Creating Pixelart with 3ds max 5 or 6.

[PiledotNET]

Creating Pixelart with 3ds max 5 or 6.

I love to see pictures made with Pixelart tecnic, and I love 3ds max. So, why not put both things to work together?

3ds max wasn't design to do this, but you can reach very nice results with some easy configurations.


First of all, the position of the camera! This is very important, if this first step is not correct you're going to have strange effects.

With your 3ds max running, reset it ('File'>'Reset'>'Yes'). Now you have the perfect angle in Perspective Viewport.

- If you have 3ds max 5, active the Perspective Viewport and press the 'U' key. This will transform the Viewport in a User Viewport with the same angle and with a Orthographic Projection.

- If you have 3ds max 6 you can do it in the same way or create a camera from view by pressing the CTRL+C hotkey, 3ds max will create a new camera with the same properties of Perspectie Viewport. After this, go to it Modify menu and enable the Orthographic Projection.

This is the reseted Perspective Viewport.


This is the same viewport in User way:

[PiledotNET]

Done with the camera, do not rotate it! You can Pan and Zoom In/Out, but do not rotate it.

Now create an object and render it. By default, 3ds max is going to use antialias in the image, destroing the pixelart concept.


To fix this, go to Render Scene Panel and unable the Antialiasing filter creating the exact look of the pixelart.

[PiledotNET]

Next step is to create a pixel border in the edges of the object, so lets go to Material Editor. Create a new Ink'n'paint material and aply it to the object. Only thing to change is the Ink Width, set 'Min' to 1.0.


When you render the scene, you're going to have something like this:

[PiledotNET]

You're able now to edit the object normaly but some times you're going to find pixels with erros when rendering.


3ds max unit system is more precise than pixel units so if a part of your object is in a position that isn't in the pixel grid, it will not be rendered. So you will have to move it a little till the position of the object become visible in the pixel grid. Other thing that could cause this problem is the Smoothing Groups, remove them all if you want to have border in all edges. Like I sad in the beggining, 3ds max wasn't desing to do this, so you have to use a paint program to finish the job.

[PiledotNET]

With Material Ids you can control where Ink'n'Paint have to create a stroke inside the object. Look what happend when all polygons have the same ID.


There's no more strokes in polygons that share the same edge. Now let's attribute ID 2 for this selected polygons:


Since all polygons in the model have ID 1 except those 3 polygons, Ink'n'Paint will create an aditional stroke.


You can do this to other polygons, creating strokes where you want them to be, but sure, always using the object structure.


Result

[PiledotNET]

You can use lights to enhance the pixelart look.


Result


And even cast shadows.

[PiledotNET]

Here's another examples:

[PiledotNET]

[PiledotNET]

And animation


3ds max Screenshot



End.

[the_solidshadow]

great!
i love the idea, and the tut!
real great man,

[PiledotNET]

Tnks Solidshadow.

I was thinking: create a pixelart shader.

This could be a nice idea for a plugin.

[the_solidshadow]

yeah. it would be good, if you know how to write plugins

[PiledotNET]

Sure

But I think this ins't a complex task, comparing to other shader...

[the_solidshadow]

yeah, your kinda right

[PiledotNET]

Any comments from mods?

I think this tutorial does not deserve a CD, and don't care. Just want to know what you mods think about it, how useful it its.

Have to finish the Office Chair, give me a couple of weeks


tnks.