REALLY! *w*
I would like to battle the two of you in the future :D
and also WWhiteSShadow, teach me how to use 3dsmax :3
Sure, buddy! Allow me to tell you everything...
There are two ways to get 3DS MAX for yo
ur computer. The first way is just to freaking buy it for a mere $2000 or so. The second way is to be registered under your current computer lab/technology/CTE teacher as a student and get the software for free. If you've moved out and aren't in college, prepare to cough it up. Once you've paid for/been vouched for the program, you may install it directly off Autodesk's website. Follow the installation instructions there and it will be on your desktop in about an hour. (or forty if your computer isn't state-of-the-art)[/spoiler]
When you first enter the program, you wi
ll be hounded by a couple of popups. Promptly close them. Now then, look at the toolbar located on top of your screen. Around the center of it should be three tools that say Move, Rotate, and Scale as you roll your cursor over them. These are your most vital tools for manipulating objects. The Move tool makes things change their position, the Rotate tool spins objects around, and the Scale tool changes its size. In the event that you should ever have trouble with these tools, you're dead to me. Now go to the lower-right corner of your screen. This is where you can locate your camera tools. As you roll over the short list, you will find the Pan, Zoom, Zoom Extents, Zoom Extents All, and Camera Rotate tool among other things. This is your camera's command center. In the event that you should ever have trouble with these tools, you're half-dead to me.[/spoiler]
Look to the right panel on the screen. T
he topmost tab on it gives you a list of panels, including Create, Modify, Hierarchy, Motion, Display, and so on. Make sure it's on Create. Moving on down, the Create tab lets you choose between Geometry, Splines, Systems, and so on. Choose Systems, then go down and look for an option called Biped. Click on it, then scroll down the panel and look at all the links of the Biped. Change the finger links to 1-3 and the # of fingers to 5. Set the toe links to 1 and the # of toes to 5. If you have a furry gladiator, I would recommend setting the tail links to 4. If your gladiator has a ponytail, set the ponytail links to 1-4 depending on how long it is. Ignore everything else and go to your viewports. In the viewports, click and drag on the screen and the Biped specified should spawn wherever you click. (its size is determined by how much you drag your cursor)[/spoiler]
With your newly-created biped, go back t
o the uppermost area of the left panel and select the Motion tab. Provided your Biped is selected, it should bring up a confusing dialogue of tools for it. Slowly move down from the tab thumbnail until you see a little stickfigure icon. This is the Figure Mode button- click it. Your Biped will suddenly drop to where its waist was for reasons I cannot explain, so just ignore it and focus on the task at hand. First of all, notice that your biped looks like a lazy attempt at a halfbody animation. Fix it. Whip out your trusty Scale tool and select all the spine links as well as the neck link, pelvis link, and collar bone links. Make them 50% their width on the X axis and 75% their width on the Z axis. If it looks like a wide piece of cardboard, hit CTRL+Z twice and flip the instructions for the X and Z axis from here on out. Anyway, moving on to the arms and legs. Make the arms and hands 75% their width on the Z axis. Make the legs and feet 50% their width on the X and Z axis. Now that he's about as thin as a typical stickfigure, click on the Figure Mode button to exit and save. You're ready to animate him![/spoiler]
In the left panel of your screen is a li
ttle colored box that mimics the color of whatever object you just selected. This is commonly used as a means to identify something from another, but in a pinch can be used to give something its actual color. Just select your chosen object, click on the colored box, and select a color from the palette that opens up. You can select a custom color if none of the colors listed match your wishes. If you're feeling like different colors of plastic aren't good enough, then press M on your keyboard to bring up the Materials menu. Select one of the spheres in the upper menu and look at its lower menu. In there you will find a host of properties, but for now let's look at the colored boxes on the left-hand side. The Ambient and Diffuse colors determine the color of your material. To the left is a little icon that lets you lock them together so they are both the same color. Link them if they aren't already. Select your color and move on from there! To the right of that are two values that let you determine the self-illumination and opacity of the material. Just enter a value and it will determine how much the material glows in the dark and how opaque the material is. Adjust them as you see fit. Below those options is where you can find the Specular Level and Glossiness values. These determine how shiny an material is and how the shine is distributed over the material. The higher the specular, the shinier the material. The higher the glossiness, the more the light will be focused on one point versus the entire object. (as in, will it shine like metal or will it shine like pearls) Ignore everything else on the list- not even I want to put my finger in those. To apply it to an object, click on the object desired. Now look just under the list of materials and roll over the icons until you find one that says Assign To Selected Materials or something along those lines. Click on it to assign it to the material, then roll over to the right of that icon until you find an icon that says something along the lines of Show Map In Viewport. Click on it to see the material in your viewport. That's it![/spoiler]
