3DS Max and related tools

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When I first started learning 3D a long time ago, I started with Max and Maya in parallel. Maya seemed the friendlier one at first, simply because it wasn’t that much “in your face” as Max (which had me confused with its multitude of buttons and cluttered interface).
The interface grew on me afterwards simply because of its positioning. Also, the way you use various tools seems more logical to me in Max than in Maya.

That is untrue, and your comparison is rather inappropriate. Building a house without nails means that the end product is subpar, and unfit. Maybe a more appropriate way of putting is that you have to hammer in each nail by hand, whereas in Maya you have tools that automatically nail them for you.

Either way, the statement is false. I find that the envelope system in Max is pretty powerful, and I’ve rigged hundreds of characters with it and not once did I have to manually adjust the weight of each vert. It seems to me that you’re only talking about character rigs here, but whatever.

Also, making a good rig does not require scripting at all. I’ve rigged with biped, with CAT studio, with custom bones (both IK and FK), and with link and rotation constraints for vehicle rigs, and not once did I have to use Max script for it. Ever. You can use the various link constraints to create control rigs for anything from deformations for cartoony characters, to facial expression and muscle simulation for complex rigs, or suspension for cars.

I know Maya very well and I know that it’s superior to Max in several aspects, just as Max is superior in others. It all comes down to preference in the end, and I prefer Max.

And no, I don’t script. So I can’t give you an opinion on that. But it wasn’t necessary for me to learn, and I’ve been making money out of this for about 7 years now, so I wouldn’t label myself a hobbyist. And where I work, the scripts that we use to put stuff in game are made by programmers, not by graphic artists. And none of them ever complained.

That's pretty much exactly what I said.

But to clarify it doesn't really matter what you use for modeling, which is usually not most of the work unless you are making a mod in which case the heavy lifting is already done for you. But life is maddening enough without one more thing to import and export to so why not use the thing that is good for animating and scripting and will be able to export to whatever engine you're using? That last minor detail makes every option but max and maya iffy at best when you are talking about an animated character.

But it's true if you are the man when it comes to C++ it is not a bad idea to use Blender. You can even put your cool code back into the base source to get street cred with the "But will it support Linux?" crowd. If I had realized how much coding I'd be doing just for content tools I might have gone with blender instead. Still might switch some day, but it's hard to justify it when I already have pretty much perfect art pipeline now (aside from the fact that zbrush 4.0 sucks bright pink doggy dick).

So, basically I am exactly right, you only do a very limited part of the process and you're talking out of your ass to make huge sweeping generalizations about stuff you have no idea what the fuck you are talking about..

And if you aren't scripting or animating, then no you don't know maya very well, or really at all.

Maybe it's just me, but personally I haven't found the blender UI to be a problem. You get used to it after a while, and it's pretty efficient after that. Kind of like vim for coders.

As to the OP: you should look at some of the tutorials on character modelling to get a feel of how things are done.

What the fuck? I model, texture, rig and animate, do FX, cloth and hair simulations, as well as physics simulations. That’s basically everything *except* scripting. That, to you, is a “very limited part of the process”? And I’m the one talking out of my ass?

Does 3DS include similar brushes (simple sculpting of geometry, similar to ZBrush) as recent version of Maya have?

From my very limited experience, it seems Maya is used moreso for character and exterior design, while 3DS (and its AutoCAD plugins) are used for product design, interior design, and city scape.

Behold my limited experience.

Hey guys it's easy to make exporter in max because my engine provides one already and it only cost 1 million dollars per game, and easy to make rigs because someone else did the work for me. And FX, cloth and hair simulations matter a lot for making a game, the thing we are talking about.

NO WAIT I AM A FUCKING MORON WHO ONLY DOES CONTENT NOT A TECHNICAL ARTIST AT ALL AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW YOU CAN'T REALLY MAKE A RIG WITHOUT SCRIPTING I'M SO FUCKING STUPID.

You are getting very little out of maya if you don't have an assload of scripts, but maybe those are provided for you. Of course if you work for someone you use what they use. Someone making an actual game has much different concerns you fucking imbecile. You sum up everything I hate about the internet. Cocksure dumbfuck who doesn't read a fucking thing, comes in and says stupid and pedantic shit that's totally fucking irrelevant, then acts surprised anyone would disagree with them.

But back to my original point. Content creation is a small small part of what you should be worrying about, unless you have an employer who already uses a certain pipeline and scripters to do heavy lifting for you, in which case obviously yes you'd choose their product.

