Autodesk Max Tips and Tricks.
March 31st, 2010 | 
Author: 3D MAX Tips and Tricks:
These are various tips and tricks I’ve collected and stumbled across via my own experimentation with Autodesk MAX. If you’re a MAX user and have any good quick tips and tricks let me know. I’ll gladly credit you and give you a link on the page. Thanks for visiting. I hope you find these as useful as I have!
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No 1. “ctrl + spinner” holding down the ctrl key while adjusting a spinner increases the size of the incriminations. So for example if you are controlling the radius of a sphere by adjusting the radius spinner you would hold the control key down to make the radius resize much larger or smaller and faster than you would with just the spinner alone. |
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No 2. “alt + w” Want to maximize one viewport to fill your entire user interface? Just click in the viewport and hit “alt + w”. One easy way to remember this is to think of the “w” as widening the viewport. |
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No 3. “Disabling the ViewCube and SteeringWheel” In MAX 2009 there is a new viewport feature called “ViewCube” and “SteeringWheel”. I’d suggest disabling these to speed up viewport action for large scenes. Rename /program files/autodesk/3ds max 2009/stdplugs/AutoCamMax.gup to “AutoCamMax.gup.bak. This will allow you to turn it back on if you ever need to. Just remove the “.bak” extention. If you sometimes like to have this on and sometimes off you can just go to the menu item “Views>Properties>Display Options and turn off “Show ViewCube. |
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No 4. “alt + right-click” Get some specific useful tools by alt+right-clicking in the viewport or on an object. |
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No 5. “Quickly zero an object” If you want your object to the zero point in 3D space right-click the move tool and then right click the spinners. |
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No 6. “Shift Drag Duplication” Want to make a duplicate of an object or multiple instances or copies of an object evenly spaced? Just shift drag it to the appropriate location and select instance or copy. Copy just makes a simple copy of the object but when you use instance whatever changes you make to the original will apply to your copies. |
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No 7. “shift +x” In edit poly or edit mesh mode hitting “shift + x” will snap you to nearest edge. Do it again to toggle on and off. |
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No 8. “alt + right-click” Get some specific useful tools by alt+right-clicking in the viewport or on an object. |
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No 9. “ctrl + c” Pressing ctrl + c will put a camera to the current view. |
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No 10. “menus” Go to Customize>Show UI> and check Floating Toolbars. Now you can drag these toolbars to where you want them and “dock” them to your interface. I don’t use all of them but I like reactor on the left and the layers on the bottom.. helps speed things up.. if you have your screen resolution high enough you can squeeze a few more in here and there without loosing too much screen real estate. Remember to save this as maxstart.max in your scenes directory |
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No 11. “deleting vs. removing in subobject mode” When you are in subobject mode hitting the delete button can knock all associated stuff out while backspace removes only the selected item. Fiddle around with it in different sub object modes to see what I mean. |
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No 12. “reference images” If you use reference images in your work (reference image on a plane etc) put them on a separate layer/s and then you can quickly hide them and switch them. |
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No 13. “starting up customized” After adding a few tips I realized I never really explain how to save any customizations you might make to your UI. This will be good for future reference so you don’t have to repeat these steps each time you start MAX. To have customizations load each time max starts you simply need to save an empty scene with all your custom attributes to your default scenes directory. Save it as “maxstart.max” (must be saved as this to work). |
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No 14. “turn off bounding boxes” I like to have those bounding boxes off. To do this right click on the viewport, go to configure, then uncheck “bounding box”. Remember to save an empty scene like this as your maxstart.max (No. 13) If you like the bounding boxes sometimes and don’t want it to always load like this you can also use the shortcut “j” to turn them on and off. |
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No 15. “shade selected faces always on” I like to have “shade selected faces on all the time”. It helps me see what I’m working with a little better when selecting multiple faces etc. To do this right click on the viewport, go to configure, then check “shade selected faces”. Remember to save an empty scene like this as your maxstart.max |
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No 16. “more materials spheres” When you are in the material editor hit the “x” key to add more materials. |
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No 17. “using materials from another scene” When you’re in the material editor try this: Instead of loading a .mat file you can pick your materials from one of your scenes by using the drop down box in the open dialog to switch to Max file, or Viz file. This loads materials from your other scene file instead of an actual material library. |
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No 18. “dragging materials and texture maps” When you have the material editor open you can simply drag the materials to your objects. You can also have your textures directory open and drag in textures to your map slots in your material editor. Even drag them straight off the web! It will download them for you. |
