The funny thing about being a self-employed trainer is that if you stay home there's no income, so I welcome these training trips on a number of levels, a paycheck being one, of course. More importantly, however, is that I'm able to stay current with production challenges that many different types of businesses face in their day to day workflow.   more »

Gimbal is a curious reference coordinate system that only functions with rotation keys in the Euler XYZ controller type. It writes animation keys only to the specific axis being rotated and avoids random rotations that sometimes occur in 3ds Max or VIZ.   more »

Rotating hierarchically linked objects is best done using the Parent RCS, especially when using the buiit-in Bones system in 3ds Max and when setting restrictions to rotations in linked systems.   more »

Use the local coordinate system of other objects in your scene to transform selected objects. This will allow you to move or rotate one object accurately along or around the axis of any object.   more »

Learn an easy method of creating custom grids as work planes in Max and VIZ and then use the Grid reference coordinate system to control transformations.   more »

The Align tool in Max and VIZ requires knowledge of reference coordinate systems. Learn how to use Local RCS and Align to increase productivity.   more »

The World reference coordinate system is self-explanatory, but the Local reference coordinate system is probably the most productive on a day-to-day basis.   more »

The Screen reference coordinate system in 3ds Max and Autodesk VIZ can be useful in keeping animated text aligned with your viewing direction or for creating matte objects for compositing and with the Matte/Shadow material and background images.   more »

The default View reference coordinate system is what most 3ds Max and VIZ users rely on to navigate 3D space. This series of video blogs will explain the different reference coordinate systems so you can choose the right one for any situation.   more »

Good notetaking skills are important process in getting the most out of any lecture or training session and it's especially helpful in my sessions where I don't follow a scripted presentation. This link may help you improve that process.   more »

Be more productive by getting a handle on a simple, but non-intuitive coordinate system in a few short blogs. I can never stress the importance of the Reference Coordinate Systems in 3ds Max and VIZ enough. Much too much time is wasted because of the battles fought with dealing constantly with the default View RCS.   more »

I just wanted you all to know that I am back in my office and I'll be following up with some potentially useful information very soon.   more »