Max 2009 and 3ds Max Design 2009

Congratulations we have twins. This morning, Autodesk announces the birth of two versions 3ds Max 2009 and 3ds Max Design 2009 . These twin applications will share the same binary (DNA), either then small differences , they would be identical. The main defense would be differences into interface and precepts that will be geared towards the target industry (Design Visualizations will be the design version and Gaming and Media & Entertainment would be the regular Max). Except for a couple of tools, the tool sets are going to be identical. The big difference would be that Max 2009 would have the SDK included for users that need to write their own plug-ins, and Max Design will have a new Lighting analysis tool which will have values in the graphic representation (an answer to the many requests of some of our local users).
There are many new tools and improvements throughout the application from new lighting tools, exciting new material libraries and material tools animation and Biped tools ,many improvements to Mental Ray (including Proxy Object), a much tighter connection to Revit 2009, and many more (I will share them all with you as soon as it is legally possible).
These news will be accompanied with more news of improvements in other M&E applications especially for subscription users. All of which you can find here in the next few weeks, as they are released for publication

Exposing the Mental Ray Production Shaders in Max 2008

As promised, here is the way to expose the production shaders that exist in the max.mi.
CAUTION this is for you advanced users out there. Please save a copy of the max .mi before you change it scenes at the moment. There is no support for this part of Max

1. find the file called>> production_max.mi
2. open in notepad
3. do a search and replace
find "hidden" replace with # "hidden"
EXCEPT FOR THE FIRST ENTRY!!!!!!
The result is that the MI Production Shadersare exposed to Mental Ray.

These include:
mr Raytype Switcher
mr Raytype Switcher (advanced)
mr Raytype Switcher (environment)
mr Card Opacity
mr Motion Blur
mr Motion Vector Export
mr Matte/Shadow/Reflection (map)
mr Camera Map
mr Mirror Ball
mr Gray Ballmr Gamma & Gain
mr Matte/Shadow/Reflection (material)
mr Gamma
mr Gain

Combustion 2008

After a long anticipation we finally have a new version of Combustion to bring us into the age of HD. The new improvements in Combustion 2008 concentrate in two area's a new Color Wrap and improvements to the Schematics:

• Interactive adjustment of gamma, gain, offset, hue, saturation, and contrast
• Intuitive hue shift and tint color wheel for fast, accurate color balancing.
• Interactive Histogram and curves editing modes
• Independent controls for color correcting the image’s shadow, midtone, and highlight regions
• “Match” feature for fast scene-to-scene color correction
• “Selective” feature for sampling up to three color regions for isolated correction.
  
  These new improvements should make a more fluid workflow for SD and HD alike especially since now we can work in 8 , 10 , 16 , 32 and float bit depth

Autodesk Maya 2008 Extension 1:

Maya Muscle
Maya 2008 Extension 1 offers the integrated Maya Muscle toolset exclusively to Autodesk Subscription customers with Gold Support – both those with Maya Complete and Maya Unlimited licenses.

Muscles and Skin
Deformations
Use the powerful, full-featured Maya Muscle deformer on skin, muscles or as a standalone deformer in conjunction with other Maya tools. The built-in Volume Preservation solution gives you realistic results as a muscle mass is contracted and lengthened – helping you avoid the typical collapsing and pinching problems that frequently plague jointsthat bend. Custom squash and stretch can be used to override volume preservation.

Custom Weight Painting
Maya Muscle delivers custom weight painting with customizable, color-coded weight display. There are many different kinds of weight maps including:
Slide/Sticky Weights – These let skin slide and bind over the deforming muscles and articulating bones (e.g. elbows) accurately. Blending between sliding and sticky weights, enables skin to transition correctly over different areas of the character.
Relax/Wrinkle/Flex Weights – These let wrinkles, folds and creases appear and disappear at the right time.

Muscle on Muscle/Skin
The flexible Maya Muscle toolset gives you the freedom to create a wide range of rigs: from those which incorporate simple musculature to those with more complex, real-world musculature where muscle is attached not only to bone, but also to other muscles and/or skin.

Muscle Sculpting
Rather than rely on the shape that results from default deformations, you have the option to sculpt exactly the results you want for your muscle with the Custom Muscle Shaping feature.

Jiggle Functionality
Secondary motion, such as jiggle, can be added automatically through the automated Jiggle functionality. Muscles and skin can be created with as many jiggle and control points as desired, for the ultimate in control.

Workflow

Automatic Rigs and Presets
Begin using muscles instantly thanks to Maya Muscle’s automated rigging utilities and presets -- available for the most common muscle setups. Technical directors may find they can reduce the total number of specialty rigs a character requires as each Maya Muscle rig caters to a wider range of special character performances.

Realtime Jiggle Tweaking
Because jiggle animation is frame-based you can modify it on a per frame basis (often in realtime) for efficient fine-tuning and quick repetition of the deformation.
Deformation Level of Detail
You can balance performance versus accuracy through the ability to selectively enable deformer details.

Flexible Rigging
Because each Maya Muscle rig caters to a wider range of special character performances, technical directors may find they can reduce the total number of specialty rigs a character requires. The toolset supports a wide variety of rigging options including spline-based rigs.