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No 19. “using materials from another scene” When you’re in the material editor try this: Instead of loading a .mat file you can pick your materials from one of your scenes by using the drop down box in the open dialog to switch to Max file, or Viz file. This loads materials from your other scene file instead of an actual material library. |
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No 20. “mass rename of objects” If your scene is getting out of hand with a bunch of objects named by default box_01 etc… select a group of objects that could be renamed then go to “Tools>Rename” and you have advanced renaming options there. Fairly pointless for one object but great for multiples. |
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No 21. “lost your transform gizmo?” X toggles on and off the “transform gizmo” ie the xyz thingy |
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No 22. “transform gizmo too small or too big?” Use the + and – keys to make the gizmo larger or smaller. |
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No 23. “fast snapping” Shift + Right-Click in the viewport gives you a ton of snap options. |
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No 24. “good chrome” Seems simple but many people get crappy chrome even with the default chrome materials. This is because of reflection. Chrome reflects it’s surroundings. The default environment for MAX is a black void. If you placed a chrome teapot in a black void (even with lights) you’re not going to see much. But place in an actual environment and bling bling! |
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No 25. “Reset X-Form when exporting objects” If you’re exporting single objects from a scene for a colleague use the reset xform modifier so that when they import it it will be in the middle of the screen at the zero point. That is unless you want them to import in the specific location relative to the zero point that they are at currently in your scene. |
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No 26. “Viewport Shortcuts” P = Perspective You can also right click on the viewport name and under “views” find more options. If you don’t want to remember the keyboard shortcuts you can just remember “v” in any viewport gives you access to the most common views. |
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No 27. “Sub object selection shortcuts” When you are in edit poly mode you can use these to switch between sub object modes: 1 = Vertex 2 = Edge 3 = Ring 4 = Face 5 = Element |
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No 28. “Transform shortcuts” q = select w = move e = rotate r = scale |
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No 29. “rotate on subobject element” If you have your orbit tool set to rotate on subobject element you’ll rotate around your selected sub object. For instance if you have a vert selected you’ll rotate around the selected vert. It basically sets the center of your orbit to that selection. Once you’ve set it there you can easily use the middle mouse button + alt and rotate without having to use the orbit button at all. You can use the middle mouse button + alt regardless but I find it much easier to just set the orbit tool to subobject first. |
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No 30. “Fast navigation with the mouse” Middle Mouse Button = Pan Wheel = Zoom In/Out Alt+Middle Mouse Button = Orbit |
No 31. “Interactive mode”
Hold down the “I” key and click in the viewport to center on the location where your cursor is.
[I'm adding to this list so bookmark it if it is useful. The URL will stay the same. There is also another version on my static site. Also if you have any tips please feel free to leave them in the comments section!]
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How to Setup Brazil for your First Render
This tutorial is designed to give you a quick overview of the basics of setting up your first Brazil render. I’m not going to go into too much of the fancy stuff. You’ll need to become familiar with these basic steps in order to do ANY Brazil rendering so just stick to the tutorial and in the end you should understand the “basic” work-flow of Brazil.
Tutorial: Your First Brazil Render!
[Before I start this tutorial I need to thank "Captain Video" at Splutterfish Software for not only making such an awesome render engine but for putting together a Creative Commons field guide for Brazil v2.
If you'd like to learn more about Brazil visit http://www.splutterfish.com and check out the field guide at 
As you can see my scene is VERY simple. I just put in a few rough primitives since we’ll be focusing mostly on getting that look that is probably what attracted you to Brazil as a render engine. The fancy lighting etc…
Well the first part was obvious; you need a scene to work with.
Next we click the “Render Scene Dialog” button. This will bring up the standard render dialog. Click the tab labeled “Common.” This is where you choose what renderer you’d like to use. We’re going to choose “Brazil r/s v2.0 [build xxxx] “xxxx” representing the build number but that’s not too important since that build number changes all the time. The important thing is that you are using Brazil v2.
Click the three little dots “…” next to the “Production” render slot and you’ll see the next dialog.
Once you’ve highlighted Brazil v2 click “OK.”
Obviously a bunch of black squares is not what we’re looking for but by ticking the “lock” button to unlocked position we see the material editor below in all its glory.
Now I switch from the default Max material to the Brazil Advanced Material from the material editor. This isn’t really needed for this example but I don’t like the rainbow colored scene I have now. Also this will give us a good idea of how light is looking since everything is the same. I’d advise against trying to get into materials at this point. Just use a standard Brazil or Max material that is some gray or similar color so that we can really see what Brazil has to offer when we get to lighting.
Now that we have Brazil setup as our renderer and we have our material set to something fairly neutral we can simply click the Quick Render button and see what we have so far.
