Alembic for 3dsMax

alembic_logo

3dsMax gets alembic support in 2015 extension 1. A bit late to the party but this is kinda awesome. Animated 3d models and simulations can now be passed from 3dsMax to Fusion or nuke or Maya or …

Chronosculpt

A time based sculpting package for fixing simulation or adjusting alembic files

https://www.lightwave3d.com/chronosculpt/

Exocortex Crate

exocortex crate . A is fully featured cross platform Alembic plugin and its Free …

It was  $399 for 3dsmax but the company has just change to a open source and support model. It has a ton of extra features over the autodesk version, and you can get it by simply entering your email for the download link.

If your up for it heres a link to the github

Other options

There are 2 other options for alembic.io .

How to quickly locate those pesky 3dsmax settings and folders

Max uses settings and folders tucked away in various windows locations. Sometimes it can be a little tricky to track things down, and even navigating the windows explorer can be tedious if the file is buried in a deep folder structure.

Typing this code into the maxScript Listener will open the Windows Explorer at the folder containing the 3dsMax.ini file.

shellLaunch ( GetDir #maxData )

(note: you can inspect backup and restore 3dsMax.ini settings with this MAXScript)
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Dumb max tip of the day : lost time slider

Max_time_slider

Arg I lost the time slider, it took me 15mins to find it again… deadline panic..

It seems to happen when opening the mini curve editor and switch to the dope sheet.

To recover the time slider go into the menus

  • Customize > SHOW UI
  • tick on track bar
  • Lastly click on the ‘mini curve editor’ button twice. ( far left on the time ruler )

 

There’s a few MaxScript commands that many help.

Open the MAXScript listener and type

timeslider.setvisible = true

if you lost the trackbar as well, then use

trackbar.visible = true.

Zaps Mental Ray Tips

ZAP

“If you use 3DMax or Maya and use the Arch + Design / SSS / Mia shaders then you have Zap to thank”

I found this interview with mental ray wizard Zap animationreporter.com/mental-zap/

Here are Zaps top tips for mental ray

  1. Number one is perhaps to either turn off “scanline” acceleration completely or use the rasterizer (which is often found in the UI under “scanline” but is really a different thing). The “plain old” scanline acceleration can be memory hungry with not so much benefit for a large scene.
  2. Second is to use the new BSP2 acceleration structure and to try to use instancing as much as possible (since BSP2 can benefit massively from that).
  3. Thirdly, using render-time demand-loaded geometry, like assemblies or the mental ray binary proxies.
  4. Finally, you can use MAP texture format which is a tiled data format that is streamed off disk, never having to keep the texture in memory.

most people are unaware about the existence of the fast rasterizer mode for motion blur, their DCC application perhaps defaulting to the brute-force ray traced motion blur.

Joep van der Steen has written a very nice book about Mental Ray in 3ds Max. There’s also tons of stuff available online, for example at Zaps blog mentalraytips.com or the “fan site” mymentalray.com

MetaSL

Now dead this uniquely useful bit of software is still availible on the nVidia forums

http://forum.nvidia-arc.com/showthread.php?12284-mental-mill-1-2-release-and-download

Mental Ray Books

I actually have Joep van der Steen’s book  Rendering with mental ray & 3ds Max it’s ok… but to be honest there aren’t many books out there to chose from, and this kinda makes it a ‘must read’

Personally I found  Roger Cusson’s book Realistic Architectural Visualization with 3ds Max and mental ray much more useful, and if you’re serious about mental Ray I’d recommend getting this as well.

However In the end both books are quite old (… pre iRay ) and I’ve yet to find ‘the book’ that really helps navigate the mental ray maze.

Max Tip: Check for scale transforms on your cameras

If a Camera or it’s parent node has a scale transform it will effect the way SSS looks in Mental Ray.

sss_and_camera_scale

It’s common practice to rescale the root node to place camera motion from tracking software like pfTrack.

BUT … This will give you inconsistent lighting result with materials that use ‘real world’ scale.

til I figured this this out … I Lost a few hours today scratching my head. ..