3D Modeling at North

North High isn't just an Arts school. It's an Arts & Media school. To that end, the students enrolled at North have not just the opportunity to pursue traditional art classes such as ceramics, but also technology-intensive courses that allow students to work hands-on with the same cutting-edge technology and software as today's premiere design professionals.

Many of the courses here involve products from Adobe. Currently, Adobe mainstays such as Flash, Photoshop, InDesign, Dreamweaver, and Premiere Pro are all used extensively by the Arts & Media students here on campus.

In addition, all student stations here at North have the complete Adobe CS3 Design Premium Suite installed to give students the best possible access to these applications.

In the area of visualization and animation, students at North use a modeling, rendering, animation package called Autodesk 3ds Max.

What is 3ds Max?

We could describe it for you, but why re-invent the wheel when Wikipedia has done the work for us?

"3ds Max is the third most widely-used off the shelf 3D animation program by content creation professionals according to the Roncarelli report. It has strong modeling capabilities, a flexible plugin architecture and a long heritage on the Microsoft Windows platform. It is mostly used by video game developers, TV commercial studios and architectural visualization studios. It is also used for movie effects and movie pre-visualization.

In addition to its modeling and animation tools, the latest version of 3ds Max also features advanced shaders (such as ambient occlusion and subsurface scattering), dynamic simulation, particle systems, radiosity, normal map creation and rendering, global illumination, an intuitive and fully-customizable user interface, and its own scripting language. There is also a plethora of specialized renderer plugins that can be bought separately, such as V-Ray, Brazil r/s , Maxwell Render, and finalRender."

Can I learn 3ds Max at North High?

Absolutely. To learn more about the animation classes offered here at North High, please contact Mr. Mederios.

Where have I seen 3ds Max in action?

Can I see examples of work done by former students?

We thought you'd never ask. Click here to see our students 3D Modeling Gallery.