From the course: 3ds Max 2019: Advanced Materials

Using the exercise files - 3ds Max Tutorial

From the course: 3ds Max 2019: Advanced Materials

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Using the exercise files

- [Instructor] I've created exercise files for the course so if you have access to those, go ahead and download them, extract them, and place them in a convenient location such as on the Desktop. If you don't have the exercise files, then you can use our own assets to go through the demonstrations. In which case, I recommend that you create a project folder. If you're on a mobile device or just don't have 3ds Max in front of you, you can still learn by observation. If you don't have the exercise files and you want to use your own assets, then you need to create a project folder. I'll do that by right-clicking on my Desktop and just choose new folder and call it advanced materials. And with that folder created, go ahead and launch 3ds Max. Go into the File menu to Project and here, you can create a new project. And we want to choose Create Default and that will create a factory default set of subfolders such as scenes and scene assets. So choose Create Default and then navigate to that folder. Here it is on my Desktop. Advanced materials. Click Select Folder. And we can check in on that and minimize 3ds Max for a second. And go into Advanced Materials and we can see the Factory Stock folder structure. And you can place your own assets inside these subfolders, designated for scenes, scene assets images and so on. If you do have the exercise files, then we can point 3ds Max at the folder. Back in 3ds Max once again. Go to the File menu and choose Project. Set Active Project. And once again, navigate to the appropriate location on your hard drive and I'll choose Exercise Files as the root level and choose Select Folder. Then we can open up a scene file. Go back to the File menu and choose open. And I'm taking to the current project scenes folder and this Look In pulldown list, I can find the absolute path. And this is showing that it's on my Desktop under Exercise Files Scenes. Don't be fooled by this pulldown list here, which is a history of past paths. Does not display the current path. I'm not going to open any of these scene files but I'll just mention that usually there's one scene file per movie that indicates the begin state for that movie. Sometimes, there's a finished example of what the scene should look like at the end of the movie and sometimes the scene file reflects the end state of the previous movie so that they go in sequence and actually, other times there is no end state here at all because the scene didn't change so you might have a finished example or you might not. All right, I'm not going to actually open any of these scenes. I'm going to go back to my Desktop by minimizing 3ds Max. Just to show you the rest of the exercise files. In Scene Assets, we have some images, and these are textures to be applied onto objects. Additionally, in some cases, you'll see examples and I've placed these here in order to avoid a possible conflict when you create or copy files into these exercise files. In other words, you're going to be creating some of these during the course and I've sequestered them here in these examples, subfolders, in order to prevent a name clash. For example, I've got the substance examples here. These are the procedural textures that we copy from the 3ds Max installation files in order to future proof our projects in this course. Okay, that's how to set up projects in 3ds Max whether or not you have the provided exercise files. Let's begin looking at advanced materials in 3ds Max.

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