3ds Max Procedural Texturing Training Video

FatAssasin

I've put together a training DVD on creating textures using only procedural materials in Max. Here's the link to page:

http://www.kurvstudios.com/3ds_max/3ds_max_proc_texturing.php

If anyone's purchased it, or purchases it in the future, I'd love to hear any feedback you have to offer. I'd like to do more of these training videos if I can find the time, but I want to make them as useful as possible so it's worth the money.

I made a few shorter videos that were meant to be free downloads, but only segments of the longer videos made it on the page as examples. I don't have any real control over how it's being marketed on the official site, but I'll put the shorter ones on my own personal site because I think it's more informative to see a complete example of how to create a procedural material from beginning to end as opposed to just seeing a part of the overall process.

Also, here's a page that shows most of the materials that I go over in the dvd: http://jhaywood.com/proceduralTextures/

I wanted these on the official page also, but they just put up random sreenshots, which I'm not sure are as effective at showing the buyer what they can get out of the dvd.

I hope this information is useful to you guys. I think procedural materials in general are under appreciated and a lot of times not fully understood. You can make some really nice textures, or least a good base to start from, very quickly if you know how to get the most out of them.

poopinmymouth

Awesome. I might have to check this out, since I've never tackles Max's material editor. It always struck me as difficult and limited compared to Maya's, but I know it's just my ignorance.

Thanks for taking the time man.

Foehammer

is this all without plugins? how many lessons/different textures are there? looks very cool, i may have to get this one

FatAssasin

Actually, there's one plugin, Color Correct, I use, but it's free and everone that works with materials should have it anyway because it's so useful...

http://www.cuneytozdas.com/software/3dsmax/

And Max's material editor is definitely a different way of thinking than Maya's multi-lister or hyper-graph, but it's pretty easy to use and powerful once you get the hang of it.

I think there's about 20 different materials I go over. A couple are variations on a theme, but hopefully you can apply the lessons to anything else you might want to create. Plus there are a few off topic tips and tricks, like making a quick cloth object with nice folds for the velvet material and using Max's depth of field camera effect for the electron microscope look.

notman

Just some quick observations on the sample I watched:

You may want to slow things down a little. You are very familar with the locations of items, so you tended to zip through them. I'm always bugged when I watch a tutorial and they move faster than I can follow. Especially when the method is new to me and I don't know where all the features are located.

You may also want to explain a little more WHY you're making changes. Sometimes you state, "I'm just going to change enable this", but I'm not sure why you checked or unchecked things.

One final thing to keep in mind are shortcuts or key combos you do that aren't visible to the user... This is more of a generalized problem I see in most tutorials that you may want to keep in mind. I didn't see you do that in the sample, so this may not apply. I really hate it though when someone uses a keyboard shortcut and they don't state it verbally.

Anyways, the tutorials seemed cool otherwise. Keep up the good work

Eric Chadwick

Hey James, looks good. Thanks for doing this!

I've always been a fan of procedurals, use 'em where ever I can. Watched the first sample, seemed a good pace to me. If it's too fast, I guess you could set your dvd player to 1/2 speed, or step thru the frames.

I'm wasn't sure what I'd get from them since I've been using procedurals for awhile, but right off I see you're talking about rendering filters, so this might yet be good for someone like me.

You may already have discussed this in the vids, but... One thing that helps me when setting up complex materials is to name some of the maps, helps in the navigation. Also the Material Navigator window is a big help, since the MatEd uses such a lousy compacted UI.

Looking forward to the vids on your site too.

Zatoichi

Yah, the 'fast' shortcut issue is quite prevalent in the Gnomon vids I have... even the beginner ones! They just whip right through them without explination. I paid $60+ bucks, I want to know!
Anyway, great tutorial. Nice of you to show a demo.

Sage

Well I decided to buy it out of curiosity since I have a few bucks from christmas and it seems interesting and pleasant enough unlike other video tutorials I have had the displeasure of watching. I'll let you know what I think of it once I see the entire thing. I really didn't like how kurv studios dealt with the promotion of the samples. The least they could do is show an entire clip. I wouldn't have bothered getting it if you weren't a part of these boards. End rant. Good luck on the sales. Thanks for taking the time to make these. Later.

