3ds Max Cleaner, Remove Missing Plugins and a cool iPhone App and More

Here are a few things I have learnt this month.1. If you can not Group objects in 3ds Max then with the objects selected hit the unlink button on the left of the main toolbar. Then try and group it and it should work. This happens to me when I import files from AutoCAD and other software. 2. Camera Converter. To quickly add cameras I hit Ctrl+C in the 3ds Max viewport this is great when selecting views with others. But if you are using Vray it can be a pain to line the Vray Physical Camera up. This is where Anything to Physcam from Lele's Vray Tools on script spot is really great. There is a good video on how to use it from Alex over at Vray-Studio.

3. Cleaner. I was having trouble with a scene that was taking ages to load and save. I also had to turn off autoback and it really got hard to work with. Then I found Cleaner on script spot. This amazing tool got my file down from around 1gb to 200mb! 4. Remove Missing Plug-ins. I started to use Rebus Farm and I had a plug-in that Rebus did not. They are quite good with having Plug-ins but I could not send it until I sorted it. This can be quite a pain to resolve, but not with Remove Missing Plugins from Martin Breidt. Really easy to use and extremely useful.

5. How to setup Depth of Field in 3ds Max. A great reminder on setting up a DOF pass in 3ds Max from Onno Van Braam.

6. Wireless Trackpad and Keyboard iPhone App. This great app from Logitech turns your iPhone into a mouse and you can type to. This is handy when watching films on the TV from the laptop and not wanting to have to move.

Polygons to Solids for 3D Printing

The reason for this blog article is to save you from the terrible time I had exporting a polygon mesh into a solid. Basically taking a mesh file and turning into a .iges or similar for 3d printing. After searching the forums and testing out tools that claim to do the job with no luck I had to get busy...

It is possible to take a mesh into Rhino and use the MeshToNumb command, but the mesh needs to be under 20,000 poly and once it is converted it is not smooth and for 3d printing you probably want it smooth. In 3ds Max there is a way to turn your model to Nurbs and export as an .iges. For small models this may work but not for me. If you right click on the model and Convert to Patch and once that is done right click again and Convert to Nurbs. I have not successfully used this method because I have never had the time to wait for the conversion so be warned it does take sometime.

So in 3ds Max there is an export to .iges file in the export box. File>export but unless your model is in Nurbs rather than ploys then this option won't work. So here is how I managed to get quite a heavy max scene into a solid format. This is in no way the correct method but if there is one I would love to know about it.

So here we go with my method. In 3ds Max select your mesh and go to File>Export as .obj. Then open this great tool called 3d Exploration which can be downloaded here. Navigate to the .obj file in here and save it out as a .stl file.

Open up Rhino and import the .stl file. Select the mesh and type in the command bar MeshToNurb. Once this is done select the mesh and delete it, then you should be left with the nurb object. Now all you have to do is export it as an it as an .iges :)

Panorama at Roquebrune Cap Martin

I have added a photo section to my portfolio area including this image I recently took at Roquebrune Cap Martin.

Top 5 Free 3ds Max Scripts and Plugins

Recently I have been trying out quite a few scripts and plugins to speed up my work flow in 3ds Max. I highly recommend browsing scriptspot.com for useful scripts. But to save so time and kick you off here is what I have been using recently. Please note that not all of these are available on Sciptspot but there is a link to each download. So in no particular order here are my Top Five Free 3ds Max Scripts and Plugins. Wireframe Render jokermartini.com/2010/04/30/wireframe-render/ Wireframe Render is a script from John Martini over at jokermartini.com. I have found this one very useful for creating wireframe renders for Turbosquid for example. Wireframe Render uses a simple interface that enables the user to quickly and easily create wireframe renders. I would also recommend checking out some of John's other cool tools available at jokermartini.com/extras/ including cobwebs and Select Intersectors.

Render Mask www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/rendermask Render Mask allows you to quickly render masks such as object ID's and Materials ID's which I find extremely useful. It is possable to do this in 3ds Max Render Elements but this is handy after you have rendered and maybe you need to get a mask without re-rendering. This plugin is a massive time saver when trying to create varous types of masks for use in post production. It is by Ivan Tepavicharov and this video should explain how to use it.

https://vimeo.com/26107414 Center and Reset www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/frodos-magic-scripts-pack This neat script is from Frodo's Magic Scripts Pack. It resets the xform on an object and centers the pivot point in one click. I use this alot and find it to be a big time saver.

Copitor www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/copitor This has to be one of my favourites. I have posted about Copitor before here and I am still using it all the time. Copitor lets you copy and paste objects between 3ds Max scenes. I also find it useful to grab the material off the object rather than having to export it.

Ivy Generator www.guruware.at/main

Ivy Generator hass been around for a while now and I think it is great. I am always looking out for places I can put it in my scenes because it looks great and it is so easy to use. It is also very customisable with your own leaves etc. Here is a great video tutourial from Sachin Joshi over at CGTuts.

cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-3d-studio-max/create-an-ivy-covered-tree-stump-with-3ds-max-ivy-gen-and-vray/

21 Free Medieval Textures

Hopefully some people will find these free textures useful . They are from the Medieval Village of Roquebrune in the South of France, not to far from me. Please feel free to use them for whatever you like. In the rar file there are doors, walls, windows and a view over the village. 

