little Max help

[Daniel]

Hey guys,

I'm just starting to learn 3D studio Max 5, since a lot of real job opportunities pretty much require to use that program. I'm very familiar with maya 5, so I have no problems at all with the basics. But some things elude me, so if someone can point me towards tutorials of that kind it would help.

1. Lighting, one of the reasons I want to learn this is for the rendering capabilities of Brazil. I figured out how to activate brazil, but to use the lights, do I just use omni lights and skylights, or are there some special lights that come with brazil.

2. For the Brazil shaders, how to I go get them? For that matter, how do I find the equal of maya's "hypershade" in Max, the place where I can create shaders using lambers and blinns and all that crap.

To summarize some texturing and lighting with Max's Brazil or basic max, all the tutorials I found were for that caustic's crap.
I will probably think of more questions as I explore this interesting program. But I would appreciate a little help none the less :D

thanks

[FutureMan]

Well for lights you should probably use spotlights, from what I remember omni lights are actually several spots linked, so if your using complex shadows you could get some longer rendertimes if you use an omni.

Also there should be a Brazil Light under your lights>Brazil r/s. You can change any light's shadows to Brazil Ray Shadows if you want from the modifier panel as well.

For the materials, simply press "M" and you'll get your Material Editor.

[Emperor]

DanielB, might be a good idea to learn the UI a bit first. As for blinns n stuff u got it all under M, the material editor. If u press that big button that sez "Standard" ull get to the base shader selection menu. There u can select different base shaders. I don't think ull have the trouble of finding out wich teh brazil ones are :). Welcome to the wonderful world of max.