3ds max 6
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UNWRAP UVW: RELAX
I have never spent more time on a single task than I have pulling and pushing vertices to create a nice unified UV mapping solution for placing textures. Even with tools that are specifically designed for this, like DeepUVs, it’s a daunting proposition. But, 3ds max has taken a cue from those other tools and decided to put in a new tool into its already capable UVWrap tool. The relax tool works very much like the relax modifier does for vertices. It redistributes the distance between vertices evenly over the selection. Users can resolve issues with overlapping and stretched mapping by choosing the problematic verts and relaxing them – spreading out ones that are too close and bring in ones that are too far. In my perspective, this will save an artist so much time that it is worth the price of admission in itself (unless you wish to purchase DeepPaint3D and DeepUVs, nee Texture Weapons – which quite frankly is a great buy in itself, IMHO)
Nutshell: Indispensable. I love my DeepPaint, but if I don’t have to leave 3ds max to make adjustments to my UVs, then I can spend more time trying to finish the latest Final Fantasy.
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ISOLINE DISPLAY
Sometimes, it’s the little things that make a piece of software better. This is the case with the slight adjustment to the modeling technique we have come to know as subdivision modeling. Generally, with subdivision surfaces, the model builds a low-poly version of the object. When a meshsmooth is applied, detail is introduced in the model, and the model itself becomes more refined. The small downside to this is that the model becomes denser and more difficult to read the topology. The isoline display removes all the internal edges leaving only the lines that correlate to the edit cage (the low-poly representation of the model). This makes working with subdivision surfaces so much easier that I cannot possibly overstate its importance.
Nutshell: Why did this take so long?
SHELL MODIFIER
The new Shell Modifier is a slightly more controllable version of the plugin for previous versions called Solidify. A 3D object doesn’t have any thickness to its skin when initially built. If you blow away some polys on a sphere, you will notice that the edges are as thin as the edge itself, and there is no surface on the interior. The Shell modifier creates interior geometry and adds faces to create an edge. There are controls for the inner and outer surfaces, the difference creating the thickness of the skin. More controls allow the assignment of different materialIDs, which give the user the ability to assign unique materials to each surface. Toggles provide a means to select each surface. These last features could be done manually, but having them built into the tools itself is definitely a time saver. Selecting the interior surface of an object is hair-tearing to say the least.
Nutshell: Timesaver. Nothing too new because of the existence of Solidify.
EDITABLE SPLINES
In my recent experience, modeling with subdivision surfaces has become the trend of the new millennium, all but replacing NURBS and patch modeling. 3ds max doesn’t wish to exclude the old school however, and has bolstered its spline and patch editing tools.
The largest change has been to consolidate two tools previously needed to loft a surface through a cross section of splines into one tool. In earlier versions, a modeler would be required to create the profile curves for the surface and attach them. Then, a cross-section modifier would be added, which would create the splines perpendicular to the profile curves. Additional tools for copying and pasting vertice tangents completes some little tools for those guys out there who prefer modeling with patches over polys.
Nutshell: This would have been great a couple versions ago. Now I never touch patches. This isn’t to say that there aren’t modelers out there who will benefit from the loss of a couple extraneous steps. There are still people out there who prefer to forge their own nails rather than buy a box from Home Depot.
AEC OBJECTS
I’m not an architect and I rarely, if ever, provide material for architects, so I don’t have a whole lot of input into these features. However, a brief perusal through the tools shows that this group of standard architectural assemblies provides a very quick method of building scenes and sets. They are built parametrically, so they have a set of spinners to easily adjust the object after it has been created.
Nutshell: Great for quickly assembling architecture and rooms. In my field, I would definitely see it helping out for previsualizing film shoots and visual effects. Perhaps Pixel Liberation Front had a party when this was released.
CAMERA CORRECTION
A common problem within architectural previsualization is perspective. When looking up at a tall building, two-point perspective causes the edges of the building to converge. This is just plain optical physics. However, this effect often detracts from the grandiose quality of the building. In the old days, photographers had the ability to compensate by using a camera that allowed the lens to be twisted away from parallel to the film plane. This would effectively skew the perspective and cause the once converging lines to be more parallel. The Camera Correction modifier gives you the ability to have the same effect by applying an adjustable two-point perspective to the camera.
Nutshell: Specifically geared to architectural visualization. This doesn’t mean we should ignore it or throw it out. Humvees were made for military use over rugged terrain. That doesn’t mean I can’t drive one down Wilshire Blvd. on my way to Starbucks.
REGION NET RENDER
A function that had been needed for quite a while, Region Net Render provides the ability to spread a render of a single frame over many machines. It’s not a new technology to the industry. Bucket rendering has been with us for a long time. Bucket rendering generally doesn’t speed up anything when rendering sequences of files for animation and so forth, but for large images such as printwork, it’s a godsend to be able to send your 6000x8000 pixel image to a bunch of computers to chew on. For clarification, 3ds max isn’t really “bucket” rendering so much as it is “strip” rendering. It is distributing scanlines across the render farm. I suppose if you had 480 machines, that you could have each machine render one line in a 640x480 image. There have been some scripts that users have developed in the past to do this, but it’s nice to have it incorporated.
Nutshell: Great for printwork. Tremendous for rendering tests frames in an animation. Won’t gain you much for animation frames themselves.
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