Beginner Questions... pls?

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kade119

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Beginner Questions... pls?

Just a few questions..


1.) How do i delete materials etc.. from the object browser?

2.) Can I add more properties to a material?

3.) How do i make a mesh map? is that UV mapping?

4.) materials that are in say.. the example files can I pull those and place in a new file?

5.) feed me knowledge.. i'm new to 3D
 
I can answer number 1. You just click on the material tag in the object browser and click backspace and "boom" its gone...

At number 2, what kind of properties do you wanna add?

Oh yes, if you haven`t done it yet, you need to double click on the material tag in the object browser to see the specular and properties like that!
 
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ahh im such a win user.. the backspace!

ok i did d-click on the materials in object browser already but it seems the directional materials have fewer properties... and do you know about taking materials from other files? how do i add in my own texture? like to browser for a jpg i have and add in my file?
 
Make sure you add "the" material not marble or something else, and then open up the texture propertiy and click on load, then you can choose your jpg.
texture.jpg
 
i'm trying to make a shiny texture... i found the 25 free materials on here but when i apply like "gold or copper" it looks so matted... is this all adjusted in the properties?




it would almost help to use a gradient or something
 
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I am not sure, I haven`t worked with materials to much in C3D yet, but it could be that you need to do something with your lighting or add a hdri image on it, but I am not the right person to teach you this I haven`t used it myself yet!

But you can learn some more if you go to http://cheetah3d.de/wiki/index.php5?title=Main_Page

This wiki is very new, so it is missing a lot now, but you can find links to a lot of tutorials and things like that, so check out the materials section, there are some tutorials, that might be interesting for you there!
 
high dynamic range image, there is a tutorial on it in the C3D help menu, so you can take a look at it and try it out. But did you render the material, because you will not see how it looks before you render it out. You do this by clicking on the blue cheetah button in the menubar. be aware that it takes some time to render these materials.

The community always wanna help you out so just ask, but its always as you probably know good to make a search, look in the help file and check the cheetah3d wiki before you ask, but if your stuck, don`t hessitate to ask. Cheetah3D is very powerful, but it takes some time to get used to it! I am pretty new my self, but I learn something every week! There are some amazingly talented persons on this forum! So someone probably know the answer!
 
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There are two versions of the materials -- one for HDRI and one for standard lighting. Make sure you use the right ones.

In general, HDRI gives you amazing looking renders for very little effort, but the shadows tend to be very soft and you don't have much control over lighting (well, almost none).

The other quick option that pays off well is a standard three point light set up (one main light, one back light, and one fill light), especially if the main light is an area light. To get nice reflections you can use a reflection map or build out the scene (a lot more work).
 
You could try out blender, its free! I haven`t tried it my self, but I think its more complex than Cheetah3D. There are of course a lot of similar products for windows, but it depends on how much you wanna spend and what features you need!
 
There's nothing really similar to C3D for the PC. It's actually the usual story -- there's a lot more software for the PC for almost any given category, but most of it is rubbish. (Take a look at the dominant program in pretty much any category and the chances are it started out as a Mac program. The big exceptions are AutoCAD, 3D Studio Max, and accounting software.)

Blender is very powerful and free. Its UI is hard to get used to but it's very capable -- with many "state of the art" features (e.g. Subsurface Scattering, Anisotropic Reflections) and a few notable gaps (e.g. only spotlights can be volumetric, very poor motion blur implementation). Anything you can do in C3D you can do in Blender (although it will almost certainly take you longer). Blender offers integration with Yafray for ray-tracing (Yet Another Free Raytracer), although Yafray development seems to be pretty much stalled. Blender's internal renderer will probably make Yafray redundant soon enough.

Silo 3D is a very good modeler and quite similar to Cheetah 3D in a lot of ways. It's actually more expensive than C3D and has no animation or rendering capabilities. It runs on Windows, Mac, and (soon) Linux.

Milkshape 3D is probably the best known low-end 3D modeling program. It's pretty horrific compared to C3D.

PoVRay (which is free) used to be PC only and is a VERY impressive rendering engine.

There's a ton of cheap or free 3D PC software, but like I said -- nothing that combines cheap, fast, usable, and good.

If you're willing to spend some fairly serious money, there's Softimage XSI for $495 and Lightwave for $495 (crossgrade from Photoshop) or $795. Lightwave is also runs on a Mac. I guess one problem for the PC software market is that you can't compete with a product like XSI at $495 unless you go for a sub $200 price-tag.
 
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appreciate the useful info

i'm not actually looking for a 3d software that is cross platform but the one that most resembles the functionality of C3D to help me learn what button does what while i'm at home on my pc
 
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