When Cats lovers and Chess Nerds Collide

Cat chess is a real thing! 

My granny quilt board

Final Renders

Lighting & Rendering in 3Ds Max

1.  I downloaded his file so that I would be up to date after he added dynamics. I was hoping this would fix my material visibility problem, but it hasn't and the particles look weird too. I'm not sure what to do...

2. Adding basic light parameters in 3Ds as coloring, shadows, types of lighting, intensity, etc.

3. Understanding diffuse and specular components.

The left image is a render with ambient lighting off and the second image has ambient lighting turned on. 

4. Utilizing the object properties window.

First image is with shadow turned off, second is with reflect turned off, third is not visible in camera (although the shadows and reflections are still visible), and the fourth image shows the right object completely turned off in the render mode. 

5. Changing the default renderer to Mental Ray 

6. Setting up imaged based lighting and adding an environment.

7. Working with additional lighting sources in 3Ds max

8. Optimizing render speed by turning off the shadows, reflections, etc. and reducing the amount of particles in the scene.  

9. Fine-tuning particles and other materials 

10. Adding motion blur and improving the the rendered image quality 

11. Outputting the final animation from 3Ds max 

This is a view of the animation from the viewport because the rendered animation would have taken forever. 

12. Converting an image sequence to a movie file. 

I watched the process but do not have a finished product because I did not render out a image sequence. 

Animation in 3Ds Max

1. Creating and editing keyframes

2. Managing keyframes in the curve editor and cycling animation infinitely.

Alright ladies, let's get in formation 

ps. My materials are messed up and I don't know why =(

3.Working with autokey and creating simple expressions in the curve editor. 

Everybody Dance now! 

4. Creating expressions=my brain hurts.... this is like math.

And if the Devil doesn't like it he can sit on a tack! 

5. Path animation using splines

Rex says, "Of course the world revolves around me"

6. Creating crowds with populate. 

Wow! someone is hot stuff! Just look at all those women starring. Oh wait.... he's not even there. Moment lost. 

7. When I tried to download the platform in lesson 87, the materials were not showing up on the model. I downloaded his file to see if that would help with anything, but it didn't. I'm going to have to play around with the material editor for a bit and see if I can get them visible again.

8. I decided to move on with out the materials and figure that out later. This lesson was on animating the platform.

9. Blocking in the Mech's performance. I finally got the materials on my platform to show up. I had to move some files around and make sure it was pulling from my set folder. 

10. I save my file a reopened it, and not the materials aren't showing up again! I don't have time to mess with it right now. Anyway, this was from lesson 90, Finishing the blocking pass and starting on the polishing stage.

11. Finishing the Mech's polishing pass. Still no materials.. ugg.

12. Adding a shot cam.

13. Wrapping up the animation and previewing animations in real time.

Gotta get the right timing, even if you can't see all the beautiful materials. 

Materials Editor in 3Ds Max

Materials, always my favorite module! Yay!!!! But for real...

1. Adding multiple materials to a single object. Ugly army color style. 

2. Using Procedural maps and changing the properties of those maps. 

3. Unwrapping UV basics.

4. Exploring the unwrapping tools. Because you can't just tear into it like a present on Christmas morning.

Mapping the Hull

 Mapping the Shoulder Piece 

 Mapping the Arm Segment

At this point I also downloaded his file because he UV mapped all the parts.
5. Adding substance materials.

6. Outputting a UVW Template into photoshop

7. Adding textures and a bump map from files. This video was just a step by step process of him creating a UV texture in photoshop. He quickly showed the process and then said to download his file so that's what I did. 

Modeling in 3D Max

1. Set up the reference images

2. Start of the creation of the hull

3. Beginning the helmet shape

4. Smoothing the Splines

5. I finished the helmet and you can see it combined with the hull.

6. Modeling the Pelvis

7.7. Modeling the shoulder mount

8. Modeling the shoulder socket using extrude with polygon mode and creating a sphere by modifying a cube with Spherify.

9. Modeling the upper arm using the taper modifier.

10. Modeling the elbow joint.

11. Modeling the Arm: Cannon Housing. Used the inset tools and extrusions. 

12. Modeling the Arm: Cannon Interior using adjustments and bevel. 

13.Modeling the gun barrel

14. Mirroring the arm and creating groups. 

15. Modeling the upper leg process. I messed up some of my vertices, so had to play around with them for a bit to get them correct.

16. Finishing the upper leg. Learned about a trick with the swift loop tool and holding down shift that creates a shaped bulge in the shape. 

17. Modeling the middle leg link. Giving my lil buddy a knee cap and such.

18. Modeling the lower leg. The dud needs some Quads! 

19. Modeling the foot piece! On the way to having pretty princess feet. 

20. Modeling the back foot piece. Mr. Twinkle toes. 

21. Modeling the midsection and side swivel detail. 

22. Modeling the jet pack.

23. Modeling the Jet pack exhaust 

24. Modifying the hip to function when we add animation. 

25. Dude has a pretty cool hose now. 

26. Adding details such as the headlights and the pieces that hold the hose in. 

27. Smoothing out the hull and creating the smoothed notch on top. 

28. Smoothing the shoulder pieces using taper and the turbosmooth modifiers as well as Johnson and Johnson so that his shoulders are as smooth as a babies bottom. 

29. Smoothing out the arm pieces.

30. Smoothing out some of the accessory pieces. 

31. Smoothing out and sharpening the lower body, including the pelvis, legs, and hips. 

32. Adding details to the helmet and smoothing. 

33. Final model. I am now going to download his model so that all my little mistakes are fixed for texturing and animations.