Your ancestors would punch you in the teeth for being so ignorant. They built great, beautiful, sturdy (i assume we're talking wooden) houses without any nails whatsoever, and those houses were quite likely way more stable in crisis situations like tornados or earthquakes. I always just have to laugh when i see cheap USian houses, which are made from basically cardboard, flying away in a twister.

or, OR you could just use Softimage, which gives you all the Maya-comparable animation capabilities you'll ever need, WITHOUT requiring an assload of scripts. A couple scripts would do. All while providing you with the best interface of the bunch, as well as the best viewport performance.

Yes, I'd actually say softimage and project messiah are both better animators. The problem with this stuff that I was trying to communicate, is that for games in particular the issue is really not content creation. It's content...management? Getting the thing to actually work? If someone is just a content guy or doesn't work in games then it's just ignorant rambling to act like they have the big picture, and I'd say really max just sucks anyway, not just in a "I prefer this scheme to another kind of way" but measurably and quantitatively. It's a little more obvious for a noob than maya to learn modeling but it's just dumbed down trash at heart, and ultimately modeling itself is not a big part of the picture if you are doing more than contract work to model.

IE you are making a game, which is the point of the codex workshop and one would assume.

Also, spot on with the nails. After all, cathedrals, right? But building your own home that way would be quite a chore.

Yeah, actually, about that. I've been slow in getting around to it, but I've been messing with Blender the last few days, mostly due to the pretty good community around it and the easy interface (the tutorials on Blender Cookie were ridiculously useful). Once I started to get the hang of vert-by-vert modeling, things really picked up. Still working on techniques and whatnot, but give me a few months of practice and I think I'd actually be pretty good at this. So much of it comes down to figuring out basic anatomy and building a structure for your model, that once you get that right it's hard to make too many mistakes.

Speaking of:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10680698/Pictur ... /head3.png / http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10680698/Pictur ... d3side.png

Considering it's my first "full" model after a few hours of playing with the interface, I'd say it turned out decently. Used a photo reference and built the model by hand, though of course there are obvious problems that I hope to eliminate later down the road (cheekbones and eyes, plus the lack of detail on the neck). If I could go back, I'd use a higher-res reference (really caused problems for the ears and eyes especially), and spend more time trying to get the basic structure and edge flow right.

Any suggestions on where to go next? Keep it up with heads, or try to move on to bodies? Maybe a cartoon-type character, or something less organic?

EDIT: Decided to go with another head model, this time someone of different ethnicity. Process went a lot better due to finding a better reference, and overall I managed to refine some of my technique. I'd say the results are significantly better. Still need to work on edgeflow, though.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10680698/Pictur ... ead2_1.png / http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10680698/Pictur ... ead2_2.png

EDIT 2: Decided to go for something a bit different, which of course means an object of killing potential. Also happens to be my first texturing job, and while fairly rudimentary (I could have spent more time searching for better textures), I'm fairly happy with how this turned out overall, especially the speculars and normals. That said, I'm still a tutorial whore, but I plan on starting on something more original fairly soon.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10680698/Pictur ... der_01.jpg

@ sea

The head model has incorrect anatomy, even without a wire what is with the characters Zygomatic bone?
The ear is bad and incorrect.
When being in production stress usually there are morgue files, morgue files are perfect hands, feet, ears teeth, eyes mostly but it is expected to know how to create an ear for example.

Please don't take this as unnecessary rudeness but here are a few guide lines.

Generally character creation for production takes 5-10 days.
Talking about characters not Face Gen models generated with a 3D modeler.
So it You are modeling a head within hours I think that You may be rushing it.
A few rules:
1. Start small, by doing basic blocking in, don't' add edges until everything is how You wanted it to be in the base mesh- meaning You achieved the basic shape of the character.
2.Know Your budget- 500 polygons for a Starcraft character (good luck, 7000-15000 for realtime, 15000-65000 for pre-rendered, 300000 and above for Cinematics , for Movie productions there are no limits,
The above is completely someone elses decision so just a guide completely Engine and game dependent.

3.After blocking in observe a image of a human skeleton, make plans for the placing of the muscular layer.
The muscular layer again, You can just extrude edges or polys but have in mind that unless it's a still it will need some animation.
For games stay away from triangulation or anything similar, You want quads, perfect quads , that have a square shape, not a rectangle shape.