If you still have the renderer dialog open you can also hit the render button at the bottom. This is usually where you’ll be clicking since you’ll most likely make some tweaks as you go to get things just right. For now though you don’t really have to worry about it. As you progress in skill though my guess is that you’ll be back to this button frequently so if you want to get used to using it now then be my guest.
Well a few seconds later and we have what we see here. Gotta say… nothing too fancy but it is a Brazil render so you’ve made some progress. Now we just have to do a few simple steps and we can upgrade the look of this dramatically.
Obviously there are no real shadows other than the default light from Max which kinda sucks. We’d much rather use a Brazil Light right!? Of course! So click on the “light” button on your create panel.
In the drop-down menu pick Brazil r/s v2 light.
Here I select an area light in the dropdown menu.
Features: While there are a ton of “features” for lighting I’m only going to do the most basic one that pretty much everyone will want to use and that is “shadow” so under “features” click shadow.
If you’d like you can click “Focus” and see a visual indicator of where the light is going to fall upon your scene. This makes it very easy to move your lights around to get them in just the right position.
Now lets pop off another render.
OK it looks a little better… we have shadows now but probably still not exactly what you were expecting. So lets go back to the “Render Scene Dialog.”
From here we’re going to up the sample rate in order to get rid of the little jaggies on the edges of our objects. This is called “anti-aliasing” or AA. Without going into too much detail about sampling I’m just going to say that for getting a scene setup just leave it at 0,0 and when you want to pop off more final examples up it a bit. Most of my high res images never go above 1,3. They usually look pretty good and serve most of my purposes.
Now our scene looks a little more crisp but it lacks that nice ambient look. We’ve all heard about Photons and Global Illumination. It’s basically the ambient light that cascades around a scene from light bouncing around just a bit here and there. But it adds a great sense of realism to the scene.
In your render dialog go into the “Direct Illumination” area and tick “Sky Light.” This only really works if you’re not working inside of geometry. That is there is no “ceiling” etc. So if you’ve done what I’ve done and just made a few objects on a plane this should work fine. If you’ve build a whole room with no windows you’re not going to notice much. But hopefully you’re the smart type and saved time and just put a teapot on a plane.
Oh I almost distracted you with the cool tip. HIT RENDER QUICK! Oh wow look at that you have skylight in your scene now. Doesn’t that look a ton better?
Well since not all light is bright white the smart guys at Splutterfish have designed the skylight so you can make actual sky colors. As you can see below I’m changing the color of the skylight in the luma server rollout to something more realistic.
OK it might be realistic if everything was radioactive but you get the point. I’m just having fun and so should you. Playing with these basic settings is how most of the experts here learned how to make you green with envy at their skills. (intentional lame pun alert!)
Anyway, it doesn’t have to be green you can make it a sky color or even use an image to make the light… that’s more Hollywood style goodies for later. Remember you’re just getting the basics down so don’t fiddle around too much with these little teasers I’m throwing out or you’ll over look all the really important stuff.
Well the image looks OK (for a green room) but I want this thing to be a lot bigger so lets go back to the “common” tab on the “Render Dialog Screen” and set up a larger image. There are preset standard sizes that are often used in video, web, etc and you can also make custom sizes here.
Then again, click the render button… see I told you the more you tweak the more you’ll use the render button inside the “Render Dialog”
This is what it might look like if you have multiple processors or dual or quad core processors. This is called “Bucket Rendering” each little square is a processor churning away trying to process all the hard stuff you’ve been telling it to do. So as you up your samples, geometry, and lighting situation these renders will take longer and longer. You’ve probaly already noticed that just by rendering the first few tests. There are ways to speed things up but we’ll have a tutorial on speed later. First we’ve got to get you rendering some images and saving them out to show to your friends and co-workers what cool stuff you can do.
So the more complex the render the longer it’ll take this little line to get across the screen. It’s not much fun to watch so if you have to pee and you’re on a slow machine do it now.
Finally we have something that looks more normal than a radioactive tea and doughnut party so lets save it! Look for the red arrow on this screen cap which shows the little icon that looks like a floppy disk. This is how you save from the VFB or (Virtual Frame Buffer). See now you even know some lingo… 
From there you’ll have a multitude of choices to pick from. Jpg is good for the web while tga is good for games and tif is good for print. But don’t let me be the one to tell you which is best. Cause that is about like saying “what makes good art?” Everyone has their own opinion. Use your own
Alternatively if you don’t feel like waiting around because you know you’ve setup a huge scene with lots of polygons and lights and fancy materials you can opt to save an output file in any of those formats and just walk away. When you come back your file will be saved where you told it to go. Sometimes the urge to watch a render is akin to crack addiction but please try to avoid the urge to watch a 45 minute render… do it this way. Life is too precious to lose so many to render hypnosis.
