3DTuts - Free Tutorials by 3D Modeling, Texturing, Animation

Tron Identity Disc Hologram Tutorial

cinema4dtutorial — Mon, 21 May 2012 09:37:52 +0000

Do you like TRON Legacy identity disc hologram? Well, Cinema4dtutorial.net teaches you how to create this amazing VFX used in sci-fi movies. Thanks to Maxon’s Mograph technology we can create complex geometrical figures.
In this new tutorial we will create a sequence like TRON Legacy Solar sailer in cinema 4d and you will learn how to create realistic and cool effects.

Preview

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

All this you can find
HERE

Flicker-free FG animation with mental ray in 3ds Max

Jignesh Jariwala — Sat, 19 May 2012 20:11:26 +0000

I’m going to share some of tips to how to get flicker free FG animation with mentalray in 3ds max. FG is always blamed for flickering animation. I will talk about some workflow using one of the production scene from my last project containing so much amounts of polys.

So let’s start with this “Snowy Airport” scene. I have enough ram that I can render out entire scene. The whole scene is lit with single skylight and sky texture as an environment. I also have “Environment/Background Switcher” map loaded in environment slot and used sky image in “Arch : Env blur” shader inside “Environment” slot of “Switcher” map. That’s about lighting which is simple. Now let’s talk about FG.

In this scene, everything is still and just camera is moving around, so I chose “Project points along camera path” (as camera moving) and “Single file mode” (as everything is still and no animation). Also FG bounce is set to 1 and I kept trace depth to 2-1-1. I don’t need much reflection or refraction here. Noise filtering set to “None”.

and ofcourse Antialiasing is set to 1-16 high settings with 0.05 default spatial contrast and Mitchell Filter. So I generated FG map for every 5th frame (for 50 frames), then locked it and rendered with those AA settings and here is the result (Watch in full screen with HD on) :

As we can see that it’s flickering there. But wait, it’s not FG flickering. How do we find that? There are “Diagnostic tools” in mentalray. Go to diagnostic tools and enable “Final Gather” and now render out sequence with that enable. Result will be like this below video. As we can see that all those green dots aren’t moving or jumping but sticking to planes and ground. (Watch in full screen with HD on)

So what is the flickering then? It’s antialiasing flickering. It’s always antialiasing flickering not FG. FG doesn’t flicker if correct settings are chosen. Let’s enable “sampling rate” and disable “final gather” in diagnostic tools. and render out sequence. Here is the result (Watch in full screen with HD on) :

As we can see that current AA settings (1-16, 0.05) aren’t enough to generate nice fine details. Check on background geometry how those lanterns and hangars buildings have bad outlines. Also there isn’t much details generated on front planes in foreground. We need higher settings. So I would up min-max to 4-64 and spatial contrast setting to 0.02. and here is the image of result.

Still there are little details not generated. Check lanterns and those buildings in background. So let’s lower the spatial contrast setting to 0.01 (for all RGBA) and check the result :

looks good in details! For final animation, I changed the FG point density to 1.0 and FG points to 150 and AA settings 4-64, 0.012 spatial contrast. and little bit of glow using “glare” output shader. (Note : those background lanterns intentionally given higher self illumination value to get the glow, Physically it should be lower as it fades with the distance) Let’s see the result (Watch in full screen with HD on) :

As we can see it’s flicker free animation. So whenever it’s flickering in mentalray, it’s mostly due to bad sampling/AA values. (Note : we must check these using diagnostic after calculating FG maps, for some reason I find that rendering with FG is much faster than rendering without FG. So use diagnostic tool to fine tune AA after calculating FG map)

Final Thoughts ::

1. Calculate FG map first then use diagnostic utilities to fine tune FG map and AA settings. Use compare tool or load in “Ram Player” different AA settings diagnostic images, and compare the difference. Use trace depth values according to reflection/refraction amount you need in the scene.

2. Sampling value for AA min-max , 4-64 is optimal value and will work for most type of scenes. and then you need to adjust spatial contrast settings according to needs.

3. Other important thing, I feel that, If you are rendering with mentalray, always render in high resolution like full HD 1920×1080 pixels. Those above tests were done with 1280×720 pixels size becoz of vimeo 720p upload limits. I am not saying that you need to render at double or more resolution than required size, so no AA flickering issue you get.

But you will always get viewable details with full resolution and 1920x1080p size is at least minimum for rendering in mentalray.
Also as you increase resolution, you can use higher value with spatial contrast settings. For in this example, if I would do rendering with 1920x1080p size, It will require 0.017 spatial contrast settings.
and ofcourse rendering time was just 5 mins per frame (for 1280x720p res) on i7 930 overclocked 4.0 Ghz.

