What you'll learn

In collaboration with Autodesk, Digital-Tutors is excited to teach you about some of the powerful tools found in 3ds Max, and explaining how these tools can be incorporated into a motion graphics project. We will start by looking at storyboards and animatics of the final project. From there, we will learn how to set up lights and materials for our scene inside of 3ds Max, we will learn how to use particles to create dynamic effects such as sparks for our project, and we will spend several lessons discussing the new State Set feature, which is a powerful new system for creating and managing your render passes within 3ds Max. We will also learn how this State Set tool allows for the seamless transfer of rendered passes, 3D cameras, lights, and helper objects from 3ds Max directly into After Effects. From here, we will learn how to use helper objects from 3ds Max to quickly create 3D layers in After Effects, use 3D nulls to drive 2D effects like lens flares and glows, and learn how Maxscripting and expressions can be used to create highly-customized, procedural animation effects within 3ds Max. Software required: 3ds Max 2013, After Effects CS6.