Color Palette Management
Modern Color and Color Palette Management:
The state of color in the digital world of modern graphic design. Well, it could use some help. As we’ve transitioned from the old days we’ve come into the realm of computers and software. Although calibrating your computers with your hardware can be a pain in and of itself software is starting to present the big problem.
Today designers are asked to deal with a host of color schemes. In the good old day we used to just have to deal with Pantone color but today everyone has a color scheme. Over the years I’ve done a lot of painting. Both traditional and actual house painting and decorative finishes and murals. This is actually where the problem presented itself for the first time.
Although I’ve done a lot of architectural modeling most people assume the color to only be a close representation of the final color. But that is slowly changing. People are starting to ask for custom palettes for various materials in applications such as Photoshop, Painter, Autodesk 3D Studio MAX and others.
My problem presents itself first in Adobe Photoshop. I’d like to have some sort of palette management similar to what has been accomplished in font management with Extensis Suitcase and Fusion.
A search feature would be nice too. I’ve posted this request to the Photoshop Feature Request Forums so hopefully we’ll see something from them. If not programmers… run wit it!
These days everyone has a color palette and they are often times in proprietary formats or some obscure software format. So a lot of work is involved in getting… say a paint companies palette into photoshop.
Color Exchange Format is starting to work in the right direction. Tools will be needed to format these into other programs or support will need to be adopted by the software manufactures. I think that would be the best idea. More information about CxF can be found at ColorExchangeFormat.
Another place that seems to be developing a database of color palettes is ColorCharts.org. Unfortunate even though they have a wide database they still charge for their palettes. You’d think that the manufactures that they represent would put out palettes for free use for their patrons. This is what wins designers over.
While we wait for someone to attack this issue there are still a few free palettes and some cool color utilities out there. It’d be great to see these integrated into our favorite software but at least they are around.
http://www.visibone.com/ – Has tons of cool web color stuff, some free website palettes and a few other interesting things. Check it out.
Some Harmonies: http://freephotoshop.org/more/swatches/
Sherwin Williams paint color Photoshop palettes
Benjamin Moore palettes for Photoshop AutoCAD and more.
Some good skin tones but you have to sample them. Images here.
Great Adobe Color product site here: http://kuler.adobe.com/ Make your own custom harmony swatches.
Very cool online color harmony picker… exports palettes for you.
Another cool one similar to the one above.
http://colorschemedesigner.com/
Cool freeware color app: YS Instant Color Picker.
http://youngsmarts.com/index.htm
Pull color scenes from photos at ColorHunter
Enter a URL of a cool image and pull a palette from it at
http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/
This one is interesting.. enter a feeling, emotion, etc and get a matching color scheme:
http://www.gpeters.com/color/color-schemes.php
There is an interesting javascript that allows you to enter hex codes in some input boxes and change the background color of the page in another location on my website. You can find that here. Nothing terribly useful but fun to play with… though the sites above make it feel a little lack luster 
Have any more links? Let me know!
bstone@bradleystone.com
317-640-5051
RGB to HEX color conversion
HEX to RGB & vice versa
Color is one of the most fundamental parts of the web. Without it the web would truly suck. Well, we don’t want the web to suck anymore than it has to. So… I am going to show you how to use color in photoshop.
If you read the first part of this tutorial you already know that colors in a monitor are made up of only 3 colors, RGB or Red, Green, and Blue, and different combinations of these result in all the colors. Well you can define these RGB values in HEX code which looks like #000000 (<–note 6 digits or letters…hence HEX) Each HEX code represents an RGB value. “Why is this important?”, you ask. Well, its important because lots of programs use RGB colors when webpages use HEX code. When you are making a website you may want something such as a background color in hex code which could be something like #FFFFC and you get the RGB value R=255 G=255 B=204 in Photoshop. Note the image below. Since Dreamweaver and other web editing software understands HEX as opposed to RGB we need to convert it.
Say you want to match your background color of your website to the graphics you put on your site. Take a look at the image below and note that Photoshop already does this for you!
Hopefully now you can use your color picker in Adobe Photoshop to get background colors for your images that match your webpages.
NOTE: You can limit the color picker to only websafe colors by clicking the “Only Web Colors” checkbox located in the lower left hand corner of the image above.
Palettes
The Visibone Palette
Loading color palettes is easy just click the little arrow button on your swatch pallet
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This should put you on your way to working with color effectivly with photoshop.
