3d Graphics program

[Mark Suszko]

Considering your clientele, Max is inexpensive and powerful and you have access to a HUGE user community, with years worth of ready-made tutorials and guides handy. Plus, a vast array of pre-made models and accessories make it easy for you to get right into some advanced work by just buying and downloading models, plug-ins and things from places like Turbosquid or web rings of suppliers. C4D, while very nice, can’t boast the same depth of support in user groups and the like. Consider too the wider user base of Max makes it easier for you to hire-in part-time help or collaborate online with contractors that can model or rig for you when the schedules get tight.

I remain a Lightwave fan, but I jealously hate the fact that models and stuff for Max outnumber the same items for LW out there by something like 5-1. Translators like Polytrans can help a little.

[Raymond Flores]

Thanks for the input. Just the perspective I needed. Do you know anyone who has taken the future media concepts beginner and advance courses? My wife and I are planning to throw some money down to help us on our way. We’d just like to know if it is worth it.

[Mark Suszko]

Let me preface this by making clear this is just my opinion, and that I have zero idea of your skillsets and aptitudes. I’m basing what I say on myself. If any of it seems like it might apply to you, use it. Or don’t, I won’t mind.

#1 advice:
Don’t sign up for the expensive seminars yet. Not because the place you named isn’t good, likely it is, and there are many choices for such classes. Just that IMO that should be a final step, not the beginning.

You say you are good editors already. So you understand a timeline and keyframing. That will serve you well in setting up animations.

Hopefully, you’ve played around in photoshop and maybe some entry-level 2-d compositing, so you understand layering and maybe texturing. (If not, you NEED to get deep into photoshop and soon) If anything is missing from your experience, it’s in the dimensional area of working with the forms and operations peculiar to that.

So I say, you and your partner, skip the power lectures for a bit, and go take a junior college or privately taught art class together in clay sculpture for a semester. This will really get your eye and brain trained to think in terms of Boolean operations, lathing, skinning, lofting, even IK chains and parenting… the mechanics of how to build up a 3-d form from extrusions of 2-d shapes and combinations of forms. Also, making simple flip-book animations or animated GIFs is great 2-d practice that you can leverage later.

If you just can’t bring yourselves to take a course in hands-on sculpting, at least go to an art store, grab a big blob of cheap plasticene or marblex and one of the handy beginner books, take that home and try building-up progressively more sophisticated items in your kitchen, in private, over a couple of weeks. The clay is re-useable if you keep it moist and bagged. Make simple geometrics, build up animals, try making a human hand.

Concurrently with the hands-on clay play, grab a couple of the most highly-rated Max tutorial books off Amazon, used would be fine. Read and work with the included tutorial materials. You can download a student training edition of Max, I’m pretty certain, for free. Sometimes these are called PLE (Personal Learning Edition) versions. They are the whole application, or the most essential aspects of the application, only their output/saving ability is watermarked or otherwise hobbled in final output so you can’t make anything commercial with it, but you can work with it and practice and experiment all you like, gratis. Later, you can upgrade to full unlimited verions if you wish, with a simple online registering and payment…

Then just get dirty, play with it, open the pre-built models and animation files and take them apart to see the components.

After all that groundwork, THEN is the time I would say attending an expensive 2-5 day course with an expert in MAX would get you the most return on your financial and intellectual investment. These programs are exceptionally deep, and while it is true you can get started with something elementary right away, the path I’ve outlined is what I think leads to better retention and overall comprehension. When you finally take the course with the pro, you won;t just be passive sponges, you’ll be interactive and socratic learners, getting way more out of what he has to teach you. You’ll already know where your comprehension of subjects is weaker, and can direct him to work with you more in those weak areas and skim past the concepts you already have down pat.

I’m a hands-on guy; if you’re teaching me new software, I need to be the one pushing the buttons as you explain something, or I tend not to retain it very long. See it, hear it, DO it, explain it back to the teacher, that’s how I learn best.

Likewise, if I went to a power-seminar right off the bat, without prep work ahead of time, I would tend to get dazzled by the teacher blasting thru the examples, and wind up getting frustrated if I could not control the pace to my needs.

If any of this sounds like you, maybe this is the way for you to go. Everybody learns a little differently, finding a teacher to match your learning style is worth the effort, But IMO coming into ANY course already slightly warmed-up is what accellerates the learning and makes it more worthwhile…

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Ray –
I concur with Mark’s assessment for your 3D future. I have been using 3DSMax (now on Ver. 8) for 6 or 7 years. I’m an art director at a broadcast station and use Max to create elements for opens, bumps, special projects, etc.. My workflow involves Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, 3DSMax, and After Effects (often in that very order), and I have found that, if you’re literate in one graphics software package, you can usual pick up another pretty quickly.

Max tends to be the exception, since it involves x, y, and z axes, and treats them a bit different than you might see in After Effects, which is really a 2D 3D package. Max also has a feature set that’s as deep as the Grand Canyon. You can spend years on mastering one facet of it, such as character animation.

For training yourself as a compositor (which I did myself, and make a good living at it) I would suggest learning Lighting, Texture Mapping, and Animation (both object and camera) first. Learning to model, which is easy with simpler inorganic objects, can be avoided, unless you really enjoy it. There are tons of good, cheap, models out there to be had. If you’re going to be doing mostly flying graphics for opens and such, it’s really easy to type your text, extrude or bevel it, texture it, light it, and animate it.

There is enough tutorial information out there for free that you don’t need to buy the expensive training at this point. I would say download the demo copy of Max. If you have After Effects, you should also check out 3D Invigorator, which will let you do some really nice flying titles without the expense or time you have to invest in Max. You should also get your heads around lighting, and a great place to start is with Neil Blevins:

https://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/cg_education.htm

This guy is a master animator, and somehow finds the time to offer his teaching skills for free. Read all of his stuff you can get your hands on, and you’ll have a good grounding in lighting, modeling, and mapping realistic looking things. For other free sources, just do a search on +Max +Tutorials in Google. You’ll find enough valuable information to keep you occupied for the next three years! Good luck with your quest to become motion graphics artists!

Joe Bourke
Art Director / WMUR-TV

[Matthew Mcnulty]

what is the opinion on Blender 3d software… it was free the last time i checked