Ben is one half (literally) of the editor duo here at Cgtuts+. Ben has over eight years of experience in the computer graphics field and although he's primarily a hard surface modeler, he's also experienced in the fields of uvmapping, texturing, lighting and rendering. He has authored many tutorials and training materials focused on 3d Studio Max and hard surface modeling. You can check out Ben's website at bentateonline.com to see more of his work.
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In this quick tip we’ll look at an often overlooked feature of 3D Studio Max. Selection sets are a great way to keep large scenes in order by allowing you to save specific object selections, or sub-object selections. Not only will this keep you sane when working on massive scenes with hundreds or thousands of objects, but save you an enormous amount of time by essentially giving you the ability to return to a previously saved selection any time with a single click.
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It’s been awhile, but we’re back with another quiz and giving you a chance to once again test your knowledge. This time the quiz features eleven basic questions aimed at users who are new to CG. So if you’re a more experienced cg artist you may find the questions a little easy, but what the hell take it anyway! Will you succeed? Will you be victorious? We don’t know, but find out!
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With Christmas fast approaching we’ve complied a list of 36 great holiday gift ideas for the computer graphics artist in your life (let’s face it, that probably means you!) Ranging from smaller inexpensive gifts, to high end graphics tablets. We’ve got 36 products that any CG artist would be happy to receive. So whether you’re looking for a last minute gift for the holidays or simply something to spend your next paycheck on, we’ve got you covered!
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Update: Congratulations to Alex, Adam, and Heather Craik! You’ve each won a digital copy of the “Unreal Development Kit 3 Beginner’s Guide” courtesy of Packt Publishing! We have forwarded your information to Packt and they should be in touch soon with instructions on how to redeem your winnings!
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As many of you know, Tuts+ is accompanied by an online educational membership called Tuts+ Premium. We’re very excited to announce that the membership has received a huge upgrade, including a new library of courses, 27 top-selling educational eBooks, member forums, and a completely redesigned UI. You can check out all the changes here or read on to learn about what 3D artists will now get as part of Tuts+ Premium.
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With tools like Unity 3d and markets like the App Store and Steam, building indie games is becoming not only easier, but also a whole lot more lucrative. As a result, more and more indie games are being developed every single day. Unfortunately, most of those games aren’t nearly as pretty as they would have been if you had done the 3d modeling. These poor, un-artistic programmers need your help! That’s why we’re running the “3d Game Model Competition.”
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In the third and final part of the Ballistic Shield tutorial. We’ll use the free program xNormal to bake out an ambient occlusion map, before moving into Photoshop to start working on our Diffuse, Bump, Opacity and Specular maps. We’ll look at some simple ways to create convincing metal textures using a combination of both images and masking techniques. Once we have the Diffuse map finalized, we’ll use it to quickly create the remaining texture maps before heading back to 3D Studio Max to construct the shader and setup the final lighting for our scene.
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Today we’re happy to announce a brand new tutorial series coming soon to Cgtuts+, and giving you an chance to tell us exactly what you want to see! “The Film Studio Logo Animation Series” will cover the creation of popular logo animations from the biggest studios in Hollywood, including Dreamworks Animation, 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers Entertainment and Paramount pictures, to name just a few.
These tutorials will teach you exactly what goes into creating professional high quality logo animations and intros and will be authored by professional artist Antonio Cerri, the main man behind the popular “Hollywood Movie Title Series” that runs over on our sister site “Aetuts+”
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Once again we’ve searched through the internets to find some of the best Cinema 4D tutorials available anywhere, and compiled a list of 30 of the most unique we could find. We’ve got everything from Modeling and Animating, to Lighting, Rendering and Compositing. As well as Particles, Dynamics, Xpresso, Mograph and a few ‘Making Of’s’. So pull up a seat, fire up Cinema 4D and enjoy!
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Today in part 2 of the Ballistic Shield project we’ll use Max’s built in Unwrap UVW modifier to lay down mapping coordinates on our optimized model. We’ll mainly use a combination of the ‘Convert Edge Selection To Seams’ function and Pelt mapping to unwrap each and every piece of the model before organizing our UVs, and doing a final pack. Along the way we’ll speed things up by using some of the new UV tools offered in 3d Studio Max 2012.
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Use your 3D skills to build a freelance business with this authoritative guide on freelancing written by the authors of the super popular FreelanceSwitch blog.
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