Mastering Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011

962 Pages·2010·36.594 MB·English

by  Mark Gerhard, Jeffrey Harper

Mastering
Autodesk
®
3ds Max Design 2011
®
Mark Gerhard
Jeffrey M . Harper
Senior Acquisitions Editor: Willem Knibbe
Development Editor: Kim Wimpsett
Production Editor: Rachel Gigliotti
Editorial Manager: Pete Gaughan
Production Manager: Tim Tate
Vice President and Executive Group Publisher: Richard Swadley
Vice President and Publisher: Neil Edde
Book Designer: Maureen Forys and Judy Fung
Compositor: Chris Gillespie, Happenstance Type-O-Rama
Proofreader: Candace English
Indexer: Ted Laux
Project Coordinator, Cover: Lynsey Stanford
Cover Designer: Ryan Sneed
Cover Image: © John Foxx / Stockbyte / Getty Images
Copyright © 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published simultaneously in Canada
ISBN: 978-0-470-88262-7
ISBN: 978-0-470-92557-7 (ebk)
ISBN: 978-0-470-92559-1 (ebk)
ISBN: 978-0-470-92558-4 (ebk)
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United
States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appro-
priate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone].
Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River
Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the
accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation war-
ranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice
and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher
is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a
competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom.
The fact that an organization or Web site is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information
does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information the organization or Web site may provide or recommen-
dations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet Web sites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared
between when this work was written and when it is read.
For general information on our other products and services or to obtain technical support, please contact our Customer Care
Department within the U.S. at [phone], outside the U.S. at [phone] or fax [phone].
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in elec-
tronic books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the publisher.
TRADEMARKS: Wiley, the Wiley logo, and the Sybex logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
and/or its affiliates, in the United States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. Autodesk and
3ds Max are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Wiley
Publishing, Inc. is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dear Reader,
Thank you for choosing Mastering Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011. This book is part of a family
of premium-quality Sybex books, all of which are written by outstanding authors who combine
practical experience with a gift for teaching.
Sybex was founded in 1976. More than 30 years later, we’re still committed to producing consis-
tently exceptional books. With each of our titles, we’re working hard to set a new standard for
the industry. From the paper we print on, to the authors we work with, our goal is to bring you
the best books available.
I hope you see all that reflected in these pages. I’d be very interested to hear your comments and
get your feedback on how we’re doing. Feel free to let me know what you think about this or
any other Sybex book by sending me an email at [email protected]. If you think you’ve found
a technical error in this book, please visit http://sybex.custhelp.com. Customer feedback is
critical to our efforts at Sybex.
Best regards,

