When light is projected through a medium like atmosphere, water, or a field of very fine particulate matter such as smoke, water vapor, or dust, it illuminates that medium. Maya does not do this in the same way as the real world. However Maya can simulate this phenomenon with Light Fog. While in the real world the effect is a result of the atmosphere and is independent of the lights, in Maya this fog is added to and adjusted for each light seperately. Not only can light fog be used to recreate natural phenomena, but it can be used to simulate plasma, vorticies, spells, and a number of particle-like effects, without the overhead of creating and managing particles.

On this DVD Scott walks you through the industrial design rendering techniques that he employs within Adobe Photoshop®. He quickly demonstrates draft view sketching before scanning one of the sketches that will be rendered to a photo-real level. During the rendering of a bicycle, Scott discusses basic lighting and reflection strategies to indicate a variety of materials and colors. Watch along, and by the end of the DVD, you will see all of steps taken in Adobe Photoshop® to transform the initial loose sketch into a very real looking object.

In this DVD, Ethan Summers shares his techniques for e-on’s Vue Infinite, an amazing landscape creation tool and general purpose rendering engine capable of handling scenes as large as 50 billion polygons. Starting at an introductory level, Ethan covers all the main windows and functions within Vue. He then discusses more advanced topics including strategies for creating ecosystems, methods for designing realistic terrains, and ultimately how to employ DEM maps through the function editor and in conjunction with Maya. Ethan also covers XStream, e-on’s new plug-in for achieving seamless lighting and render integration with Maya and Max.

In this first DVD in our MAXScript Fundamentals series Laszlo will take you through the first principles of MAXScript, such as Variables, Properties, For Loops, Flow Control, making your code into a MacroScript for easier access on your toolbars, Functions and how to make your own custom Functions from your own MAXScript code.
This DVD is aimed at an intermediate 3dsmax user who wants to harness the power of MAXScript and at those moving over to 3dmax from another platform that need to transfer their scripting skills. MAXScript will allow you to both to make your workflow easier via custom tools, and also to push beyond any limits placed on you by the systems GUI. Note: No previous programming or scripting experience is needed for this DVD.

Practical Examples concludes our Particle Flow Fundamentals series with an in depth look at nine diverse real world effects. We look at how to approach each example in the most efficient manner, how different flow topologies can be used to tackle different effect problems. How materials can be used to produce animated effects, and how animated meshes can be instanced into our flows to help in realising our compelling series of effects.

This DVD is aimed at a user with a basic knowledge of Particle Flow. It has been primarily designed as a continuation of our Particle Flow Fundamentals series, though it is also very much suitable for those of an intermediate level of Particle Flow use.