Reference & Resources : Zap Anderson (http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com) and Jeff Patton(http://www.jeffpatton.net) (Thanks for providing great learning materials for mentalray)

Modeling a Bedroom(Part 4-7/10: Chair )

Hani Mohammadi — Fri, 18 May 2012 19:10:51 +0000

In this series of video tutorials, you will learn how to do the modeling of a bedroom. I will focus about modeling bedroom facilities.

UVing a Hand with Maya

Andrew Klein — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:36:58 +0000

This video looks at how to use UV unwrap tools in Maya to cut apart a hand by UV edges. Perfect for very fast organic UV unwraps is the smooth UV tool, also demonstrated.

The Art Institute of California — San Francisco

New category on 3DExport – Game Dev.

Stryker — Tue, 15 May 2012 08:39:36 +0000

Great news: 3DExport has opened a new category – Game Dev! In this category authors can sell ready-to-use 3d models in games, specially made to be implemented into games that can greatly accelerate the process of creating games. Authors are welcomed to add “game-ready” 3d models, or if you have already some submitted items on 3DExport, please move them to our new category.

>> Visit Gema Dev category <<

Enjoy.

Head Modelling (Part 4: Nose)

Dennis Jensen — Mon, 14 May 2012 07:10:03 +0000

This tutorial diggs deep into the unknown land of head modelling. If you are new to modelling. This will be a great tutorial for you. After the Tutorial you can write Modelling as a skill on your dating site. I’m sure you are going to score with that skill.

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YouTube page
Poly-face.com
Twitter

Modeling a Foot in Maya(Part 5)

Andrew Klein — Sun, 13 May 2012 12:41:33 +0000

Part 5 of 6 demonstrates modeling the big toe.



Tutorial by Autodesk Certified Instructor for Maya: Andrew Klein.
The Art Institute of California — San Francisco


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Video Tutorial: build your own TRON light cycle
cinema4dtutorial — Thu, 10 May 2012 19:48:16 +0000
In this tutorial we will create an scene that looks like TRON Legacy. You will learn how to make a realistic TRON light cycle, and create an awesome scene, I’ve enjoyed teaching you a lot.
Preview

Part 1
• Modeling whit a blue print

• Basic modeling using cube object

Part 2
• Modeling the wheels

• Adding extra details

The last part of the tutorial is charged, in addition, it includes the 3D models, 3D animation, textures, After Effects and cinema 4d project files, Vray settings, and more cool stuff.

All this you can find 

HERE
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45+ Free Texture Packs
Stryker — Tue, 08 May 2012 06:12:59 +0000
Every designer knows that textures are something that can make any design look more special, vivid and beautiful! But there is a very thin line one shouldn’t cross, as a wrong implementation of different textures can spoil a whole project one was working on. But a professional designer with a good taste and quick eye will be able to pick for himself the right texture among all the large number of those, which are presented on the web. So we decided to make this task easier and collected in this post 45+ Free Texture Packs, for you to choose from!
Bokeh Texture Pack by forsaken-resources


Download
Bokeh Texture Pack by forsaken-resources 2


Download
Bokeh Texture Pack by forsaken-resources 3


Download
Seamless Hi-Res Texture Pack – Argyle Knitwear by croicroga


Download
Circle Texture Pack by forsaken-resources


Download
Hi-Res Grungy Stone Texture Pack by cosbo123


Download
Vintage Texture Pack by lilydust


Download
Texture Pack by SimplySilent


Download
Texture pack 5 by mariaromerobarbero


Download
Paper Like Textures Pack 1 by Aimee-Valentine


Download
Colourful Textures by lilydust


Download
Marigold – Free Patchwork Textures


Download
Victorian Grunge Textures by lilydust


Download
Seamless Hi-Res Texture Pack – Brushed Steel by croicroga


Download
6 Paper Textures – Pack 1 by BloodMoonEquinox


Download
Textures pack by mariaromerobarbero


Download
Pack Textures – Planet by ROSASINMAS


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Texture Pack 04 by artori-stock


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Texture Pack 03 by artori-stock


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OcalyptusS Texture Pack 4 by OcalyptuS-s


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Grass Texture Pack by sdwhaven


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Texture pack 3 by mariaromerobarbero


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Wood / Laminate Textures Pack 02 by Sammali


Download
Writing texture pack by mariaromerobarbero

Paper Pack 9 by dierat


Download
Textures Pack 03 by demeters


Download
Mixed Backgrounds by BirdseyeStock


Download
Watercolor pack by yulia7


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Pack Textures – Psique by ROSASINMAS


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Canvas Texture Pack 2 by Inadesign-Stock


Download
Yellow grunge paint textures by TextureKrop


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Grunge Gift Stock Vol.One


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Grunge Plywood Textures


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Totally Rusty Metal Textures


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Old White Cracked Textures


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Rust, Moss, and Metal Textures


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Narina Textures


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Colorful Cloth Fabric Textures


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DelUngy Texture Pack by jinterwas


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High resolution texture pack


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Grunge Concrete Textures


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Texture Pack 16 by AnOrderOfFishsticks


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10 Free Hi-Res Light Grunge Textures


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Grunge Textures pack for Photoshop


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Rough Concrete Tiles: Texture Pack


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75 Textures – Pack 20 by hyperboreans


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Old paper textures pack by yulia7


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18 paint textures by mrs-padfoot


Download
You might also be interested in..

