1 tag
(102) Max: Pop-Up Notes
If sharing a scene with another artist you can add pop-up notes to be loaded at scene load to inform them of any information you so choose. To add pop-up notes to the UI, go to the Customize User Interface. In any tab (Keyboard, Toolbars, Quads, Menus) you can find them under Category -> Pop Up Note. Add them wherever you please.
2 tags
(101) Cinema 4D: Open Project As A Template
You can open any project file as the startup template by saving the project as a new.c4d file and adding it to the root directory of your application (the same place the c4d application is located)…SCORE!
3 tags
(100) Poser 3D:
Don’t ever use Poser 3D.
1 tag
(99) Cinema 4D: Save your materials!
I recommend setting up a scene file to save your best Materials. It can be a huge time saver for a quick project or nice starting point for a new one. There are tons of scenes out there that you can use as a template. Here is one that I use for my materials: http://tinyurl.com/3e7lzzb
2 tags
(98) Cinema 4D: Hardware Previews
It can be helpful to do Hardware Previews to check your animations in realtime before doing your final render. Hold down the “Render in Picture Viewer” icon and select Make Preview. Adjust the settings as needed and click Ok. You can create preview renders without affecting any full renders you may have going.
1 tag
(97) Max: Anti-Aliasing Sampling
In Mental Ray, never assign the Minimum & Maximum aliasing drop-downs to the same value.
1 tag
(96) Max: Lock Viewport
Often times a viewport is selected that you don’t want to render from. In the render dialog, select the view you want to always render from and hit the lock button next to it. This ensures no mix ups in the future.
1 tag
(95) Max: Object Trajectories
With the object selected, click on Motion Panel -> Trajectories. To edit keyframes, hit the “Sub-Object” button above. The Convert To and Convert From buttons below can be used to move an object along a path without using a path constraint.
1 tag
(94) Max: PFlow Playback
To speed up animation playback you can use the Cache Operator which stores the animation in memory rather than recalculating particle motion every time.
March 2011
93 posts
2 tags
(93) Max: Limit Controller
If you need to limit the amount an object, shape, helper, etc. can transform (move, rotate, scale) you can assign a Limit Controller to the appropriate transform channel(s). In the Motion tab of the Command Panel, select the channel you want to limit (ie. Z Position), click the Assign Controller icon and assign a Float Limit. Now set the Upper and Lower Limits and your object will now be limited...
1 tag
(92) Cinema 4D: Undo View
Accidently move the camera? To roll back to your last view you can use Cmnd + Shift + Z (mac) Ctrl + Shift + Z (windows)
1 tag
(91) Max: Pinning Modifiers
Pin a modifier in a stack to keep the parameters available to adjust while other objects are selected. Just press the pin icon on the far left of the modifier stack.
1 tag
(90) Max: Sharing and Rearranging Modifiers
Select object-space and world-space modifiers separately. Cut, Copy, and Paste are unavailable if both types are selected. If you try to paste a world-space modifier into the section for object-space types, the paste occurs at the top of the world-space section. The reverse is also true.