3D Max Animation.

Naming every object that is going to be animated or used again once modelled is very important, This is especially important for bones as you will have a list of all bones shown and if you labelled them right the next process of skinning them will be easy but if not it will not. The stretch tool is also very important as you can increase and decrease the size of objects; this is very useful when trying to create realistic 3D Models or Animations. As you could have a model soldier but have his head very small, only a small problem as the stretch tool can easily fix that. Skeletons are also very important when animating, As I mentioned above with the process of naming the objects and IK giving a model a skeleton will help you to no end during animation as it makes the process so much easier, And a model that has good quality rigging will create good quality animations. When playing a game the physics are absolutely crucial you don’t want to be able to jump 20ft in a World War 2 Shooter game just as you don’t want to be hindered by badly coded physics in a Sci-Fi game. Real World physics are very hard to re-create, but not impossible many games recently have come close, The Cry Engine 2 implements some very realistic physics into games such as crisis and the Source engine 2 was also very good when it first came out.

Staging in 3D Max.3D Max Stage.

Lights are a very important part of almost any type of filming; Animating or photography this is because it can either create a very realistic effect or just ruin the mood/atmosphere of what is being watched/played.
Cameras are also a great way to enhance your animation, you can use different camera angles to you advantage extremely well, some effects can be created by some great lighting and camera angles, these two go tighter very well.
Motion blur is a great effect to give the a feeling of going fast or speeding up, E.G GTAIV have implemented motion blur into the game, when you are driving fast the sides of your vision blur, this creates a much more realistic effect.
Particle systems are like Snow, Rain, Smoke or even dust. It is the little things that add so much realism but would be almost impossible to model of animation by hand.

3D Max Viewports.

Viewports In 3D Max and most other 3D programs you can change the viewports, usually there is 4 Viewports, these can be moved about and configured to the users liking. You can have them in certain positions that are best for making 3D models E.G Right Left and Top view are all 2D Views which makes it easier to create models as you don’t have to move that camera about all the time, this would also create a strange shaped Model as it is like tracing something then moving the tracing paper.

For the viewport there are a few pre set views which you can use, These are Front, Back, Top, Left, Right, Bottom and Perspective but you can also move the viewports in any 3D position by holding down Alt and the middle mouse button you can move the perspective view around a point. If you hold shift and the middle mouse button you can drag the view around the 3D Space. Holding CTRL is also another way of doing the last movement.

Floating pallets such as the material editor and the time configuration menus are very useful as you have easy access to a good number of options and tools without having to go rooting through various menus. They are called floating pallets as they “Float” and are not embedded as such into the main UI of the program.

There are also many very useful keyboard shortcuts, Such as Pressing the spacebar when you have something selected locks what is selected, When pressing “G” this will make the grid in the centre disappear or there are also the very useful keyboard movement shortcuts I mentioned above.