Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2010 tutorial.pdf

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2010 tutorial

Autodesk 3ds Max Design is used primarily for rendering your drawings created in

AutoCAD or AutoCAD Architecture. Even though AutoCAD Architecture has very good

rendering tools, it is not as robust as Autodesk 3ds Max Design. You can do the

following in Autodesk 3ds Max Design:

 Apply materials



Create a sun for daylighting and set the building location and date correct

shadow casting.



Create artificial lights which will accurately simulate the lights you have selected

for your building



Set up cameras by which the building can be viewed



Create animations for walk-throughs or fly-throughs by moving the cameras, or

animate objects in the scene.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design uses the "mental ray" rendering engine which can generate

reflections, refractions and shadows by ray tracing. Ray tracing traces the path of light

rays sampled from the light source. Reflections and refractions generated this way are

physically accurate.

So let's do the following exercise to get you into the program quickly.

1. Open Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2010 by clicking on the icon on the desktop:

Triton College ARC 260, fall 2009

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2010 Tutorial

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Immediately save the drawing to your H: drive, even though you have nothing drawn

yet. Pull down the application menu (the big M ) and select "Save." Browse for your H:

drive, make a folder called 3ds Max, and give the drawing a name. You file will have a

filename extension of .max .

Force yourself to get in the habit of saving your drawing every 10 minutes.

Triton College ARC 260, fall 2009

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2010 Tutorial

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After the program opens, your screen will look something like this:

Triton College ARC 260, fall 2009

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2010 Tutorial

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If you want to see four viewports showing the plan, front elevation, left elevation and

perspective view all on the screen at once, hit <Alt>W on the keyboard.

Triton College ARC 260, fall 2009

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2010 Tutorial

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If you want to go back to the perspective view only, hit <Alt>W again