Vray Embree, EUE write ups, The Rule of Thirds and Britney Spears

An update of a few useful things knocking around the community this month.

Jorge Baldeon's post Britney Spears Big Fat Bass Backdrop Making Of on his blog jorgebaldeoncg.blogspot.com is well worth a read, especially if you are a Mental Ray user. He talks about how he went about creating the background animations for Britney Spears Femme Fatale Tour using Mental Ray and 3ds Max.

Samuel Enslin, who I meet at EUE this year has done a write up of some of the talks that went on there at www.insertmesh.net. This was very useful for me as with so many great talks going on it is impossible to make it to all of them.

Ciro Sannino's blog post on The Rule Of Thirds In 3ds Max over at Cg Blog is a great read and very useful for working out how to get the best shots from your 3d models.

Finally, if you want to speed up your renderings in Vray check out Vray Embree. It can speed up your Vray renderings by up to 30%. Definitly check it out, it is very simple to use. Watch the video below for more info.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iJaPhuxepIs

Latest 3D Work - The B-Town Series

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This set of images are influenced by my time in Brighton, you may have seen the Vespas before as I started them a little while ago and they were in 3D World's Portfolio section of the magazine. The VW's were inspired by the VW show I saw when I first moved to Brighton, I posted some pictures of that back in October here. The Vespa took two days to model and adding materials, rendering and post-production took another two. All the images are rendered using Mental Ray.

End User Event 2012

I headed over to Utrecht for the End User Event this week. The event is held in the Florin Pub where the rooms for the talks also are. A total of 5 rooms made it difficult to decide what to see or not. Luckily a lot of the speakers presented their talks more than once. I arrived in the afternoon on Thursday and started with the 3ds Max Expert Panel which was made up of of Neil Hazzard, Zap Andersson, LouisMarcoux, Alex Horst and Jamie Gwilliam. In this session we could ask anything we liked about 3ds Max and any issues we had, this was a great start to the event.

Next up I saw Ted Boardman's workshop, Ted Gets Push-y where Ted demonstrated a range of modifiers that often get overlooked, most of which I had not used before. The Volume select, Push and Slice modifier all got shown and the Snapshot and the Shape Merge tool also look like something that I can introduce to my workflow. 

The evenings were great with an open bar and a tasty dinner included, this was a great time to meet fellow 3D Artists and discuss workflow, tools and anything else. My ‘to check out list’ has quadrupled.

First thing on Friday I saw the Unity guys present ‘Doing Magic with Unity in Architectural and Design Visualisation.’ Here they showed how Unity could be used as an interactive architectural visualisation tool. Next was Jamie Gwilliam, from Jamie’s Jewels, presenting an interesting discussion on ‘What Makes a Good Render.’ I learnt a lot of valuable lessons from this talk and enjoyed hearing from everybody about what they thought made renders look good or not.

After lunch Joshua Newmanfrom Meshroom presented his 15 Do's and Don'ts of Visualisation. Again I learnt a lot from this presentation and also had the opportunity to discuss issues I was having in my workflow. One of my favorite talks was from Evert Vandenberghe called Meeting Insane Insane Deadlines! I think the title appealed to a lot of the community and some of the tips and workflow were incredible, a lot of ideas that I can hopefully take into my workflow. Evert went through how he worked using basic examples but they can be used for more complex things. The day finished up with Master Zap and Neil Hazzard talking about the renderers that ship with 3ds Max.

Monaco Formula 1 Grand Prix

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This weekend was Monaco Grand Prix and I was lucky enough to be able to watch from the balcony at work.

Autodesk 123D Catch Beta

I was very excited to hear about Autodesk's 123D Catch. 123D Catch lets you take ordinary photos and turn them into 3D models. Here is a quick introduction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6aU2s85Zw3A

So I downloaded the software from here. The software comes with some good tutorials and the program is pretty straight forward to use. For the object I wanted to create I took 42 photos spinning around the object. I uploaded them and waited for Autodesk to email to let me know it was completed. A couple of the images were too dark so the object I received was not 100% but 42 images is probably the minimum I would suggest.

It looked pretty good if I do say so myself. Next, what I was most excited about was getting it into 3ds Max. This was simple, File, Export, FBX and import into Max, this is what I got below.

The scene contains cameras where all the shots were taken from, which could come in handy. I then opened up the Material Editor and selected the material from the object. There were two in this case. The file Autodesk emailed me contained to texture sheets which I remapped to the correct location and below are the 2 texture sheets and the result i got.

I then added a Mental Ray Daylight system and applied a smoothing group to the whole object and rendered. Below are the results. The mesh was very heavy and if I had more time I could have cleaned it up a lot and patched up any broken areas in the model.

Catch 123D is an amazingly powerful tool which I am sure will come in handy in future. Definitely give this free software a try and let me know how you get on.

