Most animators are looking for realistic cinematic renders. There is an industry devoted to third-party renderers that will attest to this. Reallusion once again extends the ease of use that comes with iClone to another blockbuster rendering tool that is also packed with many other features and could arguably be considered the granddaddy of 3D apps.
Autodesk’s 3DS Max is one of the most powerful 3D software tools available. It not only provides modeling and sculpting tools, but it also provides powerful animation tools, curve editors, dope sheets and many more professionally oriented tools that have been embraced by major studios and indie studios of all sizes. It has POST features and effects that were not always available from its competitors.
“Future Car” (https://skfb.ly/54ihge0) by 3DHaupt is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
3DS Max produces and renders some of the greatest-looking scenes in computer-generated animation with VRay and its built in renderer Arnold. With the right lighting and materials both renderers can produce near photo-realistic results. On the other hand, they can also produce great quality “Pixar” type toon renders.
It seems I have been married to Autodesk products in some form (3D Studio, Max, Maya) since the dawn of time, and it has been a great ride and very fruitful. Learning the software that many triple-A studios adopted afforded income opportunities for its users. 3DS Max is still used for movie and television production to this day which demonstrates its staying power as a modeling and animation application.
It only seemed natural to include 3DS Max into the “easy to animate” arena of iClone by producing a free plugin, Auto Setup for 3ds Max, that takes care of one of the most important parts of rendering a character, proper materials, and shaders. It also includes some lighting presets and other features. The importance of proper materials and shaders cannot be overstated as that directly affects how the render will look, particularly realism.
Installation
As usual, Reallusion has made the installation into 3DS Max very simple with a free download that contains a batch file and supporting files that will either install or uninstall the plugin with no other action required. Just a few clicks and you are on your way to using Auto Setup inside 3DS Max.
Go to the webpage to download the version or versions of 3DS Max applicable to your situation. Unzip the file and click on the installation batch file. It’s that simple.
Auto Setup Import Versus Standard FBX Import
Seeing is believing so let’s take a look at what happens when you import a character FBX directly into 3DS Max versus using the free Auto Setup plugin. In the image below the LEFT-SIDE character was imported into 3DS Max with the Auto Setup plugin. The RIGHT-SIDE character was imported via the standard import menu choice in 3DS Max bypassing the plugin.
As you can see the difference is day and night. I adjusted the skin roughness on the plugin-imported character to take out some shiny areas on the face and hands. This was easy as the plugin provides sliders under different tabs depending on the task you need to accomplish.
The Auto Setup Menu, Tabs, and Sub-Tabs
The Auto Setup Menu is the heart of the plugin and can be docked or free-floating. As the following menu breakdown shows, it has a LOT of options to help you get that right look and much-improved render.
I will be focusing on the native Arnold renderer as it produces great results without a lot of interaction and comes with the application at no additional cost. Any images rendered using Auto Setup in this article use Arnold which you select in the first tab of the Auto Setup menu.
The plugin interface is self-explanatory as you will see in the following overview. There are a LOT of CHOICES so experimentation is highly recommended and might even help you develop a personal render style for characters. There is also an online manual available.
This is where you import your CC4 characters into 3DS Max. This is the Import tab, the first tab at the top of the menu.
First, we must choose our renderer which has to be compatible with Auto Setup. This dropdown list is populated by the renderers available to 3DS Max on your system.
In my case, I had only one compatible renderer which was the native Arnold renderer. Even though it is native to the system it is not a second-class renderer by any means.
As mentioned earlier, if you for any reason import a character into 3DS Max via the standard import menu you will not get a nice-looking character as the materials will not match the renderer. This is the big advantage to using the plugin as it sorts all that stuff out for us. Even though Kai’s tutorial said it exported from CC4 I exported from iClone which produces the needed JSON file too.
Now we move the Look Dev tab and the Look Dev sub-tab. This is where the facial body lighting presets are located.
These are one-click presets that can be chosen while the renderer is running depending on the complexity of the scene of course.
