3DS Max - Back to Basics

What is a polygon and how are they created?

Polygons are formed when there are at least 3 vertices connecting to each other.

A polygon begins with one single point. Upon inclusion of another point, a 'line' is drawn between the two vertices. Adding another vertices, in a location that allows the other two points to connect, to it forms a face in the space between the three vertices.

Simples.

Simple Animation

Here is an animation I slaved over a hot 3DS Max for;

http://youtu.be/JxjkizuBTa8

3D Environment - Final Images

Post Processing Effects - Glowing Sun

Firstly: Post = After. This effect will not happen in real time it will happen during the rendering process. To see any effect you must render the scene.

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In my finished environment, I was going to finish off the atmospheric effect it gives across by implementing a small sphere over the sun's image in my skybox and adding a glow to it. This is done with a post processing effect during rendering. Unfortunately I did not add this into my final outcome due to hardware limitations that caused the program to crash during the rendering process when this effect was implemented.

Regardless, I'm going to cover this very easy method of creating a glowing sphere that can look like a sun when positioned properly and merged with your scene's lighting.

Firstly, create your sphere. I'm doing this in a blank document on Max so it won't nearly have the effect it could, but make the sphere just big enough to engulf what you want to be the sun (in relation to the perspective you are rendering your scene from).

Go into the Material Editor ('M' is the keyboard shortcut) and set up a new material of 100% colour, of an orange/yellow/red setting. Drag that onto your sphere.

That's the 'hard' part done. With your newly created sphere selected, at the top click 'Rendering' and go to 'Video Post'. This will open up a new window. This is where you can add in new post processing effects to your scene, such as lens flares. These work great when combined with atmospheric scenes and well placed cameras. Along the top toolbar in the new window that opened up, click 'Add Scene Event'.

This will give you a prompt to change a few settings. Just set the drop down box to 'Perspective' and press Ok. This is basically telling the event what viewpoint you want it to render the effect with, so before you render set up in your perspective view how you want the scene to be viewed (i.e. with your camera).

You should see your new scene event (tagged as 'Perspective') in the queue system on the left of the timeline-esque area of the box. Click it, and the corresponding slider should highlight in red. Make sure it's not selected, then you need to add in an 'Image Filter Event'. This can be seen two buttons along from the 'Add Scene Event' button (the yellow box with the red ~ icon).

Click this for another prompt, and this time the drop down box is very important! This is the effect that's going to be rendering in post. For this tutorial, choose 'Lens Effect Glow' from the list, but feel free to experiment afterwards.

Click the 'Setup' button which can be located underneath the dropdown box. This will give you another new box with a bunch of sliders and numbers and all sorts of other buttons that bring up new boxes! This is where you can experiment in the future. For now, let's keep it simple. Tick the 'Effects ID' box and untick the 'Object ID' box.

Under the preview window, click both the 'Preview' box and the 'VP Queue' box and you should see your sphere. You'll notice that it's not glowing though - this isn't good, is it?

This is down to the material ID. If by some fluke you created the material earlier in the second box in the material editor, then it might be working, however if (more than likely) not, you need to set the material ID to correspond with the one in the effect's settings. Where it says 'Effect ID' (the box you ticked when you first got into this box) you may notice a number, which is by default set to 1.

In future projects you may need to change this to match your material ID, or vice versa. For now, leave it set to 1, click Ok on that window, then close the Video Post window that's still open. Now, open the material editor window again and click the material that has texture in it for your 'sun sphere'. 5 buttons from the left at the top of the material properties window lets you change the material ID, hold your mouse on this button and select the little '1' icon that pops up.



The material ID now matches with the one that the effect is searching for, as the number you input in the box indicates the material it will be effecting with the chosen post process effect. So if you set the effect ID to 15, then it will effect the material in your scene with the ID '15'.

Go back into your Video Post (Rendering > Video Post) and double click on the double-click the 'Lens Effects Glow' in the queue. Go back into setup, click preview and VP queue if they're deselected, and you should now see your glowing sphere!

