Technical Talk

Topic	Replies	Latest Post
How to count your polygons and tris? Hey all, Noob here, but learning as much as I can. I know that all games eventually convert quads into tris. So my question is, is there a way to calculate how many polygons your model currently us…	17 Last	Lee3dee Nov 2006
Unfold 3d problem Hey guys, I just modelled myself a human head and I want to unwrap it using unfold 3d. But it gives me this error message when loading the file: Code: Testing and preparing mesh ... Invalid mesh…	5 Last	arshlevon Nov 2006
Best Video Card for modeling? Just curious if a card such as eVGA or ATI would be better for 3d modeling/rendering then a Matrox? What are some advantages and disadvantages of both? Thanks.	12 Last	Daz Nov 2006
3D Paint with multiple UV in the same material? Anyone know of any 3D paint software that supports the use of multiple UVW sets within the same material? I need to paint an un-tiled mask between two tiled color textures, for landscape blending in…	27 Last	CrazyButcher Nov 2006
display problem I have a geforce 7300 LE and when I turn on dx display in 3dsmax , everything has a blue tinge to it The normal maps other wise display correctly I have intsalled all the latest drivers Anyone had th…	7 Last	Ruz Nov 2006
polyboost viewport canvas question..... i'm experimenting w/polyboost's viewport canvas cloning tool to paint out some seams. anybody use this? i'm having some weird things happen. when i clone...and paint over the seam...everything is …	1 Last	fritz Nov 2006
How to combine objects together? Hello all, I would like to know if it is possible to combine objects that are overlapping each other instantly? Or is the only way to combine objects for 3d gaming is by welding their vertices/edg…	7 Last	Eric Chadwick Nov 2006
Inverse Kinematics and Hierarchy Linking Hey everyone, kinda new here. I've been searching all over the net for tutorials and I haven't had any luck. Asking you guys is my last resort next to buying an $80 book that probably won't give me m…	2 Last	Zephir62 Nov 2006
Digital color mixing After trying out painter yesterday i realized neither it nor photoshop provide me with absolute color control; RGB does not provide saturation and tint control, and HSB doesn't provide accurate hue c…	9 Last	shotgun Nov 2006
color picking from a specific vert in max I'm sure the answer is staring at me, but I can't seem to find it. I've got a mesh w/ the vertex paint modifier on it, and I want to color pick from a vert. In Maya I could select a vertex and then…	2 Last	Erol Nov 2006
Emissive textures in Max Hi guys, I'm wondering if anyone can help me with emissive textures in max. I have a few areas of a texture that need some glowing effects. So far, I have just used self-illumination but this won't g…	14 Last	Eric Chadwick Nov 2006
MaxScript: Biped Tangent Tool [url="http://www.juantwo.com/scripts/Martinez_Macro_TCBTangents.zip"][img]http://www.juantwo.com/scripts/TCBTool.gif[/img][/url] [url="http://www.juantwo.com/scripts/Martinez_Macro_TCBTangents.zip"…	8 Last	e_x Nov 2006
Procedural Textures Gaming's Future [url="http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2006/11/09/Procedural_Textures_Future_Gam/1.html"]http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2006/11/09/Procedural_Textures_Future_Gam/1.html[/url]	5 Last	Eric Chadwick Nov 2006
PSP Stalingrad I am currentlly working on a final project for my Designing Interior Worlds and Spaces class. The level I have designed and started working on is a portion of WWII Stalingrad, which is of course is …	5 Last	arshlevon Nov 2006
Creating a skybox Hey, I've gotta make a skybox for a custom UT2k4 map, but I'm not sure what the best way to go about it is... Should I just use stock photos and make a matte painting for it? Paint it by hand? Is th…	7 Last	Eric Chadwick Nov 2006
Is anything wrong with this? Hello all, I am modeling my character and doing pretty good until I got into the hip section. I don't know why this area is not automatically smooth like the other areas I worked on. Is there a wa…	2 Last	Lightray Nov 2006
render with normal map? Is there a plugin for 3ds max 8 that will allow you to render something with a normal map applied? Or is there already a way that I'm not aware of? If not what program can I use to get a good render …	3 Last	etsuja Nov 2006