There is also a one-click button to remove the lighting solution completely. This includes any props or other items loaded by the preset.
The presets can also be a great starting point as they provide lights that you can duplicate and move around to get that “just right” lighting setup before the final render.
There is also a Macbeth Chart for color matching that can be added and removed with a click.
The HDR sub-tab gives you a choice of four HDR images or you can load your own.
There is also a rotational offset slider and a general strength slider.
If you check Global Exposure, you get access to the Exposure Value slider and the White Balance choices such as Illuminant, Temperature slider, or Custom color.
Illuminant gives you many options like Daylight, Sunlight, Shade, Overcast, Incandescent, fluorescent, and many other choices including Halogen, Xenon, and Sodium among others. As in iClone and Character Creator 4, HDR is an important part of the overall scene lighting scheme and will produce results from dull to vibrant depending on your needs.
Now we are moving over to the Material tab and the Skin sub-tab in particular. All of these sub-tabs are fine-tuning for the overall look of the skin in the render.
Experimentation is encouraged, particularly if you are not familiar with all of the sliders so you can see the visual impact of each one.
Sub Surface Scattering is an important part of gaining realism in the render. Too much and areas of the skin will appear to glow. Too little and the skin will look dull and lifeless depending on the skin color. There is also a Head or Body selector for the second section of this sub-tab. This includes Normal Strength, Roughness, Specular, Micro Normal Tiling, and Micro Normal Strength.
These two panels contain a multitude of advanced sliders that control the Roughness on the left and Sub Surface Scattering (SSS) on the right.
While not exactly glamorous these two sub-tabs show just how much detail you can drill down to for added realism. Both include sliders for further enhancements to the nose, mouth, ears, cheek, forehead, and chin areas.
The wrinkle sub-tab provides pre-defined areas via the dropdown menu:
- Forehead Lines
- Frown lines
- Eyelid Crease
- Tear Troughs
- Bunny Lines
- Crow’s Feet
- Nasolabial Folds
- Lip Lines
- Smile Lines
- Marionette Lines
- Pebble Chin
- Neck Lines
- Neck Veins
Each selection has a slider for Strength and Rate of Appearance which is the speed in which a wrinkle appears.
According to Kai’s tutorial, the Wrinkle system is independent of the basic texture maps for an additional level of realism. Yet another area for experimentation even if you are familiar with the controls.
These two tabs control the facial expressions from the Face Rig tab (left) or create a custom body rig with the Body Rig tab (right).
Your character must have a facial profile to work with the Facial Rig and you can see this rig is quite extensive. It provided more than enough controls to create custom expressions for your characters inside 3DS Max. The Body Rig tab provides a one-click Biped or CAT rig if you prefer those control rig types.
Summary
I’ll admit to relegating 3DS Max to modeling and simulations since the advent of easier-to-use tools like iClone and Character Creator 4 became available. My 3DS rendering and rigging skills have suffered. With the preset lighting, it didn’t take long for this old Max veteran to start getting great renders. The presets provided a starting point to copy light and reflectors and then reposition them for additional lighting effects to further enhance the renders beyond the presets.
While there is a manual as I stated earlier, I think I only had to look at it briefly a couple of times as Auto Setup for 3DS Max is very easy to use with little to no learning curve like most Reallusion products. The extended facial rigging and ability to switch to Biped or CAT is another plus for Max veterans if that is the rig they are most proficient with.
The plugin is freely available for 3DS Max 2023, 2024 and 2025. Download your copy today!
MD McCallum – WarLord
Digital Artist MD “Mike” McCallum, aka WarLord, is a longtime iClone user. Having authored free tutorials for iClone in its early years and selected to write the iClone Beginners Guide from Packt Publishing in 2011, he was fortunate enough to meet and exchange tricks and tips with users from all over the world and loves to share this information with other users. He has authored hundreds of articles on iClone and digital art in general while reviewing some of the most popular software and hardware in the world. He has been published in many of the leading 3D online and print magazines while staying true to his biggest passion, 3D animation. For more information click here.
