3ds max Lighting Controlling spotlight parameters

3ds max Lighting Controlling spotlight parameters And we can demonstrate that if we rotate the light. Grab the rotate tool and tilt it down, and then reframe our shot so that we can see some shadows. And enclose on those shadows, and take a look in the active shade window. So that is with a disc radius of something like 40 centimeters. Let's set that radius down to one centimeter and now we've got hard shadows. Alright. Put that up to , let's say, 20 centimeters. Now, we can talk about the hotspot and falloff values. I'll dolly back, reframe the shot, and with that light selected go back into it's modified panel. And we have some special parameters for the spotlight distribution. Scrolling back up to near the top of the modified panel. We've got distribution spotlight rollout. And here we have hotspot and falloff. And these are angular values that determine the softness of the light

3ds max Hierarchies Avoiding and correcting scale issues

Non-uniform scale causes rotation and deformation issues

3ds max Hierarchies Avoiding and correcting scale issues I'll scale up in the Z axis while watching the results here in the Transform Type In area so that I get a Z scaling of exactly 200%. Click and drag that up and when I get to 200 I'll stop and now that's been scaled up. We can investigate by going into the Transform Type In dialogue, right click on the Scale tool, and it says that I've got a value of 200.151. So I'll just round that off. Type that in and now we have a situation in which we have an object with non-uniform scaling. Now again, this is not a good situation. We're going to try to avoid this, but I first need to illustrate why we need to avoid it. So I'll close Transform Type In dialogue and create some links. Let's just link the head. Grab the Select and Link tool and link it to the chest. Then let's try rotating it. Grab the Rotate tool and rotate that head and instantly we see that there is a problem. The head is changing shape as it rotates. 

In 3DS Max, is the scaling models bad and why? I'll undo that. I've actually got angle snaps turned on, so I'll turn that off and we can see the skewing happen interactively now. That's happening because of the order of operations for transforms of position, rotation, and scale. Similarly to how we saw that the order of rotation axes has an influence on the result, here we're seeing an artifact resulting from the internal order of operations of transforms in which objects are positioned then rotated and then scaled all relative to their parent. So that's the key to what's happening here. The parent object, which is the torso or chest, is scaled up by a factor of two. It's got a Z scale of 200 and what's happening is that is being inherited by the head object and it's happening after the rotations because the order of operations for transforms is, again, position, rotation, and scale. Okay, so that's why this is all happening. And this is happening because the scale is being performed after the rotation. Remember that the transform order is position, rotation, and scale. Alright, well we don't want to see this so let's undo. I'll right click on the Undo button, go into the History, and go back before we did the link. So select Link and choose Undo

3ds max Hierarchies Locking transforms

3ds max Hierarchies Locking transforms Adjusting Object Transforms | 3ds Max 2019 I can't move it. I'll select things but no matter which direction I drag in, I can't move it. Let's switch over to local coordinates for just a moment, with the move tool active and notice that the transform gizmo completely disappeared. If I select the pelvis, I get a transform gizmo, I see my move tripod but if I select any one of these other objects in local coordinate space, we'll see that 3DS Max hides the axis that are locked. I go over here and unlock one of these like Z, now it reappears and I can actually move in that direction. I'll undo that and re-enable the move lock so that's very helpful if you're in local coordinates. Let's talk about rotations so some of these objects are going to only rotate in one axis, for example, an elbow joint only has one degree of freedom. Let's check on that, I'll go over to the rotate tool and carrying over from the last exercise,

3ds max Hierarchies Linking objects

3ds max Hierarchies Linking objects You're offsetting the true rotations according to a point of reference which just happens to be the pivot point of the object. But that's not nescessarily the orientation of the animation channels that drive the rotation. So without getting to technical, if we just switch over to one of these other modes, we'll see a visual demonstration of what the issue is. Let's say I go over world coordinates and then I rotate around one axis. And I can see okay, well one axis is changing, that's fine. I'll rotate around another axis, and all of a sudden, all of the channels are changing. I think I'm only rotating around this red x-axis, but in fact in reality, under the hood, all of the rotation channels are being animated. And this is terrible because in this situation you won't be able to control animation and objects will spin wildly out of control and you won't know why. And it's because you're not actually animating what you think you're animating. And this will happen whether you're in world mode or local mode or any mode other than Gimbal.

 So I'll undo those rotations with Control + z, go back to where I was. Switch over to Gimbal coordinate system. And now when I rotate around one axis, that's the only axis that actually updates in the transform type in dialog. So this is very important for animation. All right, I'll undo those rotations. So you'll notice that, although only one axis is updating here the orientation of the rotation axes themselves is changing when we use Gimbal coordinates. So if I rotate around the y-axis, which is the green circle, notice that the red x-axis is following. And this is an indicator that there is indeed an internal hierarchy to the rotation axes, and some of those axes follow others in an order of operations. It's not a chronological order, it all happens simultaneously, it's just an order of calculations.

