As an architectural illustrator you will quite often need to create the terrain of a site following the contour lines provided by the architect. In some cases modeling the terrain can take up as much time as the building that sits on it (it happened to me on several occasions).
Fortunately, now there is a really easy way to do it using a free plugin called Populate Terrain.
In this tutorial we will go through the process of unwrapping organic models using the new “peel” function in 3ds max 2012.
1) Creating the main seams.
Download the model and open it in 3ds max 2012.
As you can see the symmetry modifier is deactivated; we should leave it like this for now.
Add an Unwrap UVW modifier just below the symmetry modifier. Your modifier stack should look like in the screen shot bellow.
Just recently I have found out the hard way that using the scale tool that I have, so ignorantly, been using for ages is simply wrong.
I don’t know why I haven’t realized it before.
I was texturing a model of a building (as described in the real world scale uvw tutorial) and something didn’t work as expected. I had a 25×25 cm textures that simply looked huge when applied to the model. Continue reading
Today I have received an email from an autodesk product manager to let me know about an interesting project that they have been working on – Butterfly Project.
So what does it actually do?
The main idea is that you can edit a dwg file without any license or software installed. All you need is a web-browser and the latest flash player from adobe.
This makes it accessible from anywhere and by anyone you share it with.
And speaking of sharing, you can actually co-edit a drawing with a colleague or a client in real time. Everything is done directly online so the files are not actually transferred from one user to another. This means that you can conduct online meetings with unlimited participants, make revision mark-ups, etc.
There is also a widget that let’s you explore all the changes done in a revision meeting so you won’t miss anything.
I see this application particularly useful for cad drafting studios and architecture offices, especially for internal meetings.
However, I don’t see it being used for architectural visualization at the moment… but I am certain the way technology evolves, in the future we will see something similar for 3D models.
In the meantime, you can watch the video bellow to see a more in depth presentation or check out the official site for project butterfly.