Go to the Create tab and look under the
first sub-menu beneath it. (it has a sphere for its icon) There are a hundred million different 3D shapes that can be used to create a weapon. Go ahead and tinker with some of the more understandable values as you draw up some of the basic shapes like the number of segments in the object to get a feel for them, then just click and drag out a basic shape. Next, right-click on it and roll over to the bottom of the menu that pops up. Once you find a sub-menu called Convert To..., roll over it and select Editable Mesh from the list that pops out. Please note that it CRUCIAL to make sure your object had lots of segments to begin with before converting it into an Editable Mesh, otherwise you WILL run out of vertex points and you WILL have to scrap the entire thing and start over. Now go over over to the tab next to the Create tab, known as the Modify tab if the program didn't already take you there. There you will see a property listed in the menu below the tab saying Editable Mesh. Select it if it isn't already selected and look in its menu below. At the top of it should be a list of icons, which upon rolling over should include things like Editable Vertex, Editable Poly, Editable Facing, or whatever. Anywho, go select Editable Vertex. The object you will make your weapon (or part of your weapon) out of will have every corner of it pegged with a blue dot. Upon selecting one, it will turn red. Upon moving it, the object's corner will stretch. If you select multiple dots, you can rotate and scale them for a number of interesting effects. Start selecting dots like nobody's business and start cutting out your weapon like a giant cookie cutter. Eventually, you will have molded a weapon. (or at least a piece of it) Once that's done, give it a nice color or make a new material for it. Repeat the process until all parts of the weapon have been generated. Once that's done, align them to form the weapon, select all of the parts, and head over to the upper-left corner of the screen. Around there you should find a tab labeled Group. Click it, then Group everything together. A message prompt should come up asking you to confirm it and rename the group into something else. Change its name into the name of your weapon and click OK. You have now fully modeled a weapon! To equip it to a character, align it with his hand and go to the upper-left corner of the screen again. Right below the File tab (which is stylized as the 3DX MAX logo) are three tools known as Link, Unlink, and Bind To Space Warp. Select the Link tool, then click your weapon and drag your cursor over to your gladiator's hand. Whenever the hand moves, the weapon will follow it, hence giving the illusion of your gladiator actually holding his weapon.[/spoiler]
Follow the exact same procedure for mode
ling weapons, but link the finished products to whatever part they apply to. (as in, linking a shield to his left forearm instead of his right hand)[/spoiler]
At the bottom of the screen, you will fi
nd a panel housing a timeline and a dial that lets you select what frame you wish to be on. To the right of that is the Autokey button, which automatically creates keyframes whenever you alter an object in the program. Turn it on. Now select any part of your stickfigure Biped and move or rotate it around. Experiment with fluid movements by setting keyframes at different intervals. Also keep in mind that if you click around the Pelvis enough, you will discover an object known as Bip01. Bip01 (or Bip02, or Bip03, or Bipwhatever) is the link that controls the general position of the Biped- without it, your biped will never move an inch from his spot. When testing for good movements, look again to the right of the timeline for a Play button. Punch it, and the animation will play. Once you get a feel for the keyframe combos needed for different movements like punching and sprinting, get yourself an ice-cream sandwich. You have just passed basic training.[/spoiler]
To render a scene or animation such that
you may view its appearance once exported, just press SHIFT+Q. You can also press F9, but this is only recommended if you will be rendering from the same viewport window every time.[/spoiler]
Now that you know how to animate people
