In your opinion was it easier to just use the manual and mess around with the program to learn it or did you learn better via tuts?
just wondering as i just got 3d max 6.
i want to just do textures in max and render them in there thats what i am basically gunna use it for unless i decide to make some objects, as i spend a lot of time on the computer anyways.
o and if u have any links to any good tuts that would be nice.
----later. mx333
Experimenting and if your suck tuts and manual. I have a basic tut on rendering textures in the 'Track Creators' forum.
hey i was wondering if someone could send me the help files that 3dmax6 comes with b/c for some reason my 3dmax doesnt have them????
You can d/l them from www.discreet.com
alright thanks cR....o yea and i cant remember the site but i think it was a tut on how to make a stadium can someone point me in that direction cuz i cant remember it..
extreme has a good flash tutorial on his site for creating a stadium at www.mcm2extreme.com (http://www.mcm2extreme.com)
Play around with it. The basic tuts for making things for mcm are good to start with also. VMX_BMXRules has a bunch of ones that helped me.
hey guys another quick question i hope this isnt complicated??!! i have basically learned the user interface and kinda have a small understanding of how this program works....but i wanted to know how i import my track into 3dx max and render just the 257x257 grayscale map because i jsut cant figure it out.
o yea and where can i find bmxrules tuts?
edit---- nvm i found it at vmx i will have a quick look then i may have to come back and ask some more Q's and get some A's lol
real easy. straight from the program opening up on the CREATE TAB (first tab on right side toolbar) you should see a box called "Plane" under the object type rollout. Click it. The right side toolbar extends with a few options. Expand the "Keyboard Entry" section and put in 257 on width and 257 on height. Then move down to "Length segs" and "Width segs" and change both to 257. I don't really know what it does but some say to click "Generate Mapping Coords" check box. I think it's more for modelling and UVW mapping, so it's up to you. Now click the "Create" button up under the "Keyboard Entry" section. A new plane will appear in the viewports. Next, click on the next tab over on the right-side toolbar which is the MODIFIER TAB. If you are using Max 3, click the "more..." button and a new window will pop up. If it's 5 or higher then you can use the dropdown menu. Anyway, choose "Displace" which is under the OBJECT-SPACE MODIFIERS category. Now below on the right side toolbar should have changed. Where it says "image" click the button that says "none" under BITMAP and locate your dispmap.tga. Load it. Strength you are going to want to use the MaxCalculator which you can find here I believe. Enter your Armadillo grid settings as well as light settings if you are happy with where the sun is in mcm2 so far. There's alot of things you can change with lighting in max so that's a whole other area. Anyway, move down to 3dsmax grid settings and change to 257. Click calculate and you should have your strength setting now. Apply it in Max. Pretty self explanatory. Basically you should see your heightmap now. Right click in top view where it says the actual text "TOP" and change to "smooth + highlights". Usually the stock color of your disp in max is not grayscale. You can change this with the material editor or just leave it, and change it in your paint program. Right now your track scene has no lights which alot of people use but I find to be not sufficient. If you want to add lighting in Max go back to the CREATE TAB and choose the third icon in that looks like a light. Target Spot is the best type to start out with. Select it then click drag in either your left or front viewport and it will create a new light. Like I said lighting is a whole other ballgame though so I'm not going to get into that. For a render, go back to the top viewport now go to menu Rendering > Render. Under output size make it 2000 x 2000. Click render. Once it renders click the top left save file icon in the render window to save it. You can either save as JPEG or TGA and make sure its max quality. for tga 24bit is fine and uncheck compress. Then you're gonna have to take the file into your paint program, select the shadow map inside of the black area and crop the image. Then resize to 960 x 960. Then you can lay it over your texmap. Also you're gonna want to take the color away by either dropping saturation or converting to grayscale.
Hey 51, how much more can you go on about the lighting?
What I mean is, I just put a target spot there, and move it around until I think I have the best shadows to define the track. Basically what looks good.
Do you do much more than basic sun lighting?
you can have more then one light, like i use 10 - 30 lights on a track
For normal sunlight I useually have a 'target spot' wich casts shadows and a 'omni' that doesn't cast shadows on the opposit direction. And then you could place more lights for if you have lightpoles etc. on the track.
Hey thanks 51 that helps big *time
yeah theres alot of lighting options. just try messing with everything thats the deal. ive never used 10-20 lights before but i can see why you would want to in certain situations. i used 4 lights on my last track and set up the parameters pretty different from stock. im starting to like omnis alot as well but there's certain things omnis are good for and certain things they aren't. there's alot of factors when it comes to simulating real life lighting. the best thing i could tell you to do is to read some max lighting tutorials online. they are really in depth and may not need everything they are doing but it gives you ideas of what could be done.
I was thinking of doing a track lit by stadium lights.
What tracks did you guys use multiple lights? I remember a diablo track done that way.
Dominion.
IV got the original max file that rainbow used to render the stock tracks in mcm2 with all the lighting setup
If anyone wants it that's all u will have to do is add your tga files let me know
Extreme
sure thing dude. :D
i want it also man ;D host it up here or summa?
yeah extreme upload them to ur site
Them? only the one i have lol ;)
http://www.mcm2extreme.com/files/pafiledb.php?action=file&id=279
Extreme
lol u knew what i ment, haha thanks alot for this. lol