3ds max Hierarchies Prioritizing rotation axis

3ds max Hierarchies Prioritizing rotation axis So without getting to technical, if we just switch over to one of these other modes, we'll see a visual demonstration of what the issue is. Let's say I go over world coordinates and then I rotate around one axis. And I can see okay, well one axis is changing, that's fine. I'll rotate around another axis, and all of a sudden, all of the channels are changing. I think I'm only rotating around this red x-axis, but in fact in reality, under the hood, all of the rotation channels are being animated. And this is terrible because in this situation you won't be able to control animation and objects will spin wildly out of control and you won't know why. And it's because you're not actually animating what you think you're animating. And this will happen whether you're in world mode or local mode or any mode other than Gimbal. So I'll undo those rotations with Control + z, go back to where I was. Switch over to Gimbal coordinate system. And now when I rotate around one axis, that's the only axis that actually updates in the transform type in dialog. So this is very important for animation. All right, I'll undo those rotations. So you'll notice that, although only one axis is updating here the orientation of the rotation axes themselves is changing when we use Gimbal coordinates. So if I rotate around the y-axis, which is the green circle,

3ds max Hierarchies Transforming pivot points

Viewing and Selecting Hierarchies | 3ds Max 2020

3ds max Hierarchies Transforming pivot points  I'll only move it in the world's X and Z axes. Get in a little bit closer, (clicking) and with the Move tool position the cursor right on that pivot point until you see a small yellow circle, and if you're having trouble seeing it you can magnify the gizmo with the plus key. So, plus and minus on your keyboard. Okay, we want to hover the mouse over that yellow circle and then click and drag, and release on the point in the center of the sphere. So, we've now established that position in two dimensions, and we'll go back over to the top view. (clicking) Maybe get in a little bit closer. Once again click on that yellow circle and then drag to the point in the center of the sphere. And now I have snapped in 2.5D and I've placed the pivot point right in the center of the sphere. All right, let's test our work. I'll disable Affect Pivot Only, go back to the Rotate tool, and I'll rotate it in local coordinates for testing purposes, and we can turn off Snaps. So, I'll go over to the perspective view and rotate, and we can see that it is in fact rotating around the correct position. I'll Control + Z to undo that. 

Hierarchies | 3ds Max 2019 | Autodesk Knowledge Network

Viewing and Selecting Hierarchies | 3ds Max 2020 So, rotations are occurring around the correct position. However, the orientation of those rotations is not desirable. What we want is the rotation axes to be aligned with the geometry itself. We can see that most clearly in the front view port here. I want to be able to rotate so that I can swivel that arm forward relative to its own coordinate space, and I can't do that right now because the pivot point is aligned with the world. And I can test that by switching the coordinate system back and forth between World and Local, and I see no change there. So, this one's an easy fix. We'll just go back into Affect Pivot Only and use the Rotate tool in local space, and I'll turn on Angle Snaps and just go over to the front view and rotate that 10 degrees to the right. Positive 10 degrees around the Y axis, and now that pivot point is aligned. And I can turn off Affect Pivot Only, and once again in local coordinates I can test it. Right-click on the perspective view and then rotate around the X axis, and it's swiveling in the direction that I want. And if I switch back and forth between Local and World we can see that in fact there is a difference there. All right, I need to repeat that process for the other shoulder. So, I'll click the Isolate Selection button to unisolate that shoulder right object, and then select the shoulder left object and re-enable Isolate Selection, and just repeat those steps. Go to the Move tool, Affect Pivot Only, enable 2.5D snaps, (clicking) and then move that pivot in the front view. I can't see it in the top view, so I can right-click over there and press the Z key and position that, snap it to that center vertex.

Viewing and Selecting Hierarchies : Setting Up a Hierarchy

Viewing and Selecting Hierarchies : Setting Up a Hierarchy Click on that and choose display selected, display selected with edged faces. And now the selected object will have edged faces making it a little bit easier for us to identify what's selected and what's not when we do a transform such as rotate. So we'll go to the rotate tool and rotate in an axis and we can see that the other objects are following. I've got angle snaps turned on here so I can turn that off and press Control Z to undo that rotation. So there is a linkage or hierarchy between the objects in this scene and the shoulder object is a parent of this elbow object. The elbow is in turn the parent of the wrist. There are two basic rules about hierarchies, one is that children inherit their transforms from their parents and the other is that a child can have only one parent. First let's talk about transform inheritance, we just saw that with rotations but of course position and scale are also transforms. If I choose the move tool and select an object its children will follow that position. I'll undo that Control Z and likewise with scale, scale is inherited by children,