Alex

FatAssasin

About using shortcuts, I tried to do eveything with mouse clicks as much as possible, especially since I didn't use a headset so I had to keep my face in front of the microphone and not look down at the keyboard too much.

And about moving too fast, that's a valid point. I do tend to rush through stuff even when I'm showing something to someone at work, but I tried to keep the pace moving along and not get too boring. I do go into detail the first time I present something new, and then try not to repeat myself later if I'm going through the same process, some of these vids are pretty long as it is. But if after watching one of the complete tutorials, not just one of the segment samples, anyone thinks I'm going too fast, I'll definitely take that into consideration next time.

And Eric, I do talk about the importance of naming and organization. Another thing I do is use instances as much as possible to make changes go faster.

And let me what you think Alex!

FatAssasin

Here are the sample videos I mentioned. They've been reduced to 256 colors to keep the file sizes down, but the actual dvd videos are full 16 bit color.

Carbon Fiber - 75 megs


Spirit/Ghost - 28 megs


Wireframe - 7 megs

adam

Broken links!

Eric Chadwick

I stripped out the "boards.polycount.net/" so now it's downloading. Gonna check these out, thanks Jay.

notman

yeah, you need to include the http:// when you create your links... otherwise it substitutes polycounts addy in front.

Here are correcte links:
http://www.jhaywood.com/proceduraltextures/3dsMax_proceduralTextures_wireframe.avi
http://www.jhaywood.com/proceduraltextures/3dsMax_proceduralTextures_spirit.avi
http://www.jhaywood.com/proceduraltextures/3dsMax_proceduralTextures_carbonFiber.avi

Thanks for posting these btw

FatAssasin

Thanks for fixing the links, sorry about that.

Sage

I just got the dvd and finished seeing all the tutorials. Overall pretty nice indeed. If you have never used procedurals in Max it would help you get up to speed and not get discouraged with using them. Fat the pace wasn't too fast and they were easy to understand and listen to.

All the tutorials are self contained so when he repeats steps done in previous lessons he explains them again and doesn't assume the viewer knows what he is doing. After awhile you know what he is going to do and say before he does it. I thought thatit was a bit funny. I have used procedurals for awhile but learned some new tricks so thanks. I hope you take the time to make more. By the way do you know how to get procedurals to animate in perfect loops? Later.

Alex

FatAssasin

Thanks for checking out the DVD, Alex. I'm glad you got some useful info out of it.

And Mr. Chadwick has actually written a quick tutorial on how to loop procedurals: http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/looping_a_procedural_texture.html

Slum

Ok, I tried to find this out on my own without bugging you, but I've been unsuccessful. What codec do those preview videos that you posted use? I can't seem to get them to work. I've tried two different computers and codec packs, but still cant get the video to play, only audio.

Sage

Slum did you try exploring the dvd and running the movies without using web page? I got wierd results trying to watch the movies that way. I just played the movies from the directory instead and that fixed my problem. I hope that helps. The codec it uses is Sorenson Video 3 and the audio is in Qualcomm PureVoice. You might need the latest version of quicktime for them to work.

Alex

Alex

FatAssasin

The videos were all created using Camtasia. So the codec needed is TechSmith, available here:
http://www.techsmith.com/download/codecs.asp

If the videos on the DVD are Sorenson then they must have done some post-processing on them to save file space.

Sage

They must have done something to them. I just looked at the info quicktime gave me under movie info. All the files that are on the dvd are in quicktime format.

Alex

Eric Chadwick

FWIW, awhile back I asked the Autodesk demo artist who made the Max7 videos, and he said they use Techsmith to capture them, then resized and compressed them into the delivery format. The clear Techsmith source kept the resizing readable, from 1024x768 down to 640x480, and the WMV or QT made light files that also didn't require most people to d/l unfamiliar codecs.

Probably a similar idea with your publisher.