Datasheet

You don’t need to finalize every texture at the beginning, because you’ll be coming
back and making adjustments all the time. Remember that the materials you create for
your scene will probably look different when you light and animate everything.
You’ll learn more about texturing in Chapter 7, “Materials and Mapping.”
Animation
Animation puts your scene into action and adds life to your characters. Animation is
change over time. Anything in a scene that needs to change from one second to another
will need to be animated to do so.
Everyone has their own reflexive sense of how things move. This knowledge is gleaned
through years of perception and observation. Therefore, your audience can be more criti-
cal of a CG scene’s motion than lighting, coloring, or anything else. You know when some-
thing doesn’t look right. So will your audience.
Animation takes quite a lot of setup, sometimes more than just modeling. For a charac-
ter, you will need to create a rig (a character’s setup or digital armature used to drive char-
acter animation, such as a Character Studio Biped) to attach to the model and then create
controls to make animation easier to operate.
It’s thrilling to see your hard work on a scene come to life with animation. On the flip
side, it can be extremely aggravating to see your creation working improperly. Making
mistakes is how you learn things, and your frustrations will ease over time. Your first sev-
eral attempts at animating a scene will not look like Pixar films, but that should not dis-
suade you from working on more animations and scenes. You will get better with more
practice.
Chapter 8, “Introduction to Animation,” and Chapter 9, “Character Studio and IK
Animation” cover animation techniques in 3ds Max.
Lighting
Lighting is the most important aspect of CG production. This area is where you get to see
your models and textures, as well as set the mood of the project. During lighting, you set
up virtual lights in 3D space that will illuminate the objects in your scene when it comes
time to render. Lighting can drastically change how your scene looks. Using lighting wisely
is a learned skill, and it takes tons of time to master; there are no shortcuts to becoming a
good lighter. Not only are you dealing with the aesthetics of getting your shot to look great,
but you are also dealing with rendering issues and bottlenecks that could make rendering
your shot a nightmare. These issues come up with much larger scenes than the ones you
will be using in the first years of your CG education; however, it’s important to start learn-
ing how to use lighting efficiently as well as aesthetically.
Lighting can make or break all your hard work. You can use lighting to affect the believ-
ability of your models and textures as well as to create the proper mood and tone.
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