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3DS Max offers near limitless potential for 3D modelling and
animation.
My first encounter with 3D Studio was at university. I spent
most of my time using Microstation, a heavy weight modeller
that was more geared to engineers and industrial design on
account of its greater accuracy.
I later regretted this because I was to learn that 3D Studio
was a more intuitive and flexible application.
3D Studio's owners Autodesk sold 3DS off and it became known
as 3DS Max. You might think that the 3DS stands for 3D Studio,
in fact it doesn't stand for anything..gotta love those marketing
guys!
3DS Max was a groundbreaking 3D modelling and Animation programme,
leading to great popularity, although the really high end
work for movies and TV usually got done using Alias/ Maya,
a competing application that remains the favourite solution
for the film industry.
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Max is hugely powerful and quite complex. Learning everything
there is to know about this programme would take many
years of dedicated use. While it allows a lot to be
done visually, like trueSpace. However, there are so
many options and settings for you to tweek and change
that you get a feeling that there is nothing you can't
do.
While it would be unfair to say that using 3DS Max isn't
a lot of fun, it is a lot of hard work. The dazzling
number of options, that allow your imagination limitless
scope also mean a lot of twiddling needs to be done,
even for fairly simple things. The rewards are always
worth the effort though.
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Is 3DS Max a good programme to learn the basics of 3D Graphics
on. Probably not, you gotta learn to crawl before you start
flying space shuttles. Max has a steep learning curve but
you can learn enough basics in a day to allow you to start
working productively.
You can learn more about 3DS Max at the site
of its creators, Discreet
Inc.
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