Tutorials! Hooray!

The 3D graphics industry is filled with helpful tutorials and articles to help new users develop their skills. I would never have been able to start without the help of these, and thought it was about time to contribute something back.

I've been busy writing a few tutorials and would like to share them with the 3D community.

If you have a question please leave a comment and I'll do my best to help.

P.S. I'm really surprised at the level of interest these tutorials have attained! As of March 2010 there have been over 40,000 unique visits! Thanks to everyone who has read them, and thanks again for the kind comments! :)

Useful Keyboard Shortcuts In 3ds Max

Some very handy keyboard shortcuts for Autodesk 3ds Max.

The key to speed and efficiency is knowing a large amount of keyboard shortcuts and using them constantly. It's far quicker than using the mouse.

V-Ray Render Elements - Rendering and Compositing in Photoshop

Rendering out into elements is a fantastic way of having more control over your images and animations in post production. There are however few tutorials that show how to do this from start to finish in an efficient way.

This tutorial will guide you through the entire process from start to finish of rendering a scene into various passes, and how to composite it back together in Photoshop. This can also be applied to After Effects or any other compositing program if you are creating an animation.

Compositing the Velocity Pass from 3ds Max using After Effects

The velocity pass is an incredibly useful tool to add motion blur without adding insane render times. True 3d motion blur is a very time intensive task and requires a lot of processing power.

Learn how to use the velocity pass to produce renders with motion blur without the render time!

Rendering a Fly-Through Animation with V-Ray and Backburner using GI

V-Ray is an incredibly powerful rendering engine, but with it comes long render times - especially when rendering animations. This guide is written to help you minimise the waiting time by using network rendering in 3ds Max.

It can also be applied to non-network rendering by simply unticking the "net render" box in the common tab of render settings.

Changing Multiple Texture Paths in 3ds Max Quickly and Easily

Texture paths can easily be broken when working on a scene using a different computer, and having to manualy change all the paths is a really irritating task.

There is however a brilliant tool built right into 3ds max to change multiple texture paths at the same time, and get them all pointing to the correct folder. It's a very good idea to always check for any texture path related issues before sending the job off to render.

Creating a Basic GUI Rig

Rigging is an essential process that must be performed in order to efficiently animate a character or object. A GUI Rig is a simple user created interface within the 3D program to allow the animator complete and accurate control of the model. This tutorial will be an introduction to creating a GUI Rig in 3ds Max.