Book Image

3ds Max Speed Modeling for 3D Artists

By : Thomas Mooney
Book Image

3ds Max Speed Modeling for 3D Artists

By: Thomas Mooney

Overview of this book

Production of 3D art is an exciting medium, but the task of modeling requires intense attention to detail, so speed and efficiency are vital. This book breaks down speed modeling workflow in 3ds Max into stages you can easily achieve, with a focus on hard surface modeling and methods you can apply to your own designs."3ds Max Speed Modeling for 3D Artists" will help level up your 3D modeling skills. It focuses on hard surface modeling, and shows the range of tools and techniques in 3ds Max 2013.This book shows content creation methods aimed at 3ds Max modelers preparing to show their skill to the industry. The key feature of modeling that artists must exhibit is speediness while preserving technical accuracy. The author helps you follow set project guidelines while pushing creativity and outlines the entire workflow from concept development to exporting a game-ready model.The book begins with introductions for new users to the interface and modeling tools, and progresses to topics aimed at users already familiar with 3ds Max, who want to improve their content creation process. You'll also see ways 3ds Max content is used with other applications, like sculpting software and game editors, and learn features of speed modeling, efficient workflow, re-use of content, and tips on getting more done, more quickly.By the end of this book you will have learned key topics in modeling, ready to face professional level work with elan.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
3ds Max Speed Modeling for 3D Artists
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Determining the hardware shading settings to use


The default views in 3ds Max 2012 and 2013 are driven by a newly introduced technology called Nitrous Accelerated Graphics Core , which is designed to allow larger sets of assets to be handled in real time with a better quality visual appearance.

You can revert your display settings to Direct3D alone, or to OpenGL, or even Software, but it depends on what hardware you are using, particularly your graphics card. If you are using a laptop with an integrated graphics card, you may be best off with Software or OpenGL rendering, but this will likely not be very fast or look as good. Nitrous views depend on access to the GPU (graphics card cores) to provide a responsive, high-quality viewport shading, and this is what gives you real-time ambient occlusion (soft shadows) and accurate shadow casting and reflective, transparent surfaces in the viewport even with unlimited lights.

You can read more about hardware concerns for 3ds Max in The Area—Discussions community—which you can access from the 3ds Max Help menu | 3ds Max on the web | The AREA. Also, you can obtain a report on 3ds Max's view of your GPU: Help | Diagnose Video Hardware.