For a human head unless You made 25-30 of them You haven't even started.
4.Images of human muscles are everywhere, some are incorrect so the best place for grasping anatomy are books like:

http://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Artist-Sa ... 078948045X

and places to visit are:
warning nudity:
http://fineart.sk/photo-references/andr ... tomy-books

The Joan of Arc tutorial is good for the head, just needs some cleaning stay away from the body modeling part.
If affordable try these:

http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/training.php?pid=3273
http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/training.php?pid=3323

These are for Maya, but are understandable and useful in Max too.
The best place to start are the basic max tutorials, become the master of the tool to become the master of the creation.
If You are remotely serious stay away from Blender, Poser, scullptris and Wings.
Despite their usefulness they are nothing more than modding and learning tools for indie production.

Max is fully functional for 30 days of the trial so reinstall Windows after that or use proxy.
The benefits of Max used to be in environmental creation, it's getting better still for character creation Maya is more established , there is a huge possibility that if You master Max, Maya will be a easy learning curve.
Here is a reference place to visit, unfortunately commercial:
again nudity:
http://fineart.sk/

here is a free one:
http://free-textures.got3d.com/natural/ ... index.html


On the topic of Zbrush, unless You are one of the top 50 usually what happens is that You create a model in Max/Maya some in Lightwave and then get exported in a smoothed form, meaning HP in to Zbrush, or gets subdivided there.
The tool is able to work with millions of polygons, Mudbox crashes around 3.5 mil depending.

Z brush works with layers so this is actually detailing, it is being used among other things for detailed normal maps that are being pulled from the HP model on the LP model to add the necessary detail that is not present, or cant be added due to polygon budget with geometry.
Patience is your friend in every part of life so it applies here to.
Be self critical and keep practicing.

There are 6 moths courses one of the best are the Gnomon classes, depending on Your age, will, finances, and location of course:
http://www.gnomonschool.com/programs/

You will discover soon that the annual Max release, makes You learn many things a new, it's a constant learning process that can be completely ruined by developing bad workflows, and sorry but You started developing them, simply because smoothing is not going to repair the errors in Your model.

There is no reason to smooth a well made model, and post without a wire when asking for critiques, on more serious places when asking for input with that approach no one is going to help You.
The edge flow cant be stolen, its' very established, correct anatomy is correct anatomy nothing wrong in learning by observing other artists edge flow.
Here a good example that explains the hows and whys:

http://www.phungdinhdung.org/Realistic_ ... hDzung.htm

So, I just wrote a to long post, basically learn Max and learn so much that if I tell You to create 10 different heads from one completed base head within 2 hours, corrected, completely useable, because the head You made, the base one is perfect, You are able to do so because You know Your tool.
And Zbrush is a must, but only after You mastered the basics, because the easiness of Zbrush can be penalizing on Your workflow.
Hope this helps.


-----------------------------------

First off, thanks for the detailed write-up and all the links, I'm going to go through them soon and see what I can take away from them. I'm not sure if you read my more recent stuff, but I've been working with Blender now that my 3DS Max trial has expired... I looked into alternatives and other "solutions" but wasn't really able to find anything helpful. For getting the basics of workflow, topology, anatomy, etc. I think Blender is totally fine for what I'm doing, and even more convenient in a few ways, compared to my experience using Max.

For what it's worth, I realise the first head model there is pretty medicore (the more recent ones done in Blender, not the horrible ZBrush stuff from earlier), but the second one made in Blender shows significant improvements and my process has sped up a lot as well since then. While I'm still having trouble getting the mouth exactly right, and connecting the ears to the head can be difficult (which is why I have a few more loops than needed), I'd say my edgeflow isn't too far off what a lot of the "good examples" I've seen are:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10680698/Pictur ... 2_wire.png

If you have any tips regarding improving that, I'd love to hear them. I actually based it off of one of the references you linked to at that Got3D page.

I'm also trying to work with texturing and UV mapping just to develop a better understanding of the process behind asset creation, not necessarily because I expect to become an expert in a week - any sense of pride I'm probably showing is a result of the quick progress I've been making in the last few days, not because I think my meshes etc. are perfect by any standard. I'm not sure I want to set my sights on being an artist, but at the very least I want to understand the workflow and the pipeline in asset creation.

As for edgeflow, technique etc. I've been following a lot of guides near to the letter, and have a pretty established formula for handling a few different situtations now. Relying on free stuff means that there are occasional holes in my knowledge, and I'm not sure if I have the money to start purchasing lessons or professional instruction videos, but I'll definitely look into what you've provided here.

