The third module of 3ds Max and VIZ Fundamentals; Animation and Scene Assembly is now available at CADLearning.com. Over 20 hours of video tutorials can be accessed online or are available on CD.   more »

The US First Robotics Competition 2008   more »

This animation is the closest you'll ever see me come to trying to dance. Thanks to Pete for pushing me out there. :)   more »

A new animation user group being formed in Boston by Neoscape   more »

After a lot of travel in the last months I'm back in my office and am posting a quick video to answer a specific question on the Area forum, but one that comes up often. Hopefully it will help make some things easier for you in the future. Good luck and have fun Ted   more »

Let's have a look at the origins of Alpha Channel in images in order to use it more effectively in the Material Editor and in compositing maps and images. Later tutorials will make use of alpha information in a more practical application. As a side note; my blog site has be down a bit lately as well as my email address tedb@tbmax.com . If you need to contact me use tbdesign1@earthlink.net if you don't hear a reply from me. Thanks Ted   more »

Ray traced reflections can be computationally expensive and too intense in your scenes, but this video tutorial will explain how to make them more convincing as well as more efficient.   more »

Here's another quick deviation from the Material Editor to answer a question on the Autodesk Area forum recently. This is an exercise that I used to do in some classes to illustrate parametric modeling and it is one that I might resurrect again. Pay more attention to the procedures than what is actually being created and you may find the techniques useful for other situations.   more »

Bump mapping is an illusion created at render time that allows you to simulate geometry. This is an important factor in keeping your modeling efficient while the viewer is convinced of more complex geometry. Lighting is a key factor in bump mapping. White pixels in a map cause the illusion of raised areas, black has no effect, and gray is some level in between. Color maps work, but it's difficult to judge the effect visually.   more »

A previous blog entry led you to Autodesk's Area website for a tutorial on applying flexible road striping (different from Parking Stripes) to lofted objects. The link seems to have been broken in the recently updated Area, so I'm posting the zipped video tutorial for your access.   more »

I'll try to get back on track with a few new video tutorials in the coming weeks and to avoid such a lengthy space between tutorials in the future. We're still on the material editor and this tutorial will address opacity mapping.   more »

Travel, office catch-up, travel again. Here's what I've been up to.   more »

Things continue in controlled chaos with a family emergency and the rebuilding of my main system.   more »

I've reach a point where I need to do a major overhaul on my main machine, but I'll be back at the blog with some improvements soon.   more »

I'm headed to Siggraph in San Diego tomorrow to do a 3ds Max Certified Instructor evaluation for Autodesk before the show starts. the show doesn't actually start until next week, but I hope to see many of you there.   more »

Correctly sized patterns in your materials are important for making convincing materials. By using these simple steps 90% of your maps can be correctly sized in a matter of seconds.   more »

This video tutorial is specifically for VIZ users. I recommend you disable Exposure Control and Real World Map Sizes to make it easier to learn how the software functions "under the hood".   more »

Learn to view the Tiles map in the viewport so that it may be adjusted for the correct size and orientation. Some graphics cards require that you enable Texture Correction before the map will display correctly in the viewport.   more »

First, let me excuse my absence from any blog postings. The main excuse I'll give you is that I've taken the time to finish the third and final installment of my online and DVD training at CADlearning.com. In this blog I'm continuing with the material editor to explain the process of mapping.   more »

Let's have a look at the Shaders of materials in 3ds Max and VIZ that control the shape of specular highlights. The shape is affected by the molecular makeup of the material and surface conditions such as, scratching, oil and film, dust, or other layers of paints and clear coats.   more »

Joep van der Steen has announced the End User Event to be held 13-14 September 2007 in Utrecht, Holland. This is certainly evolving into one of Europe's premier training events for Autodesk's Media & Entertainment. The majority of classes are held in English and a trip do Holland in September is a wonderful thing!   more »

The specular highlights in the material are the first indication to the viewer in identifying the hardness of the material. The color, the brightness, and the size are primarily a function of the molecular makeup of the material and are a key factor in creating convincing materials.   more »

Learn about the Diffuse and Ambient color swatches and how they can be used in material definitions. I'll also talk about the Ambient color swatch in the Environment dialog; a potentially useful, but also potentially dangerous setting. Environment Ambient color should be left black or be used with very low settings to avoid washing out your materials and scene lighting.   more »

I'm taking a slight deviation from the Material Editor series of tutorials to answer a support question posted in the blogs today. The request was to show the animation of a lifter on a camshaft, so here I'm presenting a method that works for me   more »

I've been in Madison, Wisconsin training this week and am now back in the office looking forward to a weekend (holiday in the US) sitting on my porch with a couple of cool friends (Grolsch). Follow the link inside to vote in the Autodesk Masters program...   more »

In this video tutorial you'll learn to extract materials assigned to objects in the scene which are not currently in a material library or the material editor. As an example of when this may typically occur in production we'll use a merged object from another scene.   more »

In order to use materials in multiple scenes you must store the materials in library files on your hard drive that can be accessed from any scene. in this video tutorial out go through the process of creating and saving Material Libraries.   more »

I'm starting a project I've intended to address for some time to introduce new users to the concept of the Material Editor in 3ds Max and VIZ. This will be very basic at first to address common support questions. Eventually I'll work into more details on fundamental materials creation.   more »

First, my apologies for not posting tutorials recently but I've been traveling a lot lately and can't post while I'm on the road. This video tutorial we'll cover an issue that's come up in my travels about Smoothing Groups in 3ds Max and VIZ. The concept is simple: if adjacent faces share a common smoothing group number, then the edge between them is smoothed. Here I'll illustrate the basics of how it all works.   more »

I'm back in my office from traveling and hope to get back to posting some video tutorials later this week, but in the meantime here's a book review that should interest everyone who has dabbled in mental ray and is having a tough time getting their minds around the concept.   more »