VIDEO GAME CHARACTER MODELING STEPS? Can anybody give me the rundown on how do a character for a video game. tell me if I'm wrong but basically this is what I thought the process was. 1. model your character. 2. unwrap the uv's 3. firs…	13 Last	Miguelito Nov 2006
Keeping Smoothing Groups from Max to Maya Hey, Anyone know a good trick for keep Smoothing groups from Max to Maya. For some reason I check the box in the Max OBJ exporter, but everytime I open the OBJ in Maya my smoothing groups are messed…	2 Last	Palleschi Nov 2006
Building new rig, what do you guys use? Howdy, Im currently looking into getting a new system here for modeling and rendering, and I have mixed responses from people. What kind of system do you guys have? Will applications such as Photo…	4 Last	Rick Stirling Nov 2006
editbl poly subobject: edge->poly selectn transfer [url="http://www.dwbgallery.com/stuff/edge-poly_selection_trick.jpg"][img]http://www.dwbgallery.com/stuff/edge-poly_selection_tricklr.jpg[/img][/url] A friend of mine showed me 8 months ago how to cr…	3 Last	monster Nov 2006
Maya High Quality Rendering error I'm having an error in Maya that says "Warning: High Quality Rendering mode is not supported by the graphics card." Apparently others have had this problem since switching to Maya 8, but I can't fin…	4 Last	tacit math Nov 2006
Need second opinion about texturemap. Hey all, I wanted your help with deciding with how to handle my models texturemaps. I'm planning to create a normalmap(s), texturemap(s) and specularmap(s) for this model. I want to keep the model …	4 Last	Mark Dygert Nov 2006
weird seam thing in Maya, screws up smoothing as I was working on this face, I couldn't delete edges in a few places. I worked around it to get what I wanted. But then I smoothed it and got this weird seam goin on. Wasn't sure what it was and we…	5 Last	erik! Nov 2006
Auto Rigging in XSI Hey all, been working on some rigging stuff in XSI, and trying to standardize/simplify some of the repetitive work, like rigging humans. While the default XSI bipeds are ok to work with, they aren't…	10 Last	Squid Nov 2006
CHARACTER MODELING QUESTION!! PLEASE HELP! Whats up everyone. This is my first post on polycount but definitly not the last! anyways I am a character artist in training. I am in school and just learning about using edgeloops and zbrush to mod…	15 Last	kakikukeko Nov 2006
Do you recommend Polyboost for new Max user? Hi I am fairly decent at Maya modeling (not great). I am trying to learn Max now. I watched a Gnomon Tutorial which the tutor demostrated Polyboost. do you recommend me to get Polyboost at this stag…	11 Last	Eric Chadwick Nov 2006
exchanging 3d files wondering how you handle 3d file exchanging within your studios. while likely you might use a combo of more, please specify which you use in most cases.	3 Last	Eric Chadwick Nov 2006
J.I. Styles' skin shader So, I downloaded that nice lookin' skin shader, but have no idea how to put it to use. Where exactly do I put all of the TGAs and such? Should it have come with a plugin or some sort of shader file c…	9 Last	erik! Nov 2006
UT2K4 static mesh problem blah, disregard this, I figured it out, for some reason my UV's were flipping when I imported the mesh into UnrealEd so I just flipped them in Maya and they flipped back to the correct way in UnrealEd	1 Last	Joao Sapiro Nov 2006
MAX 9 trial, try it out [url="http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=5972446"]http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=5972446[/url] for anyone wanting to try it out here is …	28 Last	mvelasquez Nov 2006
lumonix SHADER FX [url="http://www.lumonix.net/frames_shaderfx.html"]http://www.lumonix.net/frames_shaderfx.html[/url] its still in beta trying it out now, will let you guys know if its any good. Shader FX is a fu…	5 Last	conte Nov 2006
wire frame showing when i hide faces I have just gone from max 8 to 9.I have a lo poly model i am working on.If i select the faces of the body and click hide so i can work on the arm they disappear,but when i switch to vertex i get a wi…	1 Last	kunglao Nov 2006
