® Autodesk ® 3ds MAx 2015 ESSENTIALS Randi L. Derakhshani Dariush Derakhshani Acquisitions Editor: Mariann Barsolo Development Editor: Kim Beaudet Technical Editor: Jon McFarland Production Editor: Rebecca Anderson Copy Editor: Linda Recktenwald Editorial Manager: Pete Gaughan Vice President and Executive Group Publisher: Richard Swadley Associate Publisher: Chris Webb Book Designer: Happenstance Type-O-Rama Compositor: Cody Gates, Happenstance Type-O-Rama Proofreader: Jennifer Bennett, Word One New York Indexer: Ted Laux Project Coordinator, Cover: Lauren Buroker Cover Designer: Wiley Cover Image: Courtesy of Randi L. Derakhshani Copyright © 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana Published simultaneously in Canada ISBN: 978-1-118-86721-1 ISBN: 978-1-118-86753-2 (ebk.) ISBN: 978-1-118-86770-9 (ebk.) 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Sybex was founded in 1976. More than 30 years later, we’re still committed to producing consistently exceptional books. With each of our titles, we’re working hard to set a new standard for the industry. From the paper we print on to the authors we work with, our goal is to bring you the best books available. I hope you see all that relected in these pages. I’d be very interested to hear your comments and get your feedback on how we’re doing. Feel free to let me know what you think about this or any other Sybex book by sending me an email at [email protected]. If you think you’ve found a technical error in this book, please visit http://sybex.custhelp.com. Customer feedback is critical to our efforts at Sybex. Best regards, CHRIS WEBB Associate Publisher, Sybex To Max Henry Acknowledgments Education is an all-important goal in life and should always be approached with eagerness and earnestness. We would like to show appreciation to the teachers who inspired us; you can always remember the teachers who touched your life, and to them we say thanks. We would also like to thank all of our students, who taught us a lot during the course of our many combined academic years. Special thanks go to Mariann Barsolo, Kim Beaudet, Rebecca Anderson, and Pete Gaughan, our editors at Sybex who have been professional, courteous, and ever patient. Our appreciation also goes to technical editor Jon McFarland, who worked hard to make sure this book is of the utmost quality. We could not have done this revision without their help. In addition, thanks to Dariush’s mother and brother for their love and support, not to mention the life-saving babysitting services. Writing on the HP EliteBook Having a good computer system is important with this type of work, so a special thank you goes to HP for keeping us on the cutting edge of workstation hardware by providing us with a fully decked-out EliteBook 8760w, which was our primary computer in writing this book. What struck us about the laptop was that it was not only portable, making it easy for a writing team to collaborate; it was also powerful enough to run truly demanding tasks. It takes a special machine to run graphics- intensive applications, such as the Autodesk® 3ds Max® software, and we were thrilled to write this book on the HP EliteBook. Running an Intel i7 CPU with 16GB of RAM and an NVidia Quadro 5010M (with a whopping 6GB of memory) gave us the muscle we needed to run multiple appli- cations alongside 3ds Max splendidly. Dual 320GB hard drives gave us plenty of space for Windows 7 Professional and its applications, and still left lots of room for renders. We opted out of the RAID option to mirror the drives (you can also stripe them for performance), but that doesn’t mean we neglected our backup duties with this machine! The 8760w was easily integrated into a Gigabit network in the home ofice, and on fast Wi-Fi everywhere else, so we had constant access to the home network and the hundreds upon hundreds of iles necessary to write this book (and all their backups!). And since we are so very image-conscious (as in the screen!), we wondered if the images we created and captured for this book would be done justice on “just a lap- top screen.” The EliteBook has a stunning 17-inch, 30-bit IPS display panel that put those questions to rest very quickly! The HP EliteBook screen is no less than profes- sionally accurate and calibrated for optimum image clarity and correct color. Barely a handful of high-end mobile workstations could even come close to meeting the demands image professionals put on their gear. But this notebook HP DreamColor display is remarkable—there’s just no other way to put it—going as far as besting any of our desktop screens in color and vibrancy. With performance at such a high level, and in a nice portable form, we were easily convinced that we should perform all of our intensive work for this book on the EliteBook. Going back to a desk-bound tower quickly became a non-option. Thanks, HP! About the Authors Randi L. Derakhshani is an Autodesk-Certiied Instructor. She began work- ing with computer graphics in 1992 and was hired by her instructor to work at Sony Pictures Imageworks, where she developed her skills with the Autodesk® 3ds Max® program and Shake, among many other programs. A teacher since 1999, Randi enjoys sharing her wisdom with young talent and watching them develop. Currently, she teaches a wide range of classes, from Autodesk 3ds Max, Autodesk® Maya®, and ZBrush to compositing with The Foundry’s Nuke. Juggling her teaching activities with caring for a little boy makes Randi a pretty busy lady. Dariush Derakhshani is an Autodesk-Certiied Instructor and Certiied Evaluator, a visual-effects supervisor, a writer, and an educator in Los Angeles, California, as well as Randi’s husband. Dariush used Autodesk® AutoCAD® software in his architectural days and migrated to using 3D programs when his irm’s principal architects needed to visualize architectural designs in 3D on the computer. Dariush started using Alias PowerAnimator version 6 when he enrolled in USC Film School’s animation program, and he has been using Alias/Autodesk animation software for the past 14 years. He received an MFA in ilm, video, and computer animation from the USC Film School in 1997. He also holds a BA in architecture and theater from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. He worked at a New Jersey architectural irm before moving to Los Angeles for ilm school. He has worked on feature ilms, music videos, and countless commercials as a 3D animator, as a CG/VFX supervisor, and sometimes as a composi- tor. Dariush also serves as an editor, and is on the advisory board of HDRI 3D, a pro- fessional computer graphics magazine from DMG Publishing.