3D Max Stuff

[Covenant]

I was gonna call it 3D Max Shit but I didn't want to make anyone overly excited about seeing some modelling in here. Nobody really commented about my kickass spaceman head, so no new stuff for you! For a bit.

I just want to know some basics about using Max. I'm getting a new job, looks like steady (non-freelance) work at a studio and they use a lot of Max. They do have Maya, which I prefer, but I want to be able to work on someone else's machine if they need me to do something.

Anyway, I went trolling for basic tutorials and it looks all pretty similar. The animation is a bit more cumbersome, but I already figured that. Maya's better for it anyway, so I can just pull the models from Max and put it into Maya for the animating. If they have mental ray I should be able to get some decent renders too--Maya isn't world renowed for it's awesome in-package rendering abilities.

Is there anything about Max I should read in specific? They want to give me a software test during my orientation coming up and I'd enjoy looking like a non-dumbass should they ask me something I haven't got experience with using in Max.

Also, is there any way for me to export a scenefile with animation and import it into max? I'd love to do my animation in Maya but texture and render in Max with it's delicious raytracing. Maya's got it too, but there's a ton of good rendering plugins for Max that would just make my life easier if I could.

Anyway, and help appreciated. I can indeed use the program, just not extremely fast, and I usually shortcut out of the hard stuff by dropping into maya, doing it there, then exporting it to max... seems kinda silly to use max at all.

[salm]

I was gonna call it 3D Max Shit but I didn't want to make anyone overly excited about seeing some modelling in here. Nobody really commented about my kickass spaceman head, so no new stuff for you! For a bit.
I just want to know some basics about using Max. I'm getting a new job, looks like steady (non-freelance) work at a studio and they use a lot of Max. They do have Maya, which I prefer, but I want to be able to work on someone else's machine if they need me to do something.


Anyway, I went trolling for basic tutorials and it looks all pretty similar. The animation is a bit more cumbersome, but I already figured that. Maya's better for it anyway, so I can just pull the models from Max and put it into Maya for the animating. If they have mental ray I should be able to get some decent renders too--Maya isn't world renowed for it's awesome in-package rendering abilities.

Is there anything about Max I should read in specific? They want to give me a software test during my orientation coming up and I'd enjoy looking like a non-dumbass should they ask me something I haven't got experience with using in Max.

Also, is there any way for me to export a scenefile with animation and import it into max? I'd love to do my animation in Maya but texture and render in Max with it's delicious raytracing. Maya's got it too, but there's a ton of good rendering plugins for Max that would just make my life easier if I could.

Anyway, and help appreciated. I can indeed use the program, just not extremely fast, and I usually shortcut out of the hard stuff by dropping into maya, doing it there, then exporting it to max... seems kinda silly to use max at all.

Hey, i commented on your spaceman.
Congrats on your new job.

They will have Mental Ray because Max ships with Mental Ray.


Specifics about Max? Hmm... like what? What version are you using?

For exporting non animated objects to maya i suggest the obj format since it doesn´t triangulate making it far superior to 3ds. However .obj doesn´t export animations. So to export it back to max you can use either 3ds. for keyframe animation of the .fbx for bone animations.
Note that very good tutorials come with max under F1 -> Tutorials
BTW, for Unwrapping organic stuff is suggest using Blender. It´s got the best Pelt Mapping algorythm at the moment and you can simply export your geometry to obj, import into Blender unwrap and export to obj again and reimport to Max. I usually do that and it saves heaps of time.