3d Programs

In this tutorial, you will get a basic rundown of the 3D animation program, Blender. This video will help you get used to your new application and get started with its many features. Follow along and pretty soon you will be ready to start animating like a pro.

Want to know how to do proportional modeling when working in Maya 2011? This clip will you how to do just that using the program's Soft Select tool. Whether you're new to Autodesk's popular modeling software or a seasoned 3D artist just looking to better acquaint yourself with ...more

Create a vector three-dimensional box icon in Adobe Illustrator CS4. Whether you're new to Adobe's popular vector graphics editor program or a seasoned graphic arts professional looking to better acquaint yourself with the new features and functions of this particular iteratio ...more

Learn how to interlace custom shapes in Adobe Illustrator CS4, an effect that's especially attractive when working with 3d perspective objects and shapes. Whether you're new to Adobe's popular vector graphics editor program or a seasoned graphic arts professional looking to be ...more

If you've come home from a long day of work, you might just want to sculpt in Pixologic's Zbrush 3.1 3D sculpting software. So sculpt out of clay to practice the Zbrush 3D modeling program, don't work on Zspheres or an entire model, practice on sculpting. If you plan on being ...more

Systm is the Do It Yourself show designed for the common geek who wants to quickly and easily learn how to dive into the latest and hottest tech projects. We will help you avoid pitfalls and get your project up and running fast. Search Systm on WonderHowTo for more DIY episode ...more

Maya can count itself among the most powerful and also most challenging programs in all of computing. It's 3D modeling potential is nearly limitless if you can master its intricacies. This video features a professional digital art teacher teaching you how to model a 3D head us ...more

3D modeling tool Mayafrom Autodesk is a monster of a program, able to do SO many things. One of the things you'll need to learn is how to use the CV Curve tool. This will allow you to create objects with curves of any shape or dimension you desire. Let's be honest, most of you ...more

This video will show you how to create a 3D cartoon character using a website called Xtranormal. In the program, you should first pick the scene where you want your action to occur as well as the 3D character which you would like to be present in the scene. You can then type a ...more

This video offers a few quick tips on how to simplify animation curves with a new feature in Blender 2.53. Whether you're new to the Blender Foundation's popular 3D modeling program or a seasoned graphic artist just interested in better acquainting yourself with the applicatio ...more

Searching for a primer on how to create a realistic 3D street art effect Adobe Photoshop CS5? This clip will teach you what you need to know. Whether you're new to Adobe's popular raster graphics editing software or a seasoned professional just looking to better acquaint yours ...more

In this clip, you'll learn how to bake ambient occlusion (AO) and tangent normals in Blender 2.5 and up. Whether you're new to the Blender Foundation's popular 3D modeling program or a seasoned graphic artist just interested in better acquainting yourself with the application, ...more

In this Blender 2.5 video tutorial, you'll learn how to create a branded coffee cup. This tutorial encompasses the modeling, rendering and texturing of the coffee cup. Whether you're new to the Blender Foundation's popular 3D modeling program or a seasoned graphic artist just ...more

In this quick Blender 2.5 video tip, you'll learn how appending/linking can be used to bring in elements from another .blend file. These elements can be mesh objects, lamps, materials, or even sculpting brushes. Whether you're new to the Blender Foundation's popular 3D modelin ...more

This clip demonstrates the basics of adding seams to a model, covering setting up Ambient Occlusion and Environment lights, baking them to a texture map, and applying it to the model. Whether you're new to the Blender Foundation's popular 3D modeling program or a seasoned grap ...more

This tutorial uses After Effects to design a quick animation that looks like several light streaks form the letters of a word. The letters burst from the light streaks with a particle explosion. This tutorial uses Trapcode 3D Stroke and Particular. Whether you're new to Adobe' ...more

If you want to make a hybrid machinima movie using WoW characters, you are probably going to have to import them into 3DS MAX at some point. Unfortunately, you cannot just do this straight away. This video will teach you how to use a program called Milkshape 3D to prepare a ch ...more

For 3D artists new to 3DS Max, learning your way around this massive piece of software can take a long time. It need not do. This video will teach you how to use some of the many hotkeys in the program to navigate it like a pro, easily accessing all of the most popular tools a ...more

