Tom Fitzgerald

I’ve just started a one-person design firm specializing in residential. I’m trying to decide between the various cad programs and think Vectorworks would be the best fit for me. I have owned EaglePoint LandCADD (2000) but was running with its stand-alone cad engine (not AutoCAD). Now, years later, I’m really thinking it’s time to try again with…[Read more]

Thanks for that book, that is great.

This is also a really good tutorial (in four steps) pretty complicated when it gets to the post processing stuff though.
http://en.9jcg.com/comm_pages/blog_content-art-129.htm

I’ve got a very straight forward manual for 3ds Max called “3ds Max Architectural Visualization.” I use it all the time for reference and unlike most program manuals its very easy to follow. Pretty much covers all the basics. Just follow this link and the password is “dallas”.

https://filestogeaux.lsu.edu/public/download.php?FILE=lattin1/313674GOBf0

David Fano is really good, he worked (works?) at SHoP architects in NY and has started a consulting company that show firms how to implement digital technology.

Plus he is very active on the site so you can ask him questions or request he do a tutorial on something.

checked out designreform. havent taken a look at any tutorials yet but looks promising. quite a few tutorials, thanks for the link… ill check it out when i have time to breathe

David Fano at http://www.designreform.net has some excellent 3DS tutorials. His are focused on 3DS as a design tool and not visualisation.

He also has good grasshopper, rhino, and revit tutorials.

well, 3ds 2009 has intro tutorials. im not totally sure about 2008 but i bet it does too. do all of those, they will get you acquainted with some of the basics. from there find tutorials online, there are plenty of free ones area.autodesk.com is a good start. dont worry about finding landscape specific tutorials just do some. learning the tools is…[Read more]

any discussion topic ideas?

idk. 3ds is such a complex program that there many ways to do the same thing, these ways subsequently produce different end products. It takes an eye for compositon and color just like hand rendering does. Different designers have different styles but to me i think it is valuable to bring representations as close to reality as possible. I also…[Read more]

Hi,
We use 3ds max in our office, or to be more exact the brilliant young women who work for me use it, and we are all very happy with it. However my question is, is there a risk that the sameness of the presentations as presented by different designers may mask the individuality of the designs and the designers, or am I wrong?

Michael, thanks for the tip with the autodesk tutorials.

Kavan, i find the idea of using 3ds max for simulations, as you said for eg. watershed calculations, very interesting. i hadn’t thought you could enter the necessary data into 3dsmax for the programme to calculate and simulate these events. that’s very intriguing, although my laptop would…[Read more]

The more u model the more you learn to keep your finger off F9. Also the more you model the more you learn to create fast visualizations with high impact.

Heres one of my latest renderings

3ds Max is great but once you start on a model its hard to stop. Its addictive. Maybe its just me but I always start off with the intent of making a quick model for some perspectives and somehow I end up modeling half the city.

looks good. what helped me a lot was doing tutorials area.autodesk.com has some good ones. its good to just mess around with the program, learn about textures, modeling lighting, ect… by the way those images i posted were created by Kavan Donohue and James Fink. I often try to take all of the credit for their work.

some beginners 3ds max combined with psd

here are a couple renderings. questions, critiques, comments… all are encouraged. post your work. sharing is caring.