Free Textures No. 1
Free 50 Hi-res Metal Textures
60 Useful Texturing Tutorials

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Modeling a Foot in Maya(Part 4)
Andrew Klein — Mon, 07 May 2012 19:05:49 +0000
Part 4 of 6 covers how to get the foot ready to add toes.



Tutorial by Autodesk Certified Instructor for Maya: Andrew Klein.
The Art Institute of California — San Francisco


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The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 21 – 23)
SpyBG — Mon, 07 May 2012 09:05:08 +0000
The Making of Gryphon Bot: Rigging (Part 21 – 23).
Video Tutorial

Full Tutorial List
The Making of Gryphon Bot: Trailer

The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 1 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 2 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 3 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 4 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 5 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 6 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 7 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 8 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 9 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 10 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 11 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 12 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 13 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 14 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 15 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 16 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 17 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 18 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 19 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 20 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 21 – 23)

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Making of a Victorian Building
Andy Walsh — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:11:04 +0000
This scene was created in 3ds max, rendered using Vray and then composited in Photoshop and was inspired by my love of victorian architecture.
Introduction
 Texturing was key in getting the desired result and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that you must be prepared to hunt down and maybe even pay for good textures! While this was made in 3ds max and rendered with Vray, there’s nothing unusual about how I used either, so this tutorial will work in any similar software.
This piece had 3 main components that made it possible to create:

The modelling techniques

Decent high res building textures from here: cgtextures.com and here: isourcetextures.com.

Research. I spent a long time trying to find as many photos of Victorian England/London as I could. The Roman Polanski version of Oliver Twist was a good source of architecture reference.
It’s very important to source building textures that are nice and straight (not taken at an angle), without noticable directional lighting (they should have a kind of overcast, diffuse lighting) and of a very high resolution so you can see all the pixel detail in your 3d program.
Step 1
I Began by making a flat plane in the top viewport, rotating it 90 degrees so it could be seen in the front viewport. I Then took that plane through the following steps:

Turned it into an editable poly.

Added an edit mesh modifier.* (see explanation below)

I then added a UVW modifier. Make sure the bitmap is correctly proportioned and not stretched.

Next I used the ‘swiftloop’ (within the edit poly modifier) tool with the ‘show end result’ clicked/checked, to slice into the mesh.
* You put an edit mesh modifier between the poly and the UVW modifiers because otherwise, as you push and pull edges around, you’ll see your texture stretch and mess up in your 3d display. Just a random 3dsmax glitch/nuance.




The swiftloop tool is found under the graphite modelling tools in 3ds max (when edge sub-object is selected) and creates horizontal and vertical cuts right around your geometry. Click above, below and either side of a window and you can then push the window back via extrude. You’ll then see something like the above image.

You can then take the far edge of the wall and shift+drag it back to create the side walls. You can either keep it as one object or detach those walls to gain greater control over the UVW maps. Otherwise when you change one face, it will affect the other.

Finally, I also created blocks of geometry and converted them to editable mesh, placing them carefully onto the face of the building before ‘attaching’ them via the edit poly rollout. They then inherit the material of your building face and are selectable as an ‘element’ if you need to grab them and move them later. I did this with the geometry above the windows and the detailing near where the roof will be.
Step 2
Next up is the roof which is made in pretty much the same way as the building faces. You take a decent high res texture, place it on a plane and cut horizontal lines in it via the swiftloop. If you make two cuts very close together along the lines of the roofing tiles, you can pick one like and drag it up, creating a zig-zag. You can see here in this close-up:




You can then add free form deformation to the roof to create slumps and sags.


Step 3
Time to do the ground floor. I didn’t quite use the principle of getting a whole building facia done in one large texture. Instead I built individual components, although the door was from a door texture which did make use of the swiftloop technique. Again, reference is key, without which you just won’t know what to build.




Step 4
Here’s how to make a whole building using one texture as opposed to splitting it up as per the first building.

