Jamie's Jewels

DotNet and 3ds Max Considerations from a Guru (ie not me)

Morning All

Pete, over at Lonerobot, has written a great tutorial on the finer considerations of using DotNet with 3ds Max. Pete has a heritage in writing MAXScripts and developing custom pipelines, working on many high profile projects. More recently he worked at ImpossibleTV responsible for many childrens TV productions.

 

This tutorial is a great way to understanding how DotNet works and how it differs (or doesn't in some cases) from MAXScript. This posting allows even me to grasp the considerations of using the DotNet language, as he puts it "from a beginners perspective."

 

This is a recommended reading for anyone wanting to get involved with programming, particularly as Pete approaches it from an artist's perspective.

Click here to read the indepth blog posting.

Happy Max'ing 

3ds Max & Vault Overview

Hi All

Below is an external link to an interesting blog posting by Brian Schanen. Brian is a product manager at Autodesk, responsible for Data management solutions. In his post, he walks you through the steps of using the 'Vault.'

If your not familiar with 'Vault' then it is an add-on offered by Autodesk, to allow you to manage assets in a collaborative production environment. Its a powerful tool, that for many 'Max' users is overlooked. The Manufacturing community rely on this extensively, but us 'typical' 3ds Max users tend to ignore its importance. Hopefully the tutorial by Brian will entice you to explore Vault's functionality and integration.

(I will always have a soft-spot for Vault, as it was my first product demonstration for Autodesk, and probably more surprisingly, wasn't my last...)

You can read his blog posting in detail by clicking here.

Happy Max'ing

Architectural 3d Awards from CGarchitect is Now Open

Hi All

The 2011 Architectural 3d awards competition is now open. This competition is a 'must' to enter. This year see's the 8th annual competition with 3 main categories for you to focus on.

• Still Imagery
• Animation/Film
• and Real-time.

 

Jeff has managed to not only secure an impressive prize fund of over $54k, but also an impressive list of expert and acclaimed judges to top it all off.

As always, I recommend all of you working in the world of Architectural Visualisation enter. The deadline is a fast approaching 20th May 2011. This competition is indisputably the one to win.

 

Full details and criteria can be found here.

Happy Max'ing

3ds Max Dev Team meeting - Thanks for coming along

Hi All

I just wanted to send a sincere thanks to those of you who came along to the 'invite only' 3ds Max Development Team meeting last week. I know I can speak for the other guys when I say that all the feedback was genuinely appreciated and all goes towards helping ensure we have an even stronger product for another 20 years.

We had a large group of users arrive from all areas of 3ds Max's usage. This included VFX, Games and Design Visualisation. Due to the relatively short two hours, we could only cover some areas, and if you came along to the event, and want to have a more detailed one-to-one chat with us then please feel free to email me directly. We hope to do more informal events in the near future, so keep an eye on this space. Many of you came up at the end and said how positive you were about what you had seen, but remember you can continue to send feedback (email me) regarding the event itself or the details and roadmap discussed.

The below pictures should show you what you missed out on, in the (crowded) Autodesk London Office.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A big thanks also needs to go to Demir Ali and Rob Jamieson from AMD/ATI for supply the beer, wine, nibbles and free V5800 graphics card... Congratulations to the lucky winner.

 

Of course, If your reading this and have no idea what im talking about then you can see the original event invite and details by clicking here.

Until the next time.... Happy Max'ing

Utah Teapot spotted

Hi All

We all know how important the 3ds Max/Design 'Utah' Teapot is. In fact, it's so important that Amsterdam Schipol Airport has added one to their departure area. (OK, so this may not be the reason they've added a giant teapot in the restaurant, but if your interested in why we have a 'Teapot' in 3ds Max then read on....)

 

The Utah Teapot, or NewellTeapot, was originally created by a British Scientist in the mid-1970's. This teapot is now a benchmark for rendering and computer graphics. But why is it so important and why do we have it as a "Primitive"?

Martin Newell (hence Newell Teapot) is a CG specialist programmer. Who I believe now still lives in the US with links to Adobe. The teapot was developed whilst working at Utah's University (hence Utah Teapot - do you see a trend in computer graphics here?) to act as a way to easily test his programming experiments. After all he's, British so what else would he choose to use! This Teapot has now come to symbolise all things 'rendering' related, which is why we set it in parts of 3ds Max's menu icons, as below.

