Another noob enters the fold! Do you remember your first break-through moments?

[Anonymous]

Hello members of the Area, I humbly submit my first post...

There's an incredible amount of talent on display here. At first glance, I figured "how hard could this be?," but that was a gross miscalculation.

The quick question - what were your breakthrough moments? What skills did you learn about Max and production that opened you up to new possibilities? I've realized I need to open up and talk with those above me, because I'm just not making enough progress.

I'm a recent under-graduate from architecture school, and have relied on AutoCAD / Sketchup / Photoshop for the brunt of my workflow. Any experience with rendering was usually limited to light gray textured models from which to take only shadow information into Photoshop.

Realizing the joys of 3D design, I've set out to teach myself (usually in my free time) a more powerful set of tools.

3DS Max and VRay.

Thus far, I've had several experiences where there was a 'breakthrough' and it was like someone turning the light on:
1. VRayCamera
2. Render passes - RawReflection/RawRefraction etc
3. The 'affect shadows' check-box in your glass material. Wow.

In an odd way I'm more comfortable with materials and lighting at this point than I am with modeling. I still rely too heavily on a CAD 'base file' from which I extrude/lathe/sweep elements.

There are only so many hours in a day, and I only have so much energy. When you get into modeling / materials / lighting / compositing this just becomes more information than I realized I could digest in a short period of time. It is easy to get discouraged, but like anything worth doing you learn to persevere.

The attached image is about the extent of my abilities. Thank you for looking!

[Anonymous]

Welcome to the forums 🙂

If only all noobs were as skilled as you!

One of my lights was turned on (excuse the pun) when Mental Ray was included with Max as one of the default renderers, which gave me a chance to play around with it. I was so used to the Scanline, that MR blew me away. GI (Global Illumination) was what my renders were missing. The subtle amount of colour bleed from one surface to another gave my renders the much needed relief between surfaces.

Funnily enough, getting a Wacom graphics tablet breathed new life into Photoshop for me, resulting in texture creating becoming a joy, instead of a burden that I kept putting off.

Also, these forums are an inspiration too, which you touched upon yourself. Most people are quick to help when they can, and I usually have at least one question a week - most of which are answered by searching previous posts. And it's always a pleasure to read the ever-reoccurring "What's better, Max or Maya / PC or Mac?" posts - and if you're wondering, it's Max and a Mac 😉

I look forward to seeing more of your work as you progress with Max.

Lastly, there's nothing wrong with extruding, lathing and sweeping, especially in architectural scenes!

[caprier]

Hello R3DYoung.

I second Matt on all his points (except the last one: I'm a PC guy).
Nice render indeed. One can tell the architecture background. I like the composition a lot.

Major breakthroughs were about modeling.
The first when I took the time to learn how the program worked under the hood. It made the use of the zillion tools and modeling techniques much more intuitive.
The second was after watching professional modelers. Seeing guys that have optimized their workflow to the extreme was a great inspiration.

There was also when I finally agreed with the saying 'save early, save often'. This, I learned the hard way. More than once.

Keep at it and keep posting! 🙂

[Anonymous]

Although I've been doing this since I was 15 in high school (going on 22 soon), It's been on an off with more than a year between projects at times. I too started with self learning - it resulted in a science fiction film with space ships whose meshes were so poorly constructed that when pushed to do anything beyond one model by itself, the system would crash.

First breakthrough - learning the value of spending a little on training DVD's. Were I'm at there's no avenue to study other modelers in person (not til after college at least), so hunting down free tutorials online and training DVD's has made a huge jump in my progress. You'd be amazed how many secrets/helping hands you'll find online.

Second Breakthrough - Learning how to create polygons, vertexes, and target welding. This was a big part of things i was missing because I couldn't produce the shapes I wanted or be able to clean up mistakes like over-beveled polygons.

Third Breakthrough - Maximizing the selection options of sub-objects such as Ring, Loop, and my new favorite: Select by Angle. I used to, for the longest time, select huge areas of polygons - sometimes a 100 or more, when I could have set an angle of 5 degrees and clicked once... very frustrating.

So, you can probably tell that I'm still mainly just into modeling. Right now is the first time I'm coming back and learning how to do "real" 3d art and haven't even gotten to UVW Unwrapping yet. Let me know if you have any of your own break through's 😛

[Anonymous]

Thank you guys for your thoughtful comments!

Matt-N, with your hardware set-up I might have to agree with you on the Max with Mac comment, even though I am traditionally a PC guy. Oddly enough, most of my architecture work at the office is done on a Macbook Pro with XP bootcamp. There's something tragic and sad about only 2D CAD drawings being done on the machine. Every now and then it gets to sing with Photoshop though...

Caprier and Jared, you both mention having watched others (either in person or via DVD) as being an important helping step. There's so much to learn, but at this point I think my work-flow would benefit most from improved modeling speed. I've seen there are DVDs available on the Gnomon website, are there any other good video tutorial providers you can think of?

And Jared, I too have yet to do any UVW unwrapping. I try to develop new projects on the basis of "what don't I know yet" - so UVW unwrapping is in the pipeline for the current project, among other things. I'll let you know how it goes 😉

[caprier]

These tutorials by the Gnomon Workshop:
- Global Illumination Exteriors
- Global Illumination Interiors
- Environment Creation for Production
- Environment Lighting for Production
- Character Modeling Techniques
- Character Texturing Techniques
- Creature Modeling for Production
- Creature Detailing for Production
- Creature Texturing and Rendering for Production
are my all-time favorites (so far).
They are more about workflow than tools (though they are full of tips and workarounds and whatnot). If you're not familiar enough with the toolset, you'll have to pause every 5 seconds to figure what's happening. Guys on these tuts work pretty fast.

Something worth mentionning is viewport navigation with CTRL, ALT and the middle mouse button. Hopefully you're past that stage. If not, you need to train yourselt until it's completely natural (doesn't take long). Also set the Arc Rotate tool (bottom right in the UI) to sub-object. That way, you'll always rotate the view around whatever is selected: sub-object, object or objects.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Caprier, I'll look into some more of those. I have seen the interiors GI video, definitely good for an 'under the hood' perspective.

Maybe I'll check out one of the character modeling videos next. Although not a modeling field I am familiar with, I think it can only help your skill set to look at other (but related) disciplines for experience.