It’s basically all down to how good your textures are. Chances are you won’t be able to get a full building, so photoshop must come to the rescue. Below is the basic result once applied:



…and here are the raw textures:


There was a lot of work done here to clean up. I had to remove the tree and attach the shop (from a totally different photograph) in such a way as to make them seem proportional to each other. Here are the finished texture maps:

So using the reflection map was key here. White is reflective and black is non-reflective. I was careful to mask out the precise areas I needed the window glass to be and as you can see below, we get shiny reflective windows in all the right places.
This is how the building looked once the modelling and texturing was pretty much done:


Step 5
Time to start work on the ground plane. Again, I had to do a lot of hunting to get the texture right. It was a large pavement texture plus a large cobbled street texture (all taken from cgtextures). The corner paving slabs were hand made. Displacemet was key here.


Here is a section of the displacement material I used for the ground plane. There is quite a specific method for creating good displacements – if you need smooth bumps, you need to have smooth displacement. A good method I’ve found is to simplify your bitmap in photoshop using something like posterize or threshold and then add a blur. Remember for straightforward raising/lowering, make very simple, blocky maps (see the long corner slabs below where the pavement meets the cobbled road, I just needed the mid grey to raise and the darker grey mortar to lower). If you use the original texture and just greyscale it, you’ll just get random spikes rather than single, round bricks.

Step 6
Next came the finishing touches in terms of the geometry and props. I added some peripheral elements so I modelled some victorian bits and pieces which were all pretty straight forward. The victorian lamp, cart wheels and crates were taken from a previous scene I’d made so that saved some modelling. Any time you can grab elements from previous scenes it will save a ton of time.
The foliage was made using Itoo Software’s Forest Pack Lite (which is the free version) as well as Ivy Generator, which is also free. I recommend looking into both of those if your budget is tight to non-existent!
The hanging washing was actually made using 3ds max’s cloth feature. It’s a very useful feature and there are many simple, easy-to-follow video tutorials on youtube etc. on how to make basic geometry fall and fold onto target geometry – in this case, the spline washing lines.
Finally the water plane was placed to give the impression of puddles. This was a flat plane and was slid under the cobbled street/pavement and then I pushed and pulled some vertices around to create dips in the ground plane so the water plane would show through. You have to factor in the displace height on top of the geometric height of the plane and the only way to see that is to render it and tweak as you go.


Step 7
Here is the light set-up. It’s very basic, just a Vray Sun and nothing more. I knew I would create a backdrop in Photoshop, so didn’t bother whith a HDRI background or similar environment map.
The only thing I added was a HDRI reflection map in the Vray Environement > Reflection/refraction environment override so the windows had something to reflect.

Here’s the basic lighting to give you an idea of how that looks minus the texturing. There’s also some Vray ambient occlusion turned on to bring out the smaller details.


Step 8
For the base I just made a large block with a soil/earth texture and a thick displacement added. I knew this wouldn’t look 100% in the render and I’d need to let photoshop handle this, so I rendered the two separately.


Final Result
The two elements were brought into photoshop and stacked on top of eachother. I then tweaked here and there to make the block of earth look that bit more realistic as well as adding a sky backdrop. Apart from that there was no other major photoshop work needed.
Next I need to think about making a whole street!




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Head Modelling (Part 3: Eyes and Mouth)
Dennis Jensen — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 18:20:28 +0000
This tutorial diggs deep into the unknown land of head modelling. If you are new to modelling. This will be a great tutorial for you. After the Tutorial you can write Modelling as a skill on your dating site. I’m sure you are going to score with that skill.

Facebook page

YouTube page

Poly-face.com

Twitter
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Modeling Interior Lamps in 3DsMax (Part 4/4)
3D-Sphere — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:43:06 +0000
In this tutorial we will  model three lamps starting with a simple one and continue with more difficult using poly modeling technique in 3DsMax. Starting from a primitive cylinder in 3DsMax we will shape the model using editable poly to a lamp. Using similar technique we will model a detailed model of a bulb including the wires inside. Using subdivision and smooth modifier we will achieve smooth and without failure our models.



At the end we will use our new material library to apply materials and create lightning for a scene and finally render using mental ray.

Include:

 Modeling three different lamps in 3DsMax

 Modeling a detailed bulb

 Using editable poly to add details

 Smoothing the object using subdivision and smooth modifier

 Starting to use our material library

 Lightning using MR Photometric Lights

 Rendering with Mental Ray

Visit www.3d-sphere.com and find more tutorials and other useful information!


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The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 20 – 23)
SpyBG — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:40:23 +0000
The Making of Gryphon Bot: Textures and Materials (Part 20 – 23).
Video Tutorial

Full Tutorial List
The Making of Gryphon Bot: Trailer

The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 1 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 2 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 3 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 4 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 5 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 6 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 7 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 8 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 9 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 10 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 11 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 12 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 13 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 14 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 15 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 16 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 17 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 18 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 19 – 23)
The Making of Gryphon Bot: (Part 20 – 23)

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