Anti-Aliasing changes in 8.1

The 8.1 update to Design 3D includes changes to the anti-aliasing system. This tutorial walks through these changes which specifically deal with how pixels are detected for anti-aliasing. Several examples are given which demonstrate how these changes manifest in renderings, and how to control the threshold mechanism (Block/Volume Subdivision Limit) which determines pixels for inclusion in the oversampling process. Changes to the Adaptive Surface Sampling threshold mechanism is also discussed.
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Anti-Aliasing, a primer

This tutorial discusses anti-aliasing / oversampling. It specifically looks at what it is using a simple demonstration in Photoshop. The Details tab has several parameters that control anti-aliasing, the Oversampling rate, the Block/Volume Subdivision Limit and the Pixel Detail Block Size. This first tutorial generally explains what the Oversampling rate is, but also discusses the other two parameters in general terms. This is in preparation for several tutorials that discuss changes in this area in the Design 3D 8.1 update.
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Dreidel toy: Texturing, part 2

This tutorial finishes the texturing of the dreidel spin toy. It specifically applies the coloration and design elements. The process of using only selected materials is described, in addition to the use of material transfer modes. Several texturing techniques for creating a roughened up texture map is explored in Photoshop.
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Dreidel toy: Texturing, part 1

This tutorial walks through the process of setting up the base wood texture for the toy. It shows how to create a rough, somewhat glossy appearance using the fresnel interpolator, the Smoothness and Index of Refractions channels to control the appearance.
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Dreidel toy: UV mapping

This tutorial UV maps the dreidel toy model. It uses the Conform to Mesh Burn UV function to do this, but a second approach is also demonstrated which shows how to generate initial UV coordinate from planar mapping in order to control the size of the UV islands.
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Dreidel toy: Modeling

This tutorial models a small game object called a dreidel. It specifically focuses on how to model the bottom rounded part, using 3 different approaches. One method shows the use of the Hull modeling function, using Adobe Illustrator bezier curves as the starting point. The use of deformation lattices as part of the modeling process is also shown.
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