Acquisitions Editor: Mariann Barsolo

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Production Editor: Liz Britten

Copy Editor: Kathy Grider-Carlyle

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Cover Designer: Ryan Sneed

Cover Image: Randi L. Derakhshani and Dariush Derakhshani

Copyright © 2012 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-118-13055-1

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ISBN: 978-1-118-23848-6 (ebk.)

ISBN: 978-1-118-26311-2 (ebk.)

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To Max Henry

Acknowledgments

We are thrilled to be a part of Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2013 Essentials, a complete update and style change to our previous Introducing Autodesk® 3ds Max® series. Education is an all-important goal in life and should always be approached with eagerness and earnestness. We would like to show appreciation to the teachers who inspired us; you can always remember the teachers who touched your life, and to them we say thanks. We would also like to thank all of our students, who taught us a lot during the course of our many combined academic years.

Having a good computer system is important with this type of work, so a special thank you goes to HP for keeping us on the cutting edge of workstation hardware. Special thanks go to Mariann Barsolo, Lisa Bishop, Liz Britten, and Kathy Grider-Carlyle, our editors at Sybex who have been professional, courteous, and ever patient. Our appreciation also goes to technical editor RC Torres, who worked hard to make sure this book is of the utmost quality. We could not have done this revision without their help.

In addition, thanks to Dariush’s mother and brother for their love and support, not to mention the life-saving babysitting services.

Writing on the HP Elitebook

We would like to thank HP for providing us with a fully decked-out Elitebook 8760w, which we primarily used to write this book. What struck us about the laptop was that it was not only portable, making it easy for a writing team to collaborate, but it was powerful enough to run truly demanding tasks. It takes a special machine to run graphics intensive applications, such as Autodesk 3ds Max, and we were thrilled to write this book on the HP Elitebook.

Running an Intel i7 CPU alongside 16GB of RAM and an Nvidia Quadro 5010M (with a whopping 6GB of memory) gave us the muscle we needed to run multiple applications alongside 3ds Max splendidly. Dual 320GB hard drives was plenty of space for Windows 7 Professional and its applications, and still left lots of room for renders. We opted out of the RAID option to mirror the drives (you can also stripe them for performance), but that doesn’t mean we neglected our backup duties with this machine! The 8760w was easily integrated into a gigabit network in the home office, and on fast Wifi everywhere else, so we had constant access to the home network and the hundreds upon hundreds of files necessary to write this book (and all their backups!).

And since we are so very image conscious (as in the screen!), we wondered if the images we created and captured for this book would be done justice on “just a laptop screen.” The Elitebook has a stunning 17˝ 30bit IPS display panel that put those questions to rest real quick! The HP’s screen is no less than professionally accurate and calibrated for optimum image clarity and correct color. Barely a handful of high-end mobile workstations could even come close to meeting the demands image professionals put on their gear. But this notebook HP DreamColor display is remarkable, there’s just no other way to put it, going as far as besting any of our desktop screens in color and vibrancy.

With performance at such a high level, and in a nice portable form factor, we were easily convinced to perform all of our intensive work for this book on the Elitebook. Going back to a desk-bound tower quickly became not an option anymore. Thanks HP!

About the Authors

Randi L. Derakhshani is a staff instructor with The Art Institute of California–Los Angeles. She began working with computer graphics in 1992 and was hired by her instructor to work at Sony Pictures Imageworks, where she developed her skills with the Autodesk® 3ds Max® program and Nuke, among many other programs. A teacher since 1999, Randi enjoys sharing her wisdom with young talent and watching them develop at The Art Institute. Currently, she teaches a wide range of classes, from Autodesk® 3ds Max®, Maya, and ZBrush to compositing with The Foundry’s Nuke. Juggling her teaching activities with caring for a little boy makes Randi a pretty busy lady.

Dariush Derakhshani is a visual effects supervisor and Supervisor of Games at Zoic Studios in Culver City, California, and a writer and educator in Los Angeles, California, as well as Randi’s husband. Dariush used Autodesk® AutoCAD® software in his architectural days and migrated to using 3D programs when his firm’s principal architects needed to visualize architectural designs in 3D on the computer. Dariush started using Alias PowerAnimator version 6 when he enrolled in USC Film School’s Animation program, and he has been using Alias/Autodesk animation software for the past 14 years. He received an M.F.A. in Film, Video, and Computer Animation from the USC Film School in 1997. He also holds a B.A. in Architecture and Theater from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. He worked at a New Jersey architectural firm before moving to Los Angeles for film school. He has worked on feature films, music videos, and countless commercials as a 3D animator, as a CG/VFX supervisor, and sometimes as a compositor. Dariush also serves as an editor and is on the advisory board of HDRI 3D, a professional computer graphics (CG) magazine from DMG Publishing.