Learning 3ds Max

At DigiPen we have to take GAT 300, 3d modeling and animation for programmers. I took the class last summer, but I decided to take the class a little bit above and beyond the usual assignment specs. Someday I would really like to become a good artist along with being a good programmer. Eventually I might want to be a Technical Artist, but for now I’ll just focus on programming. I would however like to show my current knowledge of 3ds Max in this post.

The first assignment is the one that I spent the most time on. While the original assignment specifications were to make a simple vehicle from the teacher’s template, I decided to make the vehicle from scratch. Also, the original didn’t include making an interior, so I asked the teacher if I could make one. He approved and gave me a poly limit of 800 instead of 600.

For the assignment I made the model, textures (diffuse, specular, glossiness, opacity, reflection), unwrap, lighting. The only thing I wanted to make, but didn’t have time for, was a bump/normal map. Here are the results:

For the second assignment we had to set the vehicle and the plane, which the teacher provided, to follow a path. We also had to model the island using some of the teacher’s textures. I decided to make a few more custom things using textures from www.cgtextures.com. In the end I made the tree models, island model, the lamp post models, the house models, and created a particle effect for the volcano exploding. I also animated the plane and vehicle.

For the last assignment, the easiest of the three, I had to make a mech, which the teacher modeled and textured, walk. We learned about simple forward animation and inverse kinematics. I was much more impressed with my animations than on my previous assignment.



I think these assignments were a great learning experience because I can now understand more of what an artist goes through.