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Ok... For those new to Max, or new to Max 2012... My little list of cool tools and features. I am sure it is going to grow quickly.
* Loop and Ring Selections, including 'Similar' selection, enabling various ways of selecting rings, ribbings, etc, of mesh on objects.
* Edge/Cut. Different then Gmax, you can click on a surface of polygons and cut edges with straight lines with a tool whose icon looks like an X-acto knife. You can apparently cut into the center of a Polygon, but just being able to slice through 10 edges clicking on an edge on the other side of a panel is such a dang high, it will literally bring life back into your eyebrow colors, restoring browns into gray regions.
* Bridge in either Polygon, Edge, or Border modes is brilliant. It even creates the Edges for you. So if you extrude your airliner interior window openings in, radius them for a smooth opening, you can then bridge them to the fuselage cylinder where you have openings waiting for them.
* Adjustables in Chamfer modes that enable you to add more and more Chamfer edges by pulling the mouse over the slider in-screen. Variable slider radius size 'as well'. So you can immediately do 3 edges (from one) at 1/4 inch in a single drag all from little digital sliders. Nice...
* Being able to remove Edges and Vertices from Edges is blewwwwdy amazing.
* Rendering pic views of your work is a cheap high, very gratifying. You set there stairing at it like a deer looking at headlights... 'ooooo... soo beautiful... '
In Mapping,
* In the Unwrap UVW center (Its like a giant, high technology paint shop for cars/Boeings, etc), you can use this tool called FreeForm Mode. This takes the place of Scale, Rotate, and Move, enabling you to use various mouse and key inputs to use all these various actions without going back and fourth to the 3 main tools to move mesh around on a UVW grid.
* Pelt mapping. Sort of like peeling the skin off of a Mesh and making it flat, just as you would a pelt from an animal, such as a cow to make a leather pelt which is then cut up for furniture coverings. Pelt enables you to make seams before you unpeal it and stretch it. Its stretched on a ring and has a secondary stretch treatment called 'Relax' where it causes the mesh to re-seat itself scale wise per faces sizes. So mapping pilots arms and bodies and legs will be super easy now.
* You can apparently save your FSX various materials in the library, making your own Library sections. (There are Standard and Mental Ray sections in the general Material Library, and you can add to it, making your own sections).
Side Note; the Prepar3D SDK has base materials now that fully show you how Plexi, chrome, base exterior textures, props, etc, are made, showing you all detail in a Max 9 Materials Editor, how all the settings go, so no more guessing and tuning. You can change them as you like, but they now have versions to go by.. My thoughts are to create versions of these and put them all in a section in the Material Library and each time I build a plane now, I just click and choose the Materials like books from a shelf, all done, etc.
Im still learning how to do Ambient Occlusions, (meaning, I cant get it to work properly YET!!!). It is amazing how it works, doing super precise shading. So far, Mental Ray will not function right, but ScanLine does (now). Evidently with Max 2012, they redid all the Ambient Occlusion stuff, renaming it for Mental Ray (called mr or MR by the gurus at the CG websites), calling it other things now, like Diffused Lighting or something. AO adjustments are all over the place based on what Renderer you use. For MR, your AO adjustments are done in the AO Material section (AO means Ambient Occlusion). If you use the Scanline Renderer, then your AO adjustments are in the Renderer Setup center (F10). So, if you are making AO's in Max 7 thru 9, your world will change when you upgrade. :S Finding good tutorials on AO's in 2012 is difficult. None of the tutorials show planes with tons of parts and tons of materials, usually only a crate or super hero person, one object and one material.
Here is an issue I have so far with AO, as a for instance. If I go to create AO maps (which are then placed into Photoshop as a top layer, shading, for a texture, using the 'Multiply' blend setting), and lets say, I have a scene with 3 textures and 30 parts, when I go to burn (render) the 3 AO maps, what happens is I get 30 maps, each of 'each part' instead of 3 renders for 3 textures. Does this sink in? Very difficult if you go to start putting in 10 or 15 shading inserts into a single texture, having to cut and splice and crop things into a single AO map layer. That will take quite a while. My hopes are that there is a a work around. I am sure Max have a way of doing one pass that creates all the shadings for a single texture, one output total. Surely... :S
So many exotic tools that WE CAN USE!!!!!!! Just awesome.... A gift from God for us poor souls slaving away on these airplanes and scenery. (and trains.. and space craft.. and boats and ships, and.. and.. )
Bill
* Loop and Ring Selections, including 'Similar' selection, enabling various ways of selecting rings, ribbings, etc, of mesh on objects.