Glad to see some discussion in this site wherein I can actually be helpfull.
Anyway, I'll try to keep it short. I gotta say that I completelly support everything that Dantus12 said, but I would like to stress a few things:

Zbrush and similar sculpting programs are a must nowadays, and I suppose they will be even more important in the future if this Voxel thing catches on. So, any time you spend learning it, is time well spent.

Always get absolutelly the most detailing you can in the lowest subdivision level possible, even if that means sacrificing some topology. You can fix that later.

In the beggining, always work from a reference, either in Zbrush or 3Dmax, as that guy said, after you have done a few dozens of models you'll have a easier time figuring out things on your on. You don't even need those fancy artist reference pictures, a good exercise in the matter is to pick some image and try to sculpt it to the best of your ability and as fast as possible.

Study anatomy. Of everything.

But anyway, those are just words and it can never be compared to watching some dude who knows what he is doing in action. So, here are some recomendations, if you can get your hands on them.

Anything by Zack Petroc:

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/ ... pe_series/

This guy is great in anatomy and you will learn a great deal from his videos.

Sculpting a Female Bust in ZBrush by Ryan Kngslien:

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/ ... -in-ZBrush

This guy is also awesome and worth checking out, but I find that this video helped me the most of all of his. He also has a channel on youtube that has some lessons, which are good and free.

Digital Female Character Design and Creation by Sze Jones:

http://www.gnomonschool.com/master/sze_jones.html

This one may be a little harder to track down and also may be personal prefference, but I think this girl is great. She has worked in certain codexian-potato-loved games and her work always struck me as the best part of the game.

Now, I won't condonne piracy against people who certainly are worth your recognition, and I suppose it is against forum rules, but if you are starving poor living somewhere in Somalia and for some reason wanna become a digital artist, I am pretty sure you can find that and much more if you know where to look. Also, there are free things in the gnomon site.

Before I forget, about your edge flow, I cant see clearly due to that angle and the transparency, but I'm pretty sure I've seen far worse stuff make into the final production stage. I would however get rid of a few loops in the nose, because they would just get in the way, specially if I am sculpting and animating later, and I am not sure if it is just the depth perception srcewing with me, but I think you got a few extra poles there on top of the eyes and in the cheekbones that won't really deform right if you try to animate.

Don't know if you seen it, it's on google, but there is this site:

http://www.phungdinhdung.com/Studies_pa ... eling.shtm

that has some good examples and bad examples of topology.

Hope I helped, anything I can help with feel free to contact me or ask around here.

Already read through that last article linked to (also mentioned in a previous post) and it was fairly helpful, but the tutorials on modeling heads and faces have all kind of mentioned the same stuff and built techniques that naturally work around any of the problems mentioned (such as sculpting main muscle groups/shapes/edge loops first), so that generally hasn't been a problem.

I will definitely check out the one artist you linked to, as the examples he has available are impressive to say the least. Thanks for the information!

No problem, man. Heh, thats what I get for not reading the whole thing.

But still, one last piece of advise, spend some time browsing around the zbrushcentral forums, the artists there will often post tutorials about their pieces and they include the whole production pipeline, with Max/Blender/Maya and whatnot. That site was very useful to me when I first started.

Well, I've been hearing relativelly good things about stand-alone rendering programs, like that POV-Ray thing, but I don't know man. I guess it depends on wheter you already have the objects you intend to use or expect the programs to generate them for you. I suppose that sooner or later you will have to dick around with sculpting, even if it is just to stick some rocks on the ground.
I work with enviromental and architetural design, so we mostly do pre-rendered 3D stills of stuff, I can tell you that we just use Maya/Max and I do find that it is perfect for doing this kind of stuff for us, but you do have to sculpt quite a bit.

Anyway, that's just not very helpful, hope somebody who knows more than me will chip in.

I'll check out the ZBrush boards, though aside from the interface and some of the basic brush types I'm not really too great with it... though I'm still pretty wary about using it for straight-up modeling. I'd be more concerned with using it simply to add detail to models for normal generation etc. The biggest obstacle for me is my lack of a tablet, as not being able to vary pressure on the fly takes out a lot of the finesse. I have some background in fine art, so anything that gets closer to drawing/sketching/painting, the better when it comes to detailing.

I would imagine it depends entirely on whether you've got a game engine to do things for you, and how it does said things. If it's all procedurally generated or constructed on a grid or some such, you will probably need a model or at least a flat texture on a pane for each piece of the world... on the other hand if you're working with something like Unreal that has its own geometry system, you might not need to deal with modeling anything at all (aside from non-static objects), as you could probably get away with just pasting textures down. If it's all going to be 2D backdrops, then Blender/Max/etc. is good for that, but the fact remains that you still need to create art assets, either a set of models to plunk down into a scene, or hand-craft each and every scene individually.