Neil Edde
Vice President and Publisher
Sybex, an Imprint of Wiley
This book is dedicated to my wife, Rhonda, who
puts up with me; to my four children, Kai, Sakina,
David, and Sam, who bring me so much joy; and
to my grandsons, Mateo and Zev, may they enjoy
the future. And to my mother and father and sister,
who gave me the encouragement to do whatever I
wanted, no matter how wacky it seemed at the time.
—Mark Gerhard
This book is dedicated to my family and friends,
for always encouraging me in my endeavors, for
providing their emotional support, and for their
understanding when I missed events or disappeared
from the face of the earth to finish projects such as
completing this book on schedule.
—Jeffrey M. Harper
Acknowledgments
Thanks to everyone at Wiley and Sybex for their continued support over the years. Big thanks to
Tom Hudson for pursuing his dream that turned into this software, and to Gary Yost, Dan Silva,
Rolf Bertteig, and Jack Powell for creating a program that has turned into my life’s work. I’d like
to acknowledge Frank Moore, for getting me into this mess by hiring me at Autodesk in 1990.
And my gratitude goes to Gary Rackliff for hiring me exactly at the right moment in my life.
Thanks to Jeff Harper for incredibly hard work under the gun. Additional thanks to Jennifer
O’Connor for the MAXScript information. And double thanks to my wife Rhonda, for keeping
me sane when my computer was driving me otherwise.
—Mark Gerhard
I would like to acknowledge the support of Mark Gerhard in helping update and write Mastering
Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011. I would also like to acknowledge Willem Knibbe, Pete Gaughan,
Kim Wimpsett, Connor O’Brien, Jenni Housh, Rachel Gigliotti, and everyone else on the Wiley/
Sybex team who helped keep us on schedule, assisted with graphics and figures, and made edits
and corrections.
I would also like to thank Scott Onstott for allowing us to use his models as examples for a
number of chapters in this book. Thanks also go out to Michael Clamp for the use of his won-
derful photograph of Notre Dame de Haut in Chapter 3 and to Brian P. Skripac, former architec-
tural consulting expert at IMAGINiT Technologies, for the Revit model used in Chapter 5.
A great deal of thanks goes to Barbara Vezos and Michael Sehgal at Autodesk for helping us
make sure that we cover the right topics for Mastering Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 to be the
official training material for those brave enough to tackle the certification examinations for 3ds
Max Design 2011.
I have to thank my family and friends again for all their love, support, encouragement, faith,
and patience.
—Jeffrey M. Harper
About the Authors
Mark Gerhard is a 3ds Max guru. He has devoted the past two decades to this software in all its
forms. Mark was one of the first artists hired by Autodesk in 1990 to test the first version of 3D
Studio on MS-DOS. In his 14-plus years at Autodesk, he worked as an instructor, product man-
ager, demo artist, application engineer, and technical writer. He wrote many of the tutorials that
shipped with 3ds Max, from version 3 to the present. He has been an ATC instructor, teaching
3ds Max to countless individuals at high schools, community colleges, and universities around
the world. He has been the technical editor on numerous books on 3ds Max for New Riders,
Wiley/Sybex, friends of ED, Apress, 3DATS, and Focal Press. He has been coauthor of several
books as well.
Currently Mark teaches 3ds Max to architects and engineers across the United States and
Canada. He is also a forum assistant on Area, Autodesk’s forum for all things 3D.
Mark has a bachelor’s degree in practice of art from University of California, Berkeley, with
a focus on painting and sculpture. He is the author of the children’s book The Elf of the Shelf Sees
Himself (Push Press, 1983). He is also a trained musician, proficient in the tradition of North Indian
classical music, having studied tabla with Ustad Shankar Ghosh and Pandit Jnan Prakash Ghosh
of Calcutta. He has also studied vocal music with Ustad Ali Akbar Khansahib. Additionally,
he is a student of Indian folk music, having studied and performed with the Bauls of Bengal
(Babukishan Das Goswami Baul).
Jeffrey M. Harper started using Autodesk products (initially AutoCAD 9) in his architectural
drafting classes when he was in high school. Jeff was very excited to see AutoCAD add 3D
modeling to its toolset and he merged this with his love of photography and started thinking
cinematographically, creating renderings of his CAD files with AutoShade. Soon he began
using 3D Studio R3 (for DOS) to help visualize his projects while he studied architecture at the
University of Colorado at Boulder. He upgraded to 3D Studio Max 1.0 for Windows when it was
released, and he has used every version of 3ds Max since; he has also used Lightscape 3.2 and a
few versions of Autodesk VIZ.
Jeff has used 3ds Max to create architectural and civil engineering visualizations from a com-
bination of aerial and terrestrial LiDAR, USGS NED data, high-resolution digital orthophotog-
raphy, stereo-compiled mapping data, and CAD files from different packages and disciplines.
He has also used 3ds Max to create models, stills, and animations used in computer-based train-
ing programs for aircraft maintenance. Jeff has even used 3ds Max to create an STL file used to
build a rapid-prototyped form from which he hand-pressed ceramic tiles used in the backsplash
for a kitchen remodeling project. Jeff also uses 3ds Max to create visual effects elements for a
variety of media.
As a CADD manager and data manager for a large multistate, multidiscipline engineering
firm, Jeff wrote a number of workflow/training documents to assist users with certain CAD
and GIS functions and assisted users with AutoCAD, Revit Structure, Civil 3D, MicroStation,
InRoads, Adobe Photoshop, ArcGIS, and GeoMedia.
Contents at a Glance
Introduction .........................................................................xix
Chapter 1 • Getting to Know 3ds Max Design 2011..............................1
Chapter 2 • Introducing 3ds Max Objects.....................................65
Chapter 3 • Creating Shapes with Splines.................................... 115
Chapter 4 • Editing Meshes and Creating Complex Objects .................... 177
Chapter 5 • Working with External Design Data.............................. 263
Chapter 6 • Creating AEC Objects .......................................... 317
Chapter 7 • Organizing and Editing Objects ................................. 339
Chapter 8 • Light and Shadow ............................................. 385
Chapter 9 • Enhancing Models with Materials ............................... 439
Chapter 10 • Using the 3ds Max Camera..................................... 521
Chapter 11 • Organizing Objects and Scene Management......................565
Chapter 12 • Understanding Animation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 605
Chapter 13 • Creating Animations.......................................... 651
Chapter 14 • Advanced Rendering Using mental ray .......................... 695
Chapter 15 • Finishing It Off: Atmosphere, Effects, and Compositing............ 753
Appendix A • The Bottom Line............................................. 795
Appendix B • Modifiers, Maps, and Materials................................847
Appendix C • Inverse Kinematics and MAXScript............................ 881
Appendix D • The Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 Certification Exams.......... 901
Index..............................................................................907