Check out this neat color script to see the
background of this page change dynamically.
[Pops open new browser window. Just close to return here.]
OnOne Genuine Fractals Review
Over the years there has been a joke around graphic design firms and ad agencies about a particular scene you often see in movies. There is always a scene where some detective looking at a still frame from a security camera says “zoom in there on that mirror! enhance enhance!” and finally you’ve found your villain. Of course in the world of photo software experts it’s funny because of how impossible that is. You can only get so much information in a pixel and that’s it. Even with the higher and higher bit images it’s still just a joke.. or is it?
I’ve tried several of the “top” image enhancement applications and while they were all fairly good I recently had the luck to get a chance to try out OnOne Genuine Fractal image enhancement plugin for Adobe Photoshop. While we still may not be able to zoom in and see the guy in the mirror we really aren’t far off either. I’ll try to get a comparison up here so that I can show you the difference visually but in the mean time just check out these “examples” from OnOne Software
Make a Scrolling DIV with CSS
Do a 2 Column CSS layout with scroll bars.
It doesn’t flow from column to column but then why would
you need scrollbars if it did 
PUT IN EXTERNAL STYLESHEET (ie global.css):
Adjust left values to move over on page
Adjust top values to move up higher on the page.
#leftpane {
position:absolute;
left:222px;
top:60px;
width:280px;
height:235px;
padding:10px;
z-index:2;
overflow: scroll;
background-color: #FFFFFF;
}
#rightpane {
position:absolute;
left:522px;
top:60px;
width:200px;
height:235px;
padding:10px;
z-index:3;
visibility: inherit;
overflow: scroll;
background-color: #FFFFFF;
———————————————————-
PUT IN HTML:
<div id=”leftpane”>
<p>Copy goes here.. it will scroll.</p>
</div>
<div id=”rightpane”>
<p>Copy goes here it will scroll too</p>
</div>
Corporate identity and branding
Do you need a new “Look”?
It is a fairly common occurrence for advertisers and designers to hear statements from their clients such as; “I think we need a new look.” What we hear is something entirely different but only on the surface. If even only subconsciously people generally know a logo doesn’t make a company. The “Look” part of it is simply the first thing that comes to a clients mind. We are very visual creatures and it is not uncommon for business owners to think that they need a new logo or color scheme to “spice things up a bit”. But in the world of brands we don’t like to think of a company as simply a logo/brandmark or color scheme. While often times a brandmark can tell you a bit about the company usually when left alone they offer no meaning whatsoever.
Not knowing Arabic or Chinese when I look at the characters used in these written languages I can only guess at the meaning. However when I read an English word I have the luxury of having a lifetime of experience with it to back me up. Companies should think of their brands in the same way. You are not just creating a logo, color scheme, typeface selection or combination of these but an experience. This is what we like to call a “Brand Experience”.
You don’t need a new look… you need to offer your customers a new brand experience.
Most companies around the world are small to medium sized businesses and simply can’t afford the brand consultants that are behind things like The Olympics, Audi, or Nike. You simply can’t “Just do it.”
So how then do you make your company the next Nike or Honda?… You don’t… You are not Nike, you are not Honda, you are _____ fill in the blank… Now you are starting to get the picture. It is your job to continually reinvent yourselves… to tell your own story… to envision your own future. And this is a ride you take your clients on and a ride they enjoy being on. After all isn’t that what drives you?
Even designers and advertisers are on the brand ride every day. When we landed on the moon one of the first things we did was brand it with an American flag. Without the brandmark of the American flag and everything it stands for that experience would not be as significant to Americans. These marks are more than the colors or images but the entire experience that they represent. Think of the significance of experience represented by a cross to a Christian. While these are profound and laden with history they represent something very similar to what every company tries to do with a brandmark.
It is not too difficult to see which companies play a role in your life and what type of brand experience they provide. Simply look around your office, at the shoes on your feet, the car you drive… you are on the brand wagon too. More likely than not when you purchased your belongings you did so out of not only the need for a particular necessity but for the experience that you would get from it. These experiences run deep in every sense. Women buy perfume, men buy cologne, we like the taste of a particular brand of pizza or coffee.
It may seem strange to ask yourself what does your architecture firm smell like but it could very well be a part of your brand identity and your customers brand experience. You may have never taken notice of these things because they are so familiar to your everyday life but as designers, advertisers, and brand consultants these are the things we think about. We carefully craft an experience that people want to be a part of. Brand experience involves as many senses as you can allude to in whatever medium you are dealing with and it is our job and passion to skillfully sculpt this story and experience with you.
If you look to tomorrow and want it to be different than today then… you need to get your brand on!