@ sea

Will get a warning for to long posts probably.

1. Head looks good, still have the feeling that You are hiding the ears from me.
The nose will fall in if You ever need to use blend shapes, so pull the nose from the mouth upwards not from the forehead, or simply don't add loops top early because the nasolabial fold is the most important part for expression related animation. To explain staying around 1500 polygons with ear without eyes is
a good thing.
2.Since I got no clue on Blender I will tell You what I meant with wireframe.

Basically if You ever end on a pro forum, You post Your reference, left/ right side view and front view, the version would be in MAX smooth and highlights/ edged faces in the view port settings, so not the transparent wire, but the model wire with visible edges.

This looks like the Blender tutorial from here if it isn't have a look at it it's good:
http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutori ... index.html

I looked around a bit so the tutorial by Sze Jones that is posted here, is a bad idea, She imports a skull and models around it, so that's something that can be done for a Blur Cinematic, not when You want to showcase some skill, and learn.
Here is a very good one again commercial on Max:

http://www.trinity3d.com/product.php?productid=783

a free one :
http://cg-india.com/tutorials/3dsmax_tu ... eling.html
mostly very good for workflow observation.

Since You said that You have some fine art background , it will be useful, because usually one ends as a jack of all trades, try not to be the master of none.

For the sake of ruining Your lunch I will recommend sites that deal with medical anatomy, if You know how to make it pretty, You will have to know how to make it decomposing.


The Zbrush problem You are facing is coming from the eagerness to accomplish something, You will find Your self desperate when starting to unwrap, or apply a a shinny material like a high gloss plastic material, which is a good way to detect errors on Your model,and discover that it's not that perfect as You initially thought, don't give up though.
It will become useful when collapsing symmetry and trying to lose it in Zbrush, it's a great tool with a tedious interface, so I will not recommend modeling in it. simply because You will experience the limits of modeling a character that has 300000 polys and completely breaks in, in it's LP iteration.

Just a suggestion for next time:
1.Build the base body no hands and feet.
2.Build the head with the neck, generally better to build the head and create a neck from a cylinder in top view.
3.Create the hand, feet, ear.

Start attaching and welding.
reset X form, apply symmetry, and apply nurms, observe in the front viewport. Create a grey plane underneath the character feet and set 3 lights, the so called three point light it's a 5 minute job, and watch all angles. You will soon see many problems.

After You attached , and here's is the problem in Max, when You select a edge in Max on the foot and hit ring in max it will select all edges to the head, similar with selecting a edge and hitting loop in Max.
This will show You loop interruptions and from here You start fixing the interrupted flows.

And only now You start adding edges , example edge- ring connect ,this will implement Your assembled parts and You will be able to see possible errors. Same thing goes by using edge- loop, You want Your heel to share a edge with the top of Your head.
I suck at writing, I know.

Not sure that I understand You, aren't' You the creator of the Deus Ex mod?
I think You know all this stuff, but here it is:


For adventures create a story board and get from there, it is easier to expand on a idea than to work on the fly, a lad good at drawing is useful here, even more than in other genres.

Any 3d program will do, even Blender it depends on Your skill set. I will recommend Max, because Blender is not really a industry standard.
You will need maybe a sculpting tool , i will recommend Mudbox for environments , the displacement maps it's able to create are great, better IMO than Zbrush.
Have in mind that displacement adds geometry , normal and bump mapping doesn't.
Still don't know what You asked but for adventure games maybe something like this:


http://www.visionaire-studio.net/cms/ad ... ngine.html

The above being a well versed thing.

http://www.3dvia.com/studio/
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Did a bit more work today, namely, finished another head model, and followed a tutorial in order to get a better hang of sculpting, texturing, and baking normals etc. I'm not sure if I want to really turn this into a place where I just show stuff off, but if there's any input to be given I'm more than happy to hear it. I realise the pillar texture has a couple UV issues, and the poly count is lower than it should be for ideal results, but I'm a bit too lazy to fix it... would rather just go on to other things.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10680698/Pictur ... ead3_1.png

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10680698/Pictur ... render.png

As for the links and whatnot above, some of those tutorials already cover ground that's old to me, while others are pretty useful, especially some of the anatomy reference. I've tried modeling a full body or two and it hasn't been pretty, but I haven't really managed to find good technique for it yet, either... I imagine box modeling is the best bet unless you have a perfect reference?