Conceptually, what is node-based compositing and what do nodes do? This clip uses the factory analogy to convey the concept. Blender can process video, images, sequences, and families of images in a directory. Then you'll fire up Blender and talk about threading nodes and how ...more

In this clip, you'll see how to create a new Screen Layout (workspace, desktop) to use when Compositing: 8-Nodes. and initialize this new default User setup used in all future tutorials. This clip will also teach how to move the window around, what the starting nodes are and d ...more

This tutorial presents a general introduction to the basic editing functions and tools available within Blender 2.49 & 2.5. Whether you're new to the Blender Foundation's popular 3D modeling program or a seasoned graphic artist just interested in better acquainting yourself wi ...more

This tutorial looks at how to create a map of the wetness left by a particle fluid, so that you can correctly render surfaces with a wet look. It looks at rendering out a point cloud with wetness information, and creating a bespoke shader to correctly render surface using the ...more

This quick three-part series presents an introduction to ForEach SOPs in Houdini 10. This first part looks at using the ForEach SOP to iterate over groups of primitives, using the example of creating balconies on a set of primitives. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software ...more

This one-two tutorial offers advice on how to work with bespoke shaders and compositing networks in Houdini 10. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic artist just interested in better acquainting yourself with the appl ...more

This four-part series presents an introduction to some of the techniques for uv mapping in Houdini. This first part introduces the concept of UVs, and looks at UVProject as a way of adding UVs, and UVQuickShade as a way of visualising them. Whether you're new to Side Effects S ...more

This two-part tutorial looks at the techniques for rendering millions of particles in Houdini 10. The first part looks at using the popsolver to manipulate particles using both the standard pop nodes and dynamics forces. We use the interact pop, and random grouping of particle ...more

This video provides an introduction to basic compositing in Houdini. The first part looks at color and alpha planes, the use of matte shading. It also covers generator and filter compositing nodes, and the beginnings of masking. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's po ...more

This two-part tutorial looks at the basic techniques for emitting smoke from particles. The first part examines the most simple way to bring a particle simulation in, and the way particle scale effects emission, and how to transfer velocity to emitted smoke. It then looks at t ...more

This clip uses a smoke example to examine source variations and upres (techniques which are useful preparation for the pyrofx tools). Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic artist just interested in better acquainting ...more

This two-part tutorial series offers a look at the basics of smoke simulations. This first part looks at setting up a simulation, the fields involved, how to visualise them. It also looks at temperature and bouyancy as well as vortex confinement. Whether you're new to Side Eff ...more

This clip presents a quick look at how to instance lights to particles in Houdini. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic artist just interested in better acquainting yourself with the application, you're sure to be we ...more

This clip presents a walkthrough of how to go about creating a particle based explosion in Houdini 10. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic artist just interested in better acquainting yourself with the application, ...more

This clip offers instructions on how to create your own lighting models using an illuminance loop in a VOP network. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic artist just interested in better acquainting yourself with the ...more

This Houdini 10 user's guide offers a look at how CHOPs can be used to replicate animation from one object to many, or more precisely to vary that animation. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic artist just intereste ...more

This clip demonstrates how to create a caustic lighting effect using Houdini's Mantra PBR rendering engine. The first part starts with a refresher on refraction. More generally, guide looks at setting up normals correctly, then at the glass shader in Houdini, faux caustics and ...more

This tripartite tutorial series presents an in-depth look at how to use volumes in Houdini 10 — creating them using the volume and IsoOffset SOPs, and adjusting their values. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic arti ...more

This clip offers an introduction to using attributes and local variables in Houdini. It covers vertices (vertexes), points, primitives and details. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic artist just interested in bette ...more

Learn how to use the Houdini SOP solver to create a realistic burning match effect within Houdini 10. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic artist just interested in better acquainting yourself with the application, y ...more

This clip covers how to enable motion blur in Houdini, the difference between standard and deformation blur, motion blurring dynamics simulations, motion blur quality settings. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic ar ...more

This four-part guide presents an introduction to physically-based rendering in Houdini 10, covering what PBR will and won't do for you, sampling settings, environment lighting, objects as lights, shaders, issues with specular highlights. Whether you're new to Side Effects Soft ...more

