Sunset Animation

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In this tutorial you will learn how to create sunset animation using 3dsmax: sun slowly going down below horizon. Although this is just a simple animation, you will learn a lot from this tutorial. In first section of this tutorial, you are going to create ocean wave using animated material. You can apply this technique to any water surface, like river, pond, or lake.

1. At first, you need sea object. You can use a simple plane. Open or reset 3dsmax. Go to Create tab. Click Plane button. Click and drag to create a plane in Top viewport. While plane still selected, go to Modify tab. Use 500x500 for plane size

2.Go to Camera tab. Click Free button. Then, click in Front viewport to create Free Camera. Change Perspective viewport into Camera (first activate viewport by right click in this viewport, and press "C" in keyboard). Move and rotate camera, so you have camera view like image below. .

3. Next, you will create material for sea object. Open Material Editor (press "M" in keyboard). By default one of material slot is active. Change this material name to "sea". Apply this material to plane by dragging from material slot to plane in viewport. Change Diffuse color to blue (R=50, G=50, B=104). Also increase Specular value to 50 to make sea surface more shiny.

4. Scroll down until you see Maps rollout. Open Maps rollout. Increase Bump value to 100. Click button right next to Bump. In Material/Map Browser window, double-click Noise. In Noise Parameters rollout, activate Fractal with Size=5. You can try a test render (F9) to see the result. Note: Bump is used to simulate material "roughness".

5. Right now, you had static ocean waves. To create wave animation, you need to animate material. Click Auto Key button. Move slider to frame 100, and enter Phase=3. When finished, turn off Auto Key. Using Phase, you can animate noise to simulate wave movement.

6. You can try to render the animation if you want. Press F10 to open Render window. In Time Output activate Active Time Segment. And in Render Output you can choose filename, folder and animation format (AVI, MOV). And click Render.

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After you created ocean and wave animation in Page 1 tutorial, now you are going to add background image. Also you will add a sun using simple primitive object

7. Open Environment and Effects window (from top menu Rendering>Environment or press "8" in keyboard). Click None button under Environment Map. In Material/Map Browser window double click Bitmap. Then choose any image you want as background. For example, I use file SKYSUN2.JPG. This file can be found in 3dsmax installation folder. Usually located in Program Files/Autodesk/3dsmax/Maps/Skies. When finished, try to render camera viewport

8.Unfortunately, the background image I used is not rendered in the way I want (look at above image). To fix this, click button in Environment and Effects window, hold and drag to one of unused material slot in Material Editor. Choose Instance in opened dialog box. Now, you can modify background image placement. In Cropping/Placement activate Apply and Place. Then change H value. For example I use 0.65.

9. Try to render, background image placement is much better now.

10. Next, I will add a sun using simple object. In Front viewport, create a cylinder with Radius=15 and Height=0. Then, move this cylinder in slightly above plane and in the farmost position of plane (viewed from Top)..

11. Next, you need to apply material to sun object. Select one of unused material slot. Name this material "sun". Apply this material to cylinder. Change Diffuse Color to yellow (R=247, G=209, B=0). Also activate Self Illumination and change color box at the right to orange (R=232, G=158, B=0). Self Illumination usually is used to create object which emits its own light, like a lamp or sun. Applying Self Illumination will result in more bright surface.

12. Image below shows test render up this point.

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You have created ocean with wave animation (Page 1 tutorial), then added a background image and a sun (Page 2 tutorial). Finally, in this last tutorial section you will add light and post-procesing with Video Post. You will use Video Post to add glowing effect.

13. Create omni light in viewport, move it in front of sun object (cylinder) While omni light is selected, go to Modify tab. Change this light color to orange. Then link this omni light to sun object (While omni light still selected, click Select And Link button, press H to open Select by Name window, highlight cylinder and click Link button). Note: actually you can use other than omni light. For example: spotlight. You also need to add more light to lit the whole scene. It's up to to add more light.

14.Next, we will animate the sun. Select sun object (cylinder). Activate Auto Key. Move slider to frame 100. Move sun object down, until only a half of sun visible in Camera viewport. When finished turn off Auto Key.

15. Next step is adding a glow effect to the sun. But, first select sun object, right click and choose Properties. In G-Buffer, enter Object ID=1. Click OK.

16. Now, open Video Post (Rendering>Video Post). Click Add Scene Event button. Click OK to accept default setting (View from Camera).

Click Add Image Filter Event button. From drop down list choose Lens Effect Glow. Click Setup button. Notice that glow effect will be applied to object with ID=1. In Filter, use Edge to make glow effect appear only in object surroundings. Then click OK.

Finally, click Add Image Output Event button. In opened window, click Files button, then you can choose filename, folder and animation format (AVI or MOV). When finished, click OK. In Video Post window, you will have a series of Video Post event like image below.

Finaly, click Execute button to render the animation. In opened window you can choose video resolution.Click Render. Note: Glow effect only visible when rendered from Video Post.

Modeling A Chair Using Spline

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In this tutorial I will show you how to create 3D chair model. This is a simple and modern style chair, created from bended tubular metal and some leather for chair seat and backrest. You may think I will use Lofting to create this tubular metal. Wrong. I will use another technique, using spline. It's faster and simpler.

1. Open 3ds max. In Left viewport, draw Line like image below. Use Initial Type=Corner and Drag Type=Corner. Right click to finish drawing line.