* Edge/Cut. Different then Gmax, you can click on a surface of polygons and cut edges with straight lines with a tool whose icon looks like an X-acto knife. You can apparently cut into the center of a Polygon, but just being able to slice through 10 edges clicking on an edge on the other side of a panel is such a dang high, it will literally bring life back into your eyebrow colors, restoring browns into gray regions.
* Bridge in either Polygon, Edge, or Border modes is brilliant. It even creates the Edges for you. So if you extrude your airliner interior window openings in, radius them for a smooth opening, you can then bridge them to the fuselage cylinder where you have openings waiting for them.
* Adjustables in Chamfer modes that enable you to add more and more Chamfer edges by pulling the mouse over the slider in-screen. Variable slider radius size 'as well'. So you can immediately do 3 edges (from one) at 1/4 inch in a single drag all from little digital sliders. Nice...
* Being able to remove Edges and Vertices from Edges is blewwwwdy amazing.
* Rendering pic views of your work is a cheap high, very gratifying. You set there stairing at it like a deer looking at headlights... 'ooooo... soo beautiful... '
In Mapping,
* In the Unwrap UVW center (Its like a giant, high technology paint shop for cars/Boeings, etc), you can use this tool called FreeForm Mode. This takes the place of Scale, Rotate, and Move, enabling you to use various mouse and key inputs to use all these various actions without going back and fourth to the 3 main tools to move mesh around on a UVW grid.
* Pelt mapping. Sort of like peeling the skin off of a Mesh and making it flat, just as you would a pelt from an animal, such as a cow to make a leather pelt which is then cut up for furniture coverings. Pelt enables you to make seams before you unpeal it and stretch it. Its stretched on a ring and has a secondary stretch treatment called 'Relax' where it causes the mesh to re-seat itself scale wise per faces sizes. So mapping pilots arms and bodies and legs will be super easy now.
* You can apparently save your FSX various materials in the library, making your own Library sections. (There are Standard and Mental Ray sections in the general Material Library, and you can add to it, making your own sections).
Side Note; the Prepar3D SDK has base materials now that fully show you how Plexi, chrome, base exterior textures, props, etc, are made, showing you all detail in a Max 9 Materials Editor, how all the settings go, so no more guessing and tuning. You can change them as you like, but they now have versions to go by.. My thoughts are to create versions of these and put them all in a section in the Material Library and each time I build a plane now, I just click and choose the Materials like books from a shelf, all done, etc.
Im still learning how to do Ambient Occlusions, (meaning, I cant get it to work properly YET!!!). It is amazing how it works, doing super precise shading. So far, Mental Ray will not function right, but ScanLine does (now). Evidently with Max 2012, they redid all the Ambient Occlusion stuff, renaming it for Mental Ray (called mr or MR by the gurus at the CG websites), calling it other things now, like Diffused Lighting or something. AO adjustments are all over the place based on what Renderer you use. For MR, your AO adjustments are done in the AO Material section (AO means Ambient Occlusion). If you use the Scanline Renderer, then your AO adjustments are in the Renderer Setup center (F10). So, if you are making AO's in Max 7 thru 9, your world will change when you upgrade. :S Finding good tutorials on AO's in 2012 is difficult. None of the tutorials show planes with tons of parts and tons of materials, usually only a crate or super hero person, one object and one material.
Here is an issue I have so far with AO, as a for instance. If I go to create AO maps (which are then placed into Photoshop as a top layer, shading, for a texture, using the 'Multiply' blend setting), and lets say, I have a scene with 3 textures and 30 parts, when I go to burn (render) the 3 AO maps, what happens is I get 30 maps, each of 'each part' instead of 3 renders for 3 textures. Does this sink in? Very difficult if you go to start putting in 10 or 15 shading inserts into a single texture, having to cut and splice and crop things into a single AO map layer. That will take quite a while. My hopes are that there is a a work around. I am sure Max have a way of doing one pass that creates all the shadings for a single texture, one output total. Surely... :S
So many exotic tools that WE CAN USE!!!!!!! Just awesome.... A gift from God for us poor souls slaving away on these airplanes and scenery. (and trains.. and space craft.. and boats and ships, and.. and.. )
Bill
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