This two-part tutorial presents a look at how to form a logo from flying pieces of letters in Houdini 10. The first clip demonstrates the effect, the second is a walkthrough of the setup used to create it. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production pro ...more

This clip presents a look at one of the basics of Houdini: Polygons - point, vertex and primitive data, smoothing and faceting, subdivision, removing inline points, orienting polygons and making polygons planar. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D producti ...more

This very short tutorial looks at using image planes, and the new 'per light' option in Houdini 10 to create extra image planes to separate out diffuse, specular, and gi lighting. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic ...more

This quick tutorial demonstrates how to create object trails in Houdini, and then add a turbulence effect to them. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic artist just interested in better acquainting yourself with the a ...more

Learn how to create a glowing neon sign using Houdini's renderer and compositor with this clip. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic artist just interested in better acquainting yourself with the application, you're ...more

This clip presents a quick lesson on how to render a scene using depth of field (DoF) in Houdini 10. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic artist just interested in better acquainting yourself with the application, yo ...more

This clip presents a quick tutorial on using global illumination in Houdini's Mantra renderer. It covers ambient occlusion, full irradiance, path tracing and photon mapping. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic artis ...more

This clip discusses the use of bundles in Houdini. Bundles serve similar purposes to groups of objects and layers in other applications. Whether you're new to Side Effects Software's popular 3D production program or a seasoned graphic artist just interested in better acquainti ...more

Maya is the most powerful 3D modeling tool that most people are likely to have access to. This video will teach you some basic techniques for creating 3D models in the program by teaching you how to make a chair from scratch. It's not a very exciting chair, sure, but you have ...more

For beginners, learning the intricacies of modeling 3D art can seem insurmountable. This video for 3D beginners is here to help you through it. Its four parts are a detailed and slow walkthrough for making low poly BC Rich guitar with splines using 3D Studio Max, a popular 3D ...more

Need help wrapping your head around how layer order effects visibility in After Effects when using 2D and 3D layers? This clip explains it all. With After Effects, it's easy. Whether you're new to Adobe's popular motion graphics and compositing software or a seasoned video pro ...more

In this video tutorial, CreativeCOW leader, Eran Stern demonstrates how to create flower trails using Trapcode Particular in this special holiday episode. You'll also work with the light emitter and use 3D layer to obscure particles. Creative Cow is a support community for di ...more

Want to create a surface that isn't complete smooth when working in Maya 2011? Then, my friend, you'll want to know how to use the program's displacement and bump mapping tools. This clip will show you how it's done. Whether you're new to Autodesk's popular modeling software o ...more

Meet the Maya 2011 UI! Before you get started working in the program, it stands to reason that you know how to work with it. And this guide will show you how. Whether you're new to Autodesk's popular modeling software or a seasoned 3D artist just looking to better acquaint you ...more

In this video, viewers learn how to create augmented reality applications, using Papervision 3D version 2.0. Augmented reality is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with virtual computer-generated imagery - ...more

You can do just about anything in Houdini's 3D animation program. In this video series masterclass, Houdini artist Georges NAKHLE shows how to dissolve an image using Houdini particles. See how to blow an image away using particles! Videos in this Houdini 9.5 series: 1. Tran ...more

In this Episode, we will look at some very useful techniques for Trapcode Particular that will give you better control of emitter position in 2D and 3D. You will also learn how to capture the motion of your mouse (or stylus) to control emitter position. Creative Cow is a supp ...more

The application the makes Apple's Final Cut Studio is the film editing app Final Cut Pro. With its ability to log and capture video onto your hard drive for editing, you can easily edit and process your indie film, or maybe even a professional movie. Final Cut Pro is a non-lin ...more

Have you seen the new 'program-within-a-program' in Google Sketchup 6? It's called LayOut, and it provides SketchUp users a cool way to present their 3D models in a 2D paper-space environment. Mike Tadros shows you how to use the new program LayOut available in SketchUp 6 Pro ...more

Creating movie-quality 3D images takes more than just 3DS Max. It takes a village of graphics programs to really make it look professional. This nine-part video tutorial will teach you how to create a hole in a coffee table using a combination of 3DS Max, After Effects, and th ...more