Tips: To create straight line (like from vertex number 2 to 3, hold Shift while drawing)

2. Go to Modify tab. Activate Vertex selection. Select three vertices like image below. In Geometry rollout, increase Fillet value until you get rounded corner.

3. Activate Spline selection. Select line. In Front viewport, hold Shift while moving selected line to the right. Distance between these lines will become the width of chair.

4. Next, change to Vertex selection. Activate 3D Snap toggle. In Geometry rollout, click Connect button. Then, click and hold vertex no 1, don't release yet, then click vertex no 2. Repeat this process to connect other vertices. When finished, de-activate 3D Snap Toggle and Connect.

5. Next, select 4 vertices like image below, and apply Fillet to make rounded corner.

6. To make tubular metal, open Rendering rollout. Activate Enable in Renderer, Enable in Viewport. Enter Thicknes values and use Sides=8. Easy, isn't it?

In Page 1 tutorial, we have create tubular metal frame for our chair. In this tutorial we will try to add thin chair seat and backrest.

7. Right click object and choose Convert to>Convert to Editable Poly.

Activate Polygon selection. Select several polygons like image below. In Edit Geometry rollout, click Detach button. In opened dialog box, check Detach As Clone. Selected polygons will be cloned as separate object. When finished, turn off all sub-object selection.

8. Select newly created object. Go to Modify tab. In Top viewport select 8 vertices close to the center. Look at image below for reference.

9. Using Select and Uniform Scale Tool, stretch vertices along horizontal axis.

10. Next, change to Polygon selection. In Perspective viewport select 4 polygons like image below. Delete them.

11. Next, change to Edge selection. In Top viewport, select 2 edges like image below. In Edit Edges rollout, click Bridge Settings button. In opened dialog box, enter Segments=10. New polygons will be created connecting the edges.

Repeat the same process with the backrest.

12. Activate Polygon selection. Select all polygons in backrest. In Edit Geometry rollout, click Detach button. In opened dialog box, uncheck all option. This will ensure selected polygons cut out as separate object.

13. Make sure chair seat object is selected. Activate Vertex selection. In Front vieport, select 2 vertices in the middle. Open Soft Selection rollout, turn on Use Soft Selection. Adjust Falloff value. Then, move selected vertices down. You'll get curvy chair seat. When finished turn off all sub-object selection.

15. Repeat above process with backrest object. When finished, apply Shell modifier to chair seat and backrest object. Adjust Outer Amount value. Shell modifier will add thickness to objects.

15. Image below shows rendering of textured chair object.

Download Finished Chair 3D model

This tutorial is written by
Didik Wijaya
http://www.tutorialshine.com

Create Sea Anemones using Hair and Fur

Create Sea Anemones using Hair and Fur by Luca Broglio, Italy Web: www.lucabroglio.com

This tutorial is dedicated to the use of hair & fur in 3ds max, a modifier that grows hair and fur over any object. Usually hair & fur is used to generate hair: in tufts, sparse, curly, long, short, braids, etc. ... but rarely used for other purposes. This short tutorial will show you how to create and animate sea anemones in a few clicks.

Sea anemones are a group of water dwelling, predatory animals of the order Actiniaria; they are named after the anemone, a terrestrial flower.


Create a seabed modifying a plane as you like. This will be the distribution object.

The second step is to create an anemone strand. To do so you can add a lathe modifier to a spline. Be sure to add enough subdivision to the mesh as you will have to bend it.

Apply the hair & fur modifier to the plane. If needed it's possible to select single face for the distribution. Initially hairs are oriented by the face's normals in an uniform way.



At this point open the panel "tools" of hair & fur, then click in the empty box "Instance node" and pick the anemone object. Instance node allows you to use any mesh instead the default hair object. Settings like hair segments, passes, etc will be ignored. Certain qualities belong to the mesh used as instance, so if you want more subdivisions you have to edit the original mesh.




Now you will see the distribution of anemones on the floor, the scene is beginning to resemble a seascape. Now you need to refine some settings. While certain settings are ignored others are not. Density, scale, thickness are still influencing the anemones shape. Increase the size of the hairs.



Try to use frizz and kizz parameters, watch how they influence the anemones. If the base mesh isn't subdivided enough you'll see sharp and unrealistic corners.




Now are you confident with most parameters, try to set them properly. Then if you go in the rollout dynamics you can add a simulation to the anemone that will behave like hair, falling and folding. If you click on "live" button you'll see the mesh gradually deforming.



Do not forget they will always remain "hair", so why not comb it? The toolset for hairstyling will work, so you can use it to achieve an interesting look.



Once you are satisfied with styling you can assign a material and proceed to render, and your anemones will finally be alive!

You can change the density or even assign a map to it. Here are some examples of what can be done.







Now, if you really want to add life to anemones, the steps to do this are very simple. Turning on the "Live" bends down every strand. To make strands float you can raise the parameter "root hold", for high hold value the mesh becomes totally rigid. To avoid rigidity keep root hold value low, and set the gravity to negative (type -2.33) so that it will be "attracted" to the top. Now create a space warps-> forces-> Wind and put it on a side of the scene. In the panel of hair & fur -> add it to the dynamics rollout "external forces".



The deformation can be stored by pre-computing the simulation. Set the folder in which to save individual files for each frame and click "Run". After the calculation, we simply pass in "Pre-computed" and we'll see the single anemone animated. A video example of what can be achieved.