XSI LIVE tutorials

MAX LIVE Video Tutorials

On this page you will find a collection of video tutorials for RandomControl's MAX LIVE in full HD 1080p.

Click on the menu to watch the corresponding video tutorial. Click on "- back to top -" to go back to the table of contents.

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Table of contents

1. Getting started

2. Engine properties

3. Working mith materials

4. Working with emitters

5. Working with cameras

6. Working with instances

Image courtesy of Catalin Obreja

a. Installing and Licensing MAX LIVE

This video will demonstrate the process of installing and licensing your copy of MAX LIVE after you have downloaded the setup and the license file from your Customer Area account.

b. Your first render

With this video you will learn to setup 3ds Max and MAX LIVE to launch your very first render in a few very simple steps.

c. The ActiveShade window

In this video we will see how to you 3ds Max ActiveShade interactive rendering with MAX LIVE to get a realtime feedback of your changes as they are made to the scene.

a. Environment Settings

Learn how to illuminate your scene with an environment. This tutorial will show you how to create a skylight lamp in 3ds Max and to use it to control the environment illuminaton color, mapping and intensity.

>b>b. Compositing Channels

Learn how to enable the rendering of render channels such as ambient occlusion, normals, alpha channel and many others. MAX LIVE v2.4.0 brings even more channels for a complete compositing solution. It also add the possibility to render all channels at once using just a single render and the output can be saved to a multi-layer .EXR file in full 32bit float bit depth for full HDR render editing.

a. Layers Overview

Learn how to create and manage materials with multiple layers. Using multiple layers is the ideal way to create reflective materials with a variety range of finishes from very rough to highly polished.

b. Diffuse Materials

Learn how to create a simple diffuse material. In this tutorial you will learn the very basics of material editing. Change the material color, assign a texture as color and create diffuse materials such as brick, brittle, clay...

c. Metallic Materials

Learn how to create metallic material effects and how to control the metal surface's roughness to mimic brushed or polished metals.

d. Glass Materials

Learn how to add dielectric transmission to a MAX LIVE material to create a variety of transparent materials such as glass, acrylic or any other transparent material you could think of.

e. Plastic Materials

Learn how to create plastic-like materials such as acrylic, rubber or varnished and lacquered surfaces. This tutorial covers two distinct methods. The first one is using 'coatings', this method is physically correct for materials that are covered with a lacquer or varnish for example such as parquets or even the varnish of a car paint. The second method shows how to do it with a dual layer material. This method is preferred when the surface reflection is due to its polishing or gloss and does not come from a varnish or lacquer coat.

f. Material Roughness

Lear how the material roughness can affect the look of your materials to create a variety of realistic material effects. Roughness is a mathematical model of surface micro-bumps that perturbs light reflections and produces blurry reflections and refractions. This tutorial also covers bump mapping, which is a larger scale way to alter the surface glossiness. Combining bump mapping for large surfaces irregularities with roughness is the best way to create very realistic surface details very quickly.

g. Sub-Surface Scattering Materials

Learn how to create materials with SSS, such as wax, rubber or skin. This tutorial explains settings such as the density coefficient or the media scattering asymmetry, and also explains how to do environmental fog. The tutorial ends with an explanation on how to use Single-Sheet SSS (S5).

h. Displacement Mapping

Learn how to enable and use micro-polygon displacement to enhance the realism of your scene. Displacement mapping does not increase your scene size or polycount but add tremendous amount of details on render time without the need to model them.

i. Opacity Mapping

Learn how to use opactity mapping in MAX LIVE to creates material cutouts, leaves, shades or RPC objects to populate your scene with more details. Opacity can also be used without a texture map, by simply lowering the opacity amount.

a. Setting up an Emitter

Learn how to turn an object into a light source by just changing its material type. Emitters are the only way with physical sky and environment to illuminate a scene in MAX LIVE. They are very powerful and versatile. It's possible to completely reproduce a real lighting case by using the proper units and light powers to match reality perfectly. This is important when doing lighting studies for interior or exterior design, as well as for matching the lighting on a stage for later integration of 3D elements.

b. Using Spotlights

Learn how to transform a standard emitter into an unbiased spotlight in just a few easy steps. Unbiased spotlight can dramatically improve your images' mood and realism. They are also perfect to illuminate a scene with IES photometric data files for even more realism and remove the need in other unbiased engine to model the light fixture to get the propoer light cone and pattern.

a. Physical camera settings

In this tutorial you will learn to use physical camera parameters like shutter speed and f-stop. The shutter speed is a key parameter to control the proper exposure of the rendered image. The f-stop parameter both controls the amount of light entering the camera and the depth of field. Mastering those parameters gives you great artistic control over your renders.

a. Instancing

Learn how to use instancing with MAX LIVE to replicate geometry with standard max copies. A more advanced technique using Particle Flox is also depicted. Particle Flow can generate very large amount of instances in just a few clicks with full parametric scattering.