using a fixed camera, it is time to make the environment. (think V-CAM) Model the environment using the basic geometrical shapes used in modeling the weapons and armor, and cut out complex shapes as needed. After modeling the entire scene, press 8 on your keyboard to open up the Environment and Effects menu. A window will pop up and automatically take you to the Environment menu. Choose the Background Color to determine the color of the sky, then choose the Ambient color to soften the shadows cast. Once that's done, go to the Create tab and look for the Lights menu. Put in a standard Omni Light for the Sun/moon, and any other lights needed for fixtures and stuff. You may select their Intensity, Color, Shadow Parameters, (including density and color) Falloff and Decay across the sub-menus. These properties are all crucial in determining the nature and properties of the light, and will give you vastly different results in light quality based on where you place them. Once they're in the scene, press 8 on your keyboard again. Hop on over to the Effects tab and go to the first menu. Click on the Add button and select Lens Effects. A new menu should open up. Near the top of the plethora of menus is a dialogue asking you what light you wish to pick to add the Lens Effects to. Press the Pick Light button and click on whatever light you want to apply it to. Now move on down to the different kinds of Lens Effects. There should be a list of different Effects to Add or Remove, but most notably are the Glow, Ring, Ray, and Star effects. Start by applying a Glow effect. Only worry about the upper part of the menu for now. Notable variables worthy of controlling include Size, Intensity, Radial Color, and Glow Behind. Screw around with the variables at your own leisure, and check the Glow Behind box, too. Aside from the Glow Lens Effect, the other three notable ones are also worth mentioning. The Ring Effect gives your light a halo. Its properties are the same as the Glow Effect, with the added bonus of determining the Ring's thickness. The Ray Effect gives your light a thousand points of light to simulate the Sun's streaks. In addition to the standard controls, you can set the points of light's Sharpness to determine if they end in sharp points or if they just fade into oblivion, their Length to determine if it dominates the entire screen or just a small spot, along with their Count to determine if you want just a few pin-pricks of light or a giant sunburst. Finally, the Star Effect- this allows you to add much thicker and more brilliant points of light that what the Ray effect offers, allowing you to determine the streaks of light's Width, Length, Sharpness, Angle, and so on. All of these values are exactly what they say on the tin. Play with all of them to get a wide variety of interesting Effects![/spoiler]
Obviously, the Perspective viewport is n
ot adequate enough for a lengthy animation that will likely require a moving camera and countless different angles. To fix this grievous mistake, just go to the Create tab and look under the Camera menu. You may choose either a Free or Target Camera. The Free Camera can be easily moved and rotated, but cannot lock onto objects as easily. The Target Camera comes with a Target node that must be moved with the camera for panning, but can be animated to follow moving objects while the Camera stays put or moves in another direction. Pick yer' poison and put it in the scene. From there, go over to your Perspective viewport and click on the word Perspective in the top-left corner of the viewport once or twice. A menu will open up revealing a list of different viewports that can be substituted for Perspective. Go to around the top of that list and look for a sub-menu known as Cameras or something. Select whatever the name of your camera is from the list (it should be Camera01 or something) and the Perspective viewport will instead show what your camera is looking at. As you move your camera and its target around (if it has one, that is) the Camera01 viewport will provide you with live feed of what the render will look like.[/spoiler]
Of course, the 100 frames of animating s
pace automatically provided is crap if you're making a feature-length 2-minute RHG battle. Given how the program runs at 30 frames per second, that's only a whopping 3.3 seconds of pure awesomeness. To fix this, go to where the camera tools are located and look just one column to the bottom-left of it. An icon consisting of a tiny board and an analog clock is there. Click on it, and it will bring up a window that determines a number of properties regarding time-stretch and length. Go to the middle of the window where it lists the Start Time and End Time for the animation, and set the End Time to however many frames you want in your animation. You can adjust these Times as needed for when you're working on individual segments of the animation. You're welcome![/spoiler]
To export a scene or animation such that
you may post it wherever, hit F10 on your keyboard to bring up the Render Setup window. At the top is a list of options that will allow you to either render a Single frame, (the current frame) all the frames in your Active Time Segment, or just a set number of frames between Frame A and B. If you're making an image, keep it on Single. If you're making an animation, put it on one of the other two options. Scroll down until you find the option that lets you choose what file to save it to. Normally, it will automatically be saved to the Renderoutput file on 3DS MAX, but you can redirect it just by browsing for another folder to drop it in. From there, just save it as you normally would by giving it a name and file type and hit OK. A popup prompt should emerge asking you for details on