 

The teapot remains a great object for rendering testing and benchmarking. This is attributed to its shape that allows for self shadowing (for example from the handle/spout), and curved edges for testing of reflections. I will always add a teapot to most of my scenes to allow me to rapidly check if the various render settings I've chosen are efficient, the camera matching is accurate, and the materials are believeable. By using the Teapot you can quickly identify if the object is not behaving as expected, due to its easily recogniseable form. The Teapot, although 'primitive' carrys many complex forms and as such lends itself to testing extremely well, whilst being efficient from a test-rendering point of view.

I've heard from various sources that the original real-world teapot object it referenced is approx 1/3 taller. This interesting link on Wikipedia (and if it's on Wikipedia, then it must be true) adds to this argument by giving a reason for the scaling 'error.'

"The real teapot is noticeably taller than the computer model because Newell's frame buffer used non-square pixels. Rather than distorting the image, Newell's colleague Jim Blinn reportedly scaled the geometry to cancel out the stretching"

Below you will find an image that is referenced as the original Utah Teapot Image:

Above Image from this site.

The Utah Teapot, although simple, still makes me smile when using 'Max.' I hope this short posting has convinced you of it's merits when performing test renders, and how, even though its over 30 years old, still has a space in todays complex rendering pipelines. (Below is a 3d-printed teapot which sits on my desk.)

 
Flickr Link here

Have you seen a Utah Teapot elsewhere? Then why not share the image with us all.

Happy Max'ing

 

 

Thanks for following...

Hi All

I'm fast approaching 250 followers on Twitter, and almost 300 daily readers of this blog. Therefore, I just wanted to say "thanks" to all of you for supporting me. Of course, the best way of saying thanks is to give you some 'freebies'.....

Below, you will find what I have set-aside to give to 5 Lucky readers, as a way of saying a genuine thanks for supporting this site, and more importantly for supporting 3ds Max/Design.

How Do You Enter?

• Everyone who subscribes to my Twitter Feed and/or Facebook links will be automatically entered. (If you subscribe to both, you will be entered twice.)
• The competition will open once I hit 250 followers on Twitter. (As of today, there's 9 needed till it's 'Open').
• I will then choose a random entrant to receive a selection from the below pack of goodies. That person will then choose the next lucky winner, and so on....
• 5 lucky winners will receive a random selection from the below.

            

As an example of what you can win, see the below image showing some of the special gifts you can potentially receive an assortment of.  

• 1gb>4gb USB's
• 'Max' Mouse mat
• 'Icon' Cable tidys
• Elemental 3 book
• Luggage Tags
• Branded Wallets
• ATI mouse 'travel' pack
• Autodesk USB hub

  

Happy Max'ing

 

All Invites now sent for the unique 3ds Max/Design Event this week

Hi All

Just a quick note to let you know that all the email invites have now been sent for the upcoming 3ds Max/Design event at the Autodesk Office in Soho, London. If you haven't received yours yet, then please email me directly here.

You can find out more details about the event by clicking here.

Please remember this is a very special event that will be discussing the products roadmap. NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) are necessary.

 

Happy Max'ing

New Autodesk Book featuring Customer Work

Hi All

Steve beat me to this post, but I have the last (evil) laugh.....

Read Steve's blog posting heretelling you all about a new book that Autodesk has launched showcasing many of our customers amazing projects. This covers all industries with some great examples of work.

 

 

But...... don't tell Steve that I have a copy and he doesn't. (Which makes mine even better now.)

Happy Max'ing

Facebook Link Added for 3ds Max/Design 'Jamies Jewels'

Hi All

I've added a facebook link to the right hand side navigation window. Feel free to join this group and receive updates from fellow members of this blogsite. Please share tips, tricks and your recent projects here.

Click the below image or here to visit the site.

Happy Max'ing

3ds Max/Design Event Recommendation - EUE

Hi All

Below are the details of an exciting 2-day event, being organised in Utretcht (very near to Amsterdam.) This is always a personal highlight for me, and is guaranteed to attract some of the leading lights in the CGI world.

Please visit this link for more details.

END USER EVENT 2011: 30 June - 1 July, Utrecht, Netherlands

I can not recommend this event enough, and you will not be disappointed by the calibre of the sessions (and local beer.) Its worth attending just to see Ted Boardman speak - one of my many heros and an all round nice guy.

 

Happy Max'ing