3D Studio
3D Studio Max (sometimes called 3ds Max or just MAX) is a 3-dimensional vector graphics and animation program, written by Kinetix (a division of Autodesk). It was developed as a successor to 3D Studio for DOS, but for the Win32 platform. Kinetix was later merged with Autodesk's latest acquisition, Discreet Logic. The current version of 3DS Max as of October 2003 is 6.
Overview
3ds Max is one of the most widely-used 3D software today for several reasons, such as its long heritage on the Microsoft Windows platform, its powerful editing capabilities and its ubiquitous plugin architecture. While still supplying most of the needed tools out-of-the-box, there is a plethora of plugins available.
Some previous versions required a special copy protection device to be plugged into the parallel port while the program was run. Due to the risk of people sharing the copy protection device (if the people don't use the program at the same time), a software copy protection method was implemented instead. Registration involving personal information such as name, address and e-mail address is now required.
Currently 3ds Max has a lot of advanced features. Since version 6.0, Discreet Mental Ray is included. This is the second advanced renderer included in 3ds Max.
Since version 5.0, 3DS Max has had advanced lighting. Advanced lighting included Radiosity and Light Tracer. These were very user-friendly and not so far behind professional rendering systems such as finalRender, Brazil r/s or V-ray.
3D Studio also includes user interface that is relatively easy to use, featuring a stack-based modifier architecture.
There are 4 basic modeling methods:
- Modeling with primitives
- NURMS
- Surface tool
- NURBS
Modeling with primitives
This is a basic method. The point is that one is modeling something only with boxes, spheres, cones, cylinders and other predefined objects. One can also subtract, cut, connect primitives together. For example, one can make two spheres which will work as blobs that will connect with each other. This is called "blob-mesh modeling," or "balloon modeling."
NURMS
NURMS stands for Non-Uniformal Rational MeshSmooth.
This is the 3ds Max implementation of subdivision surface modelling, a methodology that is rapidly displacing NURBS modeling as the methodology of choice for both low- and high-polygon modelling. Point of this method is modeling with polygons(in 3d studio max you are working with editable mesh, or editable poly). After creating approximate model with polygons you apply meshsmooth. Advantage of NURMS meshsmooth is that every vertex and edge has its own weight. Weight symbolizes how much will the final shape affected by that vertex/edge.
NURBS
Scanline rendering is 3ds Max's default. Max's scanline renderer is fairly robust compared to many similar packages' out-of-box offerings (Lightwave's default renderer being one exception). While several advanced features have been piggy-backed onto the scanliner over the years, such as global illumination, radiosity and ray tracing, advanced users may wish to consider using one of the many 3rd-party renderers available for Max, or make use of the somewhat limited connection to mental ray. A 3rd-party connection tool to Renderman pipelines is also available for those that need to integrate Max into Renderman shops.
