3DS Max Tutorials Category

April 5th, 2010

Procedural Maps & Modeling Talk

Written by amckay

Topics: 3DS Max Tutorials, News, Uncategorized

Here you can find a tutorial for 3d studio max on procedural mapping and modeling

I’m currently in San Francisco working on a new film after just returning from Los Angeles last week where I worked on a new game cinematic with a few ex Blur Studio guys which was a lot of fun

I’ve put together another quick tutorial just discussing layering procedural maps together and piping into geometry etc. You cand find it below

I have a lot of new stuff I will be putting up soon, most of the tutorials I’ve been putting together lately are more technical exercises on using features inside of max, and on scripting etc. However I will be doing a lot of practical exercises, stuff like blowing things up in max, and using rayfire, krakatoa, box 2, thinking particles etc. Loads of stuff to come, but again any ideas for specific things you want to see please go ahead an email me – I have been getting a lot of great emails about great ideas for FX topics, and yes Rayfire is definitely a big one!

Procedural Maps & Modeling Talk 1 from Allan McKay on Vimeo.

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March 15th, 2010

Particle Tutorial and new Real Flow Workshop

3 comments

Written by amckay

Topics: 3DS Max Tutorials, News, Real Flow Tutorials, Uncategorized

Emitting from 3D Texture Volumes Tutorial

New 3D Studio Max Tutorial on Particle Flow, discussing emitting particles to 3D procedural textures to build volumetric patterns for your initial particle emission

Real Flow Workshop #2

NEW REAL FLOW WORKSHOP – SIGN UP NOW!

CG Society’s Real Flow Workshop just finished this week, and it was a huge success! Thanks again for everyone who participated! A lot of old faces from previous workshops had signed up, as well as a lot of new people too, and the results were amazing!

The next workshop is about to run in the coming weeks, so if you’re interested in kicking ass with Real Flow, then sign up here. Keep in mind that the last workshop sold out within the first couple of days, so it might be a good idea to get in quickly!

VFX POLLS + VFX BOOTCAMP

Thanks everyone who has emailed me showing interest in the VFX Bootcamp, I had no idea there would be so many people as excited about this idea as I am! At this stage I just wanted to gauge general interest, I’ve been sent a lot of emails asking to run it in multiple cities rather than one, as it’s an inconvenience for anyone who isn’t in LA. I’ll keep everyone in the loop about this. Perhaps doing it online might be also an option, but I liked the idea of face to face hands on training over 3 intense days!

I’ve wrapped at ILM & currently in Los Angeles for the coming weeks, after which I will be flying back to San Francisco for a new feature film project. Max 2011 is soon to be released, so some exciting announcements tied to this

Until then – Happy St Patty’s day, and enjoy your hangovers!

Allan McKay

- Los Angeles USA

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February 16th, 2010

Particle UV Tutorial + VFX Boot Camp?

11 comments

Written by amckay

Topics: 3DS Max Tutorials, News, Uncategorized

Locking textures to particles with Krakatoa

So this again is more of a brief how to – but one of the most common questions I get asked is how to lock uv coordinates to particles, so for instance you can have a texture move and stay locked to each individual particle. So I’ve created this very quick example, I’ve then also pointed out how it works with Krakatoa, which is pretty much seamless.

The Last Air bender Trailer

A recent project I’ve been working on at Industrial Light + Magic

VFX BOOT CAMP

I’m toying with the idea of trying to organize a 3 day boot camp for Visual FX in LA for later in the year, which would be aimed at a limited amount of seats being personally trained intensely over 3 days in everything from Particle FX, Fluids, procedural animation, pipelines, scripting and compositing. At this stage I would just like to gauge what interest is out there, I get a lot of people asking about personal training which is hard to do with schedules, but an intense face to face workshop over perhaps a 3 day weekend might be something that a lot of people might be interested in. I’d love to hear your thoughts – so please email me!

poll by twiigs.com

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December 3rd, 2009

Want to write your own FX tools?

5 comments

Written by amckay

Topics: 3DS Max Tutorials, News, Uncategorized

Previously I’ve mentioned saving pflow presets which has been a real time saver, but what if you want to delve into building an fx pipeline where you literally put in the controls, the object you want to have your FX applied to etc. all in your own custom interface? This is something that I any many others have been doing for years, building blackboxes for FX.

This video we don’t go too deep into the whole process, however rest assured there will be some more videos coming that do. In this video we more just cover the first few steps of building an interface and choosing a custom object to apply your effects to. As well as building a preset file which we can read into our scene and then modify through our script. This is the first steps in the process, but I’m sure many of you will watch this video and then take this concept and build way further beyond the intended steps using this approach. I can’t wait to see what you guys come up with!

More to come soon on this subject, as well as a few big announcements coming next month so stay posted!

Make sure you’re using the ensharpen codec. Also VLC is recommended as the prefered video player

Download Ensharpen Codec Here

Download VLC Here

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November 25th, 2009

Max 2010 FX Elements

2 comments

Written by amckay

Topics: 3DS Max Tutorials

3D Studio Max 2010 Particle Flow FX Elements

With the release of 3DSMax 2010 – Autodesk has added in a lot (over 100+ to be exact) particle flow setups, ranging from fire, smoke, earth, water, and in addition – Logos. These contain lots of different set ups, and also conceptual files demonstrating how to create various effects.

I was brought on board to create these earlier this year (2009) for the release. Although with certain limitations such as not utilizing any plugins and not making the scenes too slow in the viewport and copyright on textures or stock footage, it meant they needed to be more sample files to demonstrate how to create a flow for the set up, rather than a full blown production ready sample, at least in some cases. However I believe that pretty much all of these scene files that ship with max are very informative and useful in day to day production. A lot of the key concepts here are the core elements of what I use in building a lot of my more complex effects and flows. Check out this video just discussing how to use them and make the most of your Particle Flow En devours!

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November 25th, 2009

Particle Flow Presets

8 comments

Written by amckay

Topics: 3DS Max Tutorials

Are you overlooking Particle Flow Presets?

Surely you’ve forgotten that Particle Flow in Max 2010 has a preset function, that allows for you to save and load particle presets. This feature has been around since Box Set 1, however it seems most people really overlook it.

This is in fact a really powerful feature, which of course is great for saving and loading preset systems, but also for saving pflow scripts, and constantly used set ups, even just some to make “rotation, spin, position, random_scale” on the fly. Here we just quickly jump in and point out the potential and usefulness of this great feature in 3D Studio Max 2010.

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November 11th, 2009

Maxscript for beginners #1

5 comments

Written by amckay

Topics: 3DS Max Tutorials, Training

Brand new tutorial in a series of Maxscript for beginners – here we introduce basic terminology and generating objects and managing them through basic mat and scripting lingo.

This series is designed to move artists into more technical subjects easily and apply them to appropriate subjects for real production.