Production Log

I have covered a lot in this year with creating our game trailer, so I will show you some of the steps I went through in my work.

Inserting a Camera

Using 3d max select the camera icon on the right hand tool bar. Choose the type of camera you wish to add at create it.

The camera can be moved and rotated wherever you wish using these icons.

There are two types of cameras within 3D studio max. A target camera and free camera. The difference between the two is that the target camera is given an area that can be changed to follow any movements or actions within the scene.

A free camera does not therefore is often just used to shoot a still scene.

Inserting Lights

There are a few different types of lights to use in 3d max. First I will talk about the Omni light.

This light provides surrounding light and good shadows for a suitable project. In this case it was in a city. Once the light was selected I created the light at positioned it high in the centre of the city. The brightness can be changed in the options on the right.

Next is a skylight, this is probably the most useful whenever creating an outdoor scene as it can give a natural daylight illusion.

Like the Omni light I will put this in the air but instead it will be a lot higher so that it looks like the light is coming from the sun.

Texturing

This is a very simple procedure. You texture an object because you want it to have the appearance of a real object. For example you can have buildings created in 3d max but without textures to make them actually look like buildings it doesn’t look too good.

Once the editor is up you can begin to create your desired texture. You can also add an image onto the sphere for a texture if you have one. Once your texture if finished you can drag and drop the texture onto your object.

If you wish to further edit your object like for instance you want different textures on opposite sides of the object this can be done by right clicking and clicking convert to editable poly. This will allow you to do more with the object that the whole thing at once.

Rendering

This is at the last stage of your production, where you create your animation. All of the lighting and shading is finally processed and put in a viewport for you to see.
In my animation I selected the camera view port.

When you render an animation you have to change some settings and decide where you want your video to save to. I will show you how to do this.

First click range and type in the amount of frames you want to animate. Usually you look for your animation to start and finish on the last frames of the render.

Next change the output size depending on how big the file size or how detailed you wish for it to be.

Then make sure effects and atmospherics is ticked because this will animate any special effects you have added to your scene.

Now scroll down to the render output and tick the save file box, click files and then show where you wish for the animation to be saved.

Once this is done click render and wait for your clip to be animated.

I will show a slide show that will help you to understand what I have done in 3d max.

Other things I have covered are

Importing/exporting

Viewports

Saving/Opening Files

Animating