Principles of 3D Studio Max

When working with 3D Studio Max , you must remember that you are dealing with a virtual computer world, and as such, you must understand how objects are represented and stored in this world.

Understanding 3D Space

3D space is a mathematically defined cube of cyberspace inside of your computer and controlled by MAX. Cyberspace differs from real physical space because it exists only inside of a piece of software.

Like real space, however, 3D space is infinitely large. Even with MAX, it’s easy to get disoriented or to “lose” an object in cyberspace. Fortunately, this is made easier through the use of coordinates.

Coordinates

In 3D space, the smallest area that it is possible to occupy is apoint. Each point is defined by unique set of three numbers, called coordinates. Each point in cyberspace has three coordinates, one each representing the height, width, and depth position of the point. As such, each point represents a single axis in cyberspace.

Axis

An axis is an imaginary line in cyberspace that defines a direction. There are three standard axis in MAX, which are referred to as the X, Y, Z. You can consider the X axis to be the width, the Y axis to be the depth, and Z axis to be the height.

3D Objects

In 3D Studio Max, objects are made up of polygons, patches, or NURBS surfaces, most of which are created with polygons arranged in a form your create. In some cases, only afew polygons are necessary to construct a convincing object. Most of the time, however, hundreds or thousands are needed, creating a massive amount of data. Thankfully, because computers are so good at handling reams of complex numbers, they are able to keep track of all the polygons, vertices, edges and faces in the scene. In the case of a simple cube, for example, MAX has to keep track to eight vertices, six faces, and 12 vicible edges. For more complex objects, the number of polygon elements can soar into the tens of thousands.

Understanding Viewpoints

Just as it would be challenging to drive your car if it didn’t have windows, manipulating the objects in 3D space is much easier when you can define a viewpoint. A viewpoint is a position in or around cyberspace that represents the user’s location. Viewpoints are analogous to the viewports in 3D Studio MAX 6, which provide you with the view into 3D space from viewpoints.

Max has default set of four viewpoints : the Top, Left, Right, and Perspective views. By default, the top viewpoints has the X axis running horizontally, the Y axis vertical, and the Z axis coming out of the screen at you, indicating depth. The viewpoint in the Top view is centered on the origin. The other viewpoints are similarly configured but view the 3D space from different angles.

Surrounding the viewpoint at a perpendicular angle is the viewing plane, which is an imaginary flat panel that defines the limits of the user’s “sight”. In other words, the user can only see things that are in front of the viewing plane, and everything else is “clipped off”. In fact, another name for the viewing plane is the clipping plane.

In order to see anything “behind” the viewing plane, the user’s viewpoint must change. In a sense, the viewing plane is like th limits of your peripheral vision. If you want to see something that’s in back of you, you either have to turn your head ( in other words, rotate the viewing plane ) or step backward until the object is in front of you ( move the viewing plane ).

In MAX , the windows that look into the 3D space are called viewports. The monitor screen it self is akin to the viewing plane because the user can only see what is “beyond” the monitor in cyberspace. This perspective is bound on the sides by the size of the viewport. In MAX, three of the four default views are orthographic, where objects are shown as orthographic projections, which may sound familiar if you have ever taken any mechanical drawing. Orthographic means that the viewer’s location is infinitely distant from the object so that all lines along the same axis are parallel. The fourth default viewport in MAX, the perspective viewport, is not orthographic and represents a more realistic view of 3D space where lines converge to vanishing points, as they do in real life.

Understanding Display Modes

Wireframe mode draws the object using lines to represent the visible edges of the polygons, which makes it resemble a sculpture made of wire mesh. This enables the user to see the true form of the object and have access to individual vertices for editing and modification.

For a higher level of realism, opt for a shaded display mode. In MAX, a shaded view is capable of displaying textures if the material definition is set to display the textures in the viewport. Flat shaded mode shows off the surface and color of the object in a course manner. The objects appear faceted, but the effects of lighting can be seen for the first time. Smooth shaded mode shows the surface of the object with color and smoothing and provides the highest level of realism in MAX.

Lights

3D light work much like photography studio lights, except that you can position them anywhere ( including inside an object ) and they don’t fall down if objects bump into them anywhere ( including inside an object ) and they don’t fall down if objects bump into them. Each light type has its own set of configuration parameters in which features, such as light, color and intensity can be controlled. Also, most lights can cast some shadows, which add a great deal of realism to a scene. Four main kinds of lights are used in MAX :

« Omni Lights, which are like bare bulbs and cast light in all directions.

« Spot Lights, which are direction sources and are often used to highlight portions of an object or provide the main source of illumination for a scene.

« Distant Lights, which are also directional but are used to simulate distant light sources such as the sun, which casts parallel shadows.

« Ambient Lights, is present everywhere in the 3D space, illuminating all surfaces equally. Ambient lights generally are used to define a consistent brightness throughtout the scene.

MAX enables you to use as many lights in a scene as you want, but adding more lights to a scene increases the rendering time.

Cameras

Cameras are non-rendering objects that you can position in the 3D scene. They work like real cameras in that they provide a viewpoint on the scene that can be adjusted and animated. This camera viewpoint is different from most of the ones users employ for modelling because it enables the scene to be viewed in more realistic and natural perspective modes. Just at with real cameras, MAX cameras have different settings such as lens lenghts and focal lenghts that you can use to control the view of the scene.

In MAX, there exists two types of cameras : a target camera and a free camera. A target camera makes use of a target, which is a point in 3D space where the camera is aimed, making it easy to see where a camera is aimed in non camera viewports. A free camera is a camera without a target that can easily be animated along a path or easily pointed by simply rotating the camera.

Rendering

Rendering is the process where in MAX interprets all the objects in the scene, in the context of lighting, materials and viewpoint to produce a finished image. The resulting image can be either a still or a frame in an animation sequence.

Animation

MAX enables you to animate just about everything from the position of an object to the object creation parameters, such as lenght and width in the case of a box. You can move and change objects, pieces of objects, lights, cameras and even materials. You can choose how long you want a particular movement to take, then reposition the object, light or camera to the new position at the correct time.