How to Cheat in 3ds Max 2010: Get Spectacular Results Fast

Description

Need to get results with 3ds max fast? Why take months to learn every button in 3ds max when you can create great visuals with just a few key tools? Learn to create quick yet stunning special effects, and animated characters with the fastest techniques possible. Need convincing grass, trees, water, shadows? You can use the memory-hogging methods that choke your display and take forever to render, or you can get it done bing-bang with this book. When you need an animated character you can spend days fiddling with polygons, or you can use this book to put it together in minutes and get the entire project done in a day. How to Cheat in 3ds max includes a host of time-saving techniques as well as little-known tools that will make you look like an expert in no time flat. This book is for busy professionals who need to get it done right, but also need it done fast. NEW to this edition will be higher-end cheats (for Intermediate users) geared towards greater realism in images, and game-centered cheats.

The DVD includes scene files and bitmaps used to illustrate the cheats, also music files, organizational samples, and instructional Camtasia movies of Michele showing some of the trickier techniques.

* 3ds Max luminary, Bousquet, shares 3ds Max secrets and little-known tips and tricks that save users bundles of time.
* Concise, step-by-step, focused, examples with everything on the accompanying DVD so that professionals and beginners alike can start toying right away: NEW camtasia MOVIES added to DVD for this edition, where Michele demonstrates the trickiest cheats.
* Proven "How to Cheat" series - Learn to create quick yet stunning special effects, animations, realistic textures, and game elements - the fastest techniques possible.

CONTENTS:

UPDATES FOR THIS EDITION:
High-end techniques:
More cheats geared toward realism and games.
--Game-centered cheats
--Normal maps - Realistic bumps
--Subsurface scattering - Realistic skin and marble
--HDRI - Use of images in conjunction with lighting to make realistic lighting in scenes. This technique is tricky, but the results are astounding.
--More on mental ray - Sky, Sun, portals
--MAXScript basics and cheats
--Hair/fur - both for hair/fur and grass/vegetation

NEW DVD Content:

Camtasia MOVIES where Michele will show some of the trickier techniques.
All the techniques above - 5 or 6 movies
Skinning - 2 movies
Character animation - 3 movies
Controllers - 2 movies
-----------------------------------

Introduction
1 Modeling
2 Materials and mapping
3 Lighting
4 Shadows
5 Reflections
6 Glass
7 Animation
8 Character animation
9 Rendering
10 Logo treatments
11 Parameter wiring
12 Appendices: Challenges, CD files