Caching
The point-cache feature gives you faster feedback after the main deformation and animation has been processed (or baked). This is useful, for example, during the lighting stage, where you need faster timeline scrubbing. Because caching is an independent feature of the deformer, it can be applied on top of other Maya deformers to write out and read cache data for the object.

Batch Processing
Save time through the ability to batch process (offline) Maya Muscle – and then cache the processed data.

Populating your scene quickly and efficiently with lightweight vegetation using Mental Ray cutout and particle flow.

Set up
Create a terrain using a plane with painted deformation or import one
In the Front View create a single polygon plane for each variety of vegetation.
Create a camera in the scene

Creating your material
In your graphic program, create a texture map with an alpha channel using the previous tutorial or if you are a little more comfortable. Save it as a Targa or any other format that supports an alpha channel.
Make sure your active renderer is Mental Ray.
Open the material editor
Selects a new arch+ design material (don't forget to name it)
Under Templates select Matte Finish
In the Main Material Parameters, roll out under diffuse click on the button next to color, double click on the map and navigate to your image.
Under the Special-Purpose Maps rollout delay on the button next to Cutout and navigate to your alpha image or the same image (if you're using a Targa) .
In the Bitmap Parameters roll out, change the RGB Channel Output to Alpha As Gray
Click on the Go to Parent Arrow and assign the material to one of the plans
Repeat that for each variety






Setting up the particle system.
Group all the plans representing the different plants and name the group
In the fly out under the Create Geometry tab choose Particle Systems
Click the PF Source button.
In the top view drug an icon anywhere in the scene.
Type 6 to activate the particle view
Here you can see the particle system we have just created
Delete the Speed, Rotation, Position Icon and Shape nodes
From the tray below drag-and-drop into event 1 a Shape Facing, Shape Instance and Position Object nodes

Click on the Birth node and set the Emit Start to -1 and the Emit Stop to 0 (since we want all the plants to be present since frame 1) and set the amount to the number of plants you would
like in the scene.

Click on Display and change the Type to geometry

Click on Position Object under Emitter Objects Click on By List and select the object/s you want the vegetation to be on (you can see tics appearing on your terrain at this moment).
Under Location, select the distribution you desire for this tutorial. I choose vertices, however it is important to know that you can paint a selection on Emitter object and use that selection with the selected vertices option for an instance.

Click on Shape Facing under Look at Camera/Object click on the button and select the camera in the scene either from the list or by clicking on it in the viewport (this is the heart of this exercise, this makes sure that a two-dimensional image or a "billboard " will always faced the camera as we animate it through the scene)

Click on Shape Instance Under Particle Geometry Object click on the button and select your
group. Under Separate Particles for check group members adjust your scale and variation to figure scene and add realism. You can also change the seed until you get your preferred variation

Add your own lighting and Sky Dome or use Mental Ray son and sky, and you are ready to render.

Note: this type of workflow is recommended for medium and wide shots and for background objects and can be used for other types of objects, such as crowds, for an instance.

New releases and upcoming events

As many of you know, August is a big month for our industry with both SIGGRAPH and Vis Musters happening back-to-back. Most of the new innovations for the next year are being revealed, and new trends are being uncovered. Of course, Autodesk has taking a big part of the limelight by announcing the release of new versions of Motion Builder, Max and Maya and the intriguing acquisition of Mud Box. Both Max and Maya are joining the ranks of the rest of the Autodesk product line and will be referred to by the product year. Both Max 2008 and Maya 2008 are opening this new tradition with exciting new and improved features from improved large scene handling and adoptive degradation to a new real light shader that affects the environment or a flexible working pivot that improves subobject modeling significantly. You can see demos of these and other new features online using the links under the “Useful Links " column. Or you can register and join us for the launch tour coming to Miami on October 2 (link at the same spot). In the meanwhile don't forget to log on and join the design visualization webcast serious (the next one is on Wednesday, September 26 ) or watch a recording of previous ones.

Creating the material with transparencies (alpha channel).

In Photoshop

1. Open the image in Photoshop
2. Using cropping and/or the marquee tool create an appropriately sized file (as little as possible while including the desired object).
3. Save and name your file as a .tif .targa or .jpg.
4. Right-click on the background layer in the layer tab to create a layer out of background
5. Using the magic wand, Lasso tools, masking or extract create the selection isolating the object from the background.
6. Using the bucket feel the object area with white (this will be the opaque area)
7. Press Shift+ Control + I (inverse selection) .
8. Feel the background area with the black (this will be the transparent area).
9. Save this file As using the same name adding the word alpha

In Max

1. Open the material editor by pressing M or clicking on the material editor icon.
2. Select an empty material slot.
3. Click on the material type button and select "Standard" from the list and click OK
4. Expand the Maps rollout
5. Click on the Diffuse Color map button
6. From the Material/Map Browser select "Bitmap" and press OK.
7. Navigate to your image, and press Open
8. In the bitmap's rollout uncheck “Use Real-world Scale”.
9. Click on the Go Two-Parent button
10. Click on the Opacity map button and assign your alpha image repeating steps 6 to 9
11. Name and save your material