which 3d package? I know this has probably been asked but I am having trouble with the search here not returning results relevant to what I ask for. I am just wondering what package is recommended for an aspiring new…	11 Last	CheeseOnToast Nov 2006
2 free NURBS training videos Free video tutorial: Making of modern tap [img]http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/8348/tap01ft9.jpg[/img] [img]http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/2205/tap02zm4.jpg[/img] [img]http://img132.imagesh…	1 Last	Joao Sapiro Nov 2006
Bounding box prob. I got a bounding box problem when i use the middle mouse button to move the scene around. What happens is Im modeling lets say a head and i want to move the scene aside to see the background image…	3 Last	D4V1DC Nov 2006
Is there a Maya equivalent of uvHelper? Well, thats about it. Just wondering if theres a Maya equivalent, plug-in, or mel script that does what the uvHelper script does in Max.	5 Last	fmnoor Nov 2006
Best 3dsmax realtime shader atm? Hi, just wondering what everyone was using these days to view their NM'd models in realtime. I'm using one I found from Ben Cloward, its a 3 light source, spec map shader for MAX. Not sure what every…	42 Last	Ghostscape Nov 2006
Buttocks help Been modelling lopoly characters male/female(1000-10000tri's) for a while now but always had difficulty in modelling buttocks not so much the cheeks themselves but the join in the middle especially i…	12 Last	Josh_Singh Nov 2006
Pulling from the R, G, and the B separately (max)? Is it possible to pull from the R, G, and the B separately in 3dsmax's material editor? I create my shaders in the game engine we are working on this way (spec in red, spec power in green ect.) and i…	4 Last	Silva_Spoon Nov 2006
Biped Stretchy Limb Tutorial It bugs me (just a little) when people say they don't like to animate with biped because you can't scale limbs. So...I made a tutorial that teaches you to create Custom Attributes and Wire them to a…	6 Last	monster Nov 2006
Newbie to 3D Max Hello all, I'm new to 3D max and 3d modelling. I've watched several free video tutorials as I can but I think I am not covering all the important steps in making a model. 3D max is overwhelming. I …	4 Last	Ninjas Nov 2006
3dsmax patch modelling anyone got a handle on the workflow for this. I used surface tools years ago. suppose ideally it would good to do a low poly head , convert to patch object and tweak from there, but you get tri patc…	4 Last	Ruz Nov 2006
normal mapping for games hey guys, quick question. I come from a film background and haven't done any game work but was wondering about normal mapping for games. I know with gams, UV and texture space must be optimized. s…	11 Last	Eric Chadwick Nov 2006
Ambient Occlusion - Opacity Mapped polys? Hey all, I've been doing a lot of ambient occlusion lightmap baking lately, and dread the times when the object is using some opacity mapped textures. The ambient occlusion needs to properly read th…	1 Last	arshlevon Nov 2006
Free ZBrush Training Videos Hi All Some of you probably know already but for those that don't 3DBuzz has posted 2 video tutorial on You Tube which serv as an introduction to ZBrush - [url="http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=3…	3 Last	Lee3dee Nov 2006
horizon mapping horizon mapping just got implemented into our engine and i am wondering if any of you have ever used horizon mapping on characters? what were the results? was it worth it? thanks, picture would be gr…	15 Last	Jarrod1937 Nov 2006
Maya with Dual Monitors? Heya, I recently got a second monitor (it's set as secondary display in dual view using nVivida's desktop tools), but it's almost useless to me when working in Maya. The reason is that I can drag …	10 Last	Whargoul Nov 2006
Normal Seams Is there any way to get rid of these normal map seams? I've tried using Melody and Santiago's xNormal with different settings in each but no luck. [img]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v138/Syama/D…	11 Last	Neox Nov 2006
Best DX shaders to view normals I was wondering what are some of the best dx shaders that you guys and gals have successfully used to view normals in the viewports of max? Thanks alot!	1 Last	CopperHaze Nov 2006