Discreet 3DS Max tutorials and learning

[andyf]

Greets.

Looks like a new forum, haven't seen this before?

Anyway I'm planning on adding 3DS Max to my huge skill list (right after 'can cook curry') and after a little bit of looking, think I will order this

http://tinyurl.com/3szfw

My question is, who here is experienced with 3D design and animation? How did you learn your skills? Are you still enjoying it? Have you done any professional work?

[JeRkY]

i work in 3d design, no animation (in this job at least)

learned my trade at uni

and am i enjoying it....some times

[Zenith]

Before you start paying out good money for stuff like that andyf, go through the Tutorials that come with 3DSM.
I found them to be VERY good at introducing the basics in a structured manner.

[Cabe]

Lightwave

currently plying my trade doing SFA.

Online tutorials are helpful.

[Mouce]

Muya is your friend :). If you get good at it, you're priceless

[Tyler]

Among other things, I'm a "professional" 3d animator (12 years now) although I don't get my hands dirty as much these days as I have more of a creative directing role. My company uses Maya, Softimage XSI, Lightwave, Houdini, Renderman and Mental Ray for broadcast and features post production. I'm self taught but also attended film/animation school to reinforce the concepts of character animation and cinematography. My first app was Turbo Silver/Imagine on the Amiga, moving on to Real 3D and then Lightwave. Wavefront and Alias PowerAnimator came next along with Softimage - working on the old SGI Indigos.

You need to figure out what direction you want to head in, as that will pretty much dictate what path you take. If you want a job in broadcast, you would be looking at Maya, Soft and Lightwave as possible end points to your path. For game development, obviously, 3DSMax. Good Maya/Soft animators are worth their weight in gold in Soho and can expect very good salaries. If you're looking at heading down the game dev route, try Discreet's G-Max application. It's free, virtually identical to 3DSMax but does not include a rendering engine. Personally, I can't stand 3DSMax - I hate it with a passion.

Before you touch on animation, I recommend you start learning how to model first. Start with structural or mechanical objects (extruding, lathing, boolean ops, bevelling, poly editing etc) and gradually move on to organic modelling (NURBS, subdivision surfaces). Be warned though; the learning curve to reach an all-round proficiency is pretty steep for any 3D animation/modelling application - there's a lot to learn. Once you've mastered modelling, there's texturing, lighting, character rigging, character animation, effects animation, multi-pass rendering, compositing. The list goes on in terms of skills one can learn. Even seasoned pros are constantly learning and looking for new ways in which to drive the software to get the results they're looking for.

I'm biased but the best poly modeller I know of is Lightwave. In fact, we do almost all of our custom modelling in LW and then port to Maya/Soft for animation. It's very quick and very intuitive. Within your first day of learning, you'll be building decent models. If you're just looking to do this as a hobby, I would say go with Lightwave.

At the end of the day, all these apps do exactly the same things albeit in slightly different ways and with varying degrees of success. Lightwave has it's modeller and renderer, Softimage it's animation tools, Houdini it's procedural methodology and Maya it's embedded scripting architecture, non-linear tools and emphasis on scalable production.

I hope this hasn't scared you off! Honestly, 3D animation can be immensely satisfying, if hard work. It's one of the few "fun" jobs out there where most people don't feel they're actually working and getting paid silly money to do it also.

Feel free to grab me on IRC if you have any other questions :).

[Gunsmith]

wow tyler, that was really interesting, i might take you up on that offer

[Elbonio]

i would say im between begginner and intermediate on 3ds max


learnt the basics via uni, the rest through experimentation and tutorials from 3dcafe, 3dbuzz etc


edit: and the forums been here for 6 months ;) you just dont scroll down often enough :D