Milan Furniture show and Top Marques

It has been a busy couple of weeks over here. On Wednesday I went to the Milan Furniture Show and returned to Monaco on the Friday night. Then I was off to Top Marques in Monaco on Sunday. Milan furniture show was great and so was Milan. I could have really done with a week there as there was so much to see. Top Marques is 'the most exclusive supercar show in the world' and it did not fail to deliver. Below are some pictures from Top Marques.

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iRay

A great Autodesk University class that converted me from Mental Ray to iRay for rendering. The talk by George Matos concentrates on how iRay is different from previous rendering technology and goes through the advantages and disadvantages. Later the talk moves on to cloud rendering with iRay and where it is all heading. Definitely worth a watch.

"Key Learning Describe the hardware required for iray and explain how to use cloud rendering with iray Explain what iray is List the advantages and disadvantages of iray Describe the differences between iray and previous rendering technology" ... Autodesk University

Art Monaco '12

Here are a few pictures from Art Monaco '12 which I attended on Friday...

My favourite Artist of the day had to be Natsuki Otake. Natsuki uses Silk, Pigment and Dye to create these beautiful images that are layered up. They can be built up to give a 3D feel to the piece.  Natsuki's batik pieces are of her idols.

Download Adobe Photoshop CS6 Beta

Adobe Photoshop CS6 Beta is available to download here. "The world’s best digital image editing software is about to get even better. Explore Adobe® Photoshop® CS6 beta for a sneak preview of some of the incredible performance enhancements, imaging magic, and creativity tools we are working on. Discover for yourself why Photoshop CS6 software will be a whole new experience in digital image editing."

In this video Julieanne Kost goes through her 6 favourite new features in Adobe Photoshop CS6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=uBLXzDvSH7k

Autodesk 3ds Max 2013 Announced - New Features Videos

Autodesk 3ds Max 2013 has been announced and here are the latest New Features videos. Personally I am looking forward to using iRay Active Shade in a viewport (video below). I understand that iRay Active Shade was only available in 2012 in the subscription pack. I have started making the move from Mental Ray to iRay now and I suggest trying Niveda's iRay out if you have not done so already.http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pji7hLREtoc Check out all the new feature videos here.

Copitor is a must have for a 3ds Max user

Copitor is a 3ds Max script by Mathieu Jacquin which allows you to copy and paste selected objects to another 3ds Max scene or to another window if you have more then one 3ds Max open. It is also useful to back an object up before you try something, such as booleans! You can download it here.

To install... Drop The file in max viewport and go to Customize ==> Customize User Interface ==> Category: zOffTy Tools ==> Copitor

Photoshop and Wacom Tablet tips

I have been doing a lot of post production work in Adobe Photoshop with my Wacom tablet recently. A couple of things I came across that I thought might be useful to share.  

1. Ring when tapping in Photoshop with a tablet. This can become very annoying. I believe it comes as default in Windows 7. This is how I got rid of the problem in Windows 7 x64 bit.

-In the Control Panel search for Edit group policy. -In here you need to go to administrative templates, windows components, tablet pc, cursors, turn off pen feedback. -In this window change from not configured to enabled.  -Click OK and your done. Update: There is a lot more information on this subject here.

2. Add a Layer mask shortcut. I am constantly using layer masks and do get feed up of going all the way to the bottom of the Layers pallete to click the button. In Photoshop there is no default shortcut. To add a shortcut click Edit, Keyboard Shortcuts, under Layer Mask> add a shortcut key (I used Ctrl+Q) to Reveal All.

Creating an ocean in 3ds Max using Wave Generator

Wave Generator is a Plugin written by Ruben Mayor and Philippe Jadoul for 3ds Max. Very quickly you can generate ocean surfaces including control over waves. The plugin is currently in alpha version. We needed a solution to create various oceans surfaces. Wave Generator gave me the ability to create the ocean as a 3d object then add materials or even export it to other applications.  I found it very straight forward to work with and in 3ds Max I just add a daylight system and a generic mental ray water material to create the image above.

You can download Wave Generator here.

Photoshop CS6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UrlsnQ32YhY

Adobe have realeased 6 sneak peek videos on Youtube of the upcoming Photoshop CS6. Video 4 'Content-Aware' was of most interest to me. In the video Product Manager Bryan O'Neil Hughes demonstrates how to move or remove an object from an image using the content- aware tool. See below for the other 4 videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pBIf9KljT68 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XLp1dR2sYkE http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=zDfL021HkCg http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9wx8P-GQxOw

Fix Your Photo’s Exposure Problems in Seconds With This Simple Trick from Lifehacker

A great tip here from the guys at lifehacker to fix exposure problems really quickly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UyIHpRjaBic

• Open up the photo and duplicate the layer containing it.
• Invert the duplicated layer. (The shortcut is Control/Command+I in Photoshop and is likely the same in other image editors.)
• Set the duplicated layer's blending mode to Overlay.

• Optional: Reduce the opacity of the duplicated layer if the effects are too much.
• Optional: Merge the two layers and adjust the levels or curves to suit your taste. (If you're in Photoshop, you can just make a new adjustment layer to do this.)