In the 'Preferences' tab, you get a whole load of options that allow you to adjust your effect. Such as the size of your effect or the colour of it. You can also get some pretty cool effects on your effect in the 'Inferno' tab that lets you create effects that look a lot like those Plasma Globes you see lying around aimlessly.

Now, if you render your scene in the standard way, you will notice that your effect isn't there! Shock and awe!

You need to render using the video post window, so open it back up if you closed it (Rendering > Video Post). At the top tool bar, there's a running man silhouette icon that represents 'Execute Sequence'. Click this, then on the new box that pops up tick the 'Single' radio button at the top (to indicate it's a still and not an animation, which you would specify those frames in the 'Range' properties). You can also set the resolution of the image here, and other useful options (such as PAL or NTSC presets). Once you've set it how you need it, click the 'Render' button. This will render exactly what your perspective (remember this is what you set up in the queue) is seeing, but with any effects you've applied in the Video Post window.

Hope this helped.



The Final Outcome







This is going to show the process I went through to create a simple but effective rock to use in my 3D environment with Max. The only primitive used is a box, and then the rest are down to simple modifiers and editing variables in pre-defined materials to get the desired result.


The first step is to create the box, this is going to be your rock believe it or not. The issue with modelling the rock in this procedural manner is that you don't really notice the difference until you get close to the end of the modelling process (it's only an issue for the first time you are creating the rock.) Worry about getting it exactly how you want it to look when you've finished the modelling processes.

I created my box with 17x17x17 dimensions, and a lot of the numbers in the tutorial I use are used to compliment that size of box. It is a fairly small number, but you can always scale it up afterwards. Feel free to experiment with any numbers used in the post if they do not give you the desired / expected result.


Once you've got your box you need to add some modifiers to it. The first modifier is the 'Spherify' modifier. This will give the model it's general rock shape while preserving the sharp and rough profile of the box. You can leave this modifier out of the stack if you want to create cliff type rocks.


The next modifier is the 'TurboSmooth' which will give your rock a few smoother edges (generally, it smoothes the edges that are too sharp). This is a pretty essential modifier to keeping your rock look realistic, as you will also get issues with the texture without this modifier. Change the 'Iterations' variable of your 'TurboSmooth' modifier to 4/5 depending on the size of your rock and the speed of your computer. Mine is set to 4 as I see no difference when bumping it up any further for it to be worth the extra computing power.


The next modifier involves some of the pre-defined materials that were discussed at the beginning of this post. Add in a 'Displace' modifier to the stack, then under the variables change the 'Map' type to 'Spherical' by clicking on it's radio button. If you don't do this, it will only apply the displacement on a planar axis and so it will not affect your rock in the desired way. Setting it to spherical works cooperatively with the 'Spherify' modifier you added at the start. This process will be true for your model even if you don't add in the 'Spherify' modifier because you want to create cliffs.


You need to tell the modifier what texture it should use to displace the Under the 'Image' heading click the button that reads 'None' under the 'Map' sub-heading. On the list that appears, select (by double clicking your choice) 'Cellular' from it. You need to actually use this map as a material now, so press 'M' on your keyboard to launch the 'Materials Editor' window. Then, on the button that previously said 'None' but should now read 'Map #1 ( Cellular )' click and drag it onto an empty material space in the 'Materials Editor' window.


Still in the 'Materials Editor' window, select the Cellular Material that you just added in and create properties in it similar to what's below, you can adjust things like the 'Size' variable and the different colours to get desired effects for your specific rock. Feel free to play around with the properties, the chances of you breaking max through exploration is very unlikely. Just make sure you save your project.

I have no doubt you'll be coming back to this page when you are refining your rock when the procedural modelling process is over, so remember where it is and what parameters are important and what each one controls. You'll more than likely be focusing on the 'Cell Characteristics' parameters for refining the rock into a shape you desire. There's also a strength parameter on the 'Displace' modifier that you should adjust - for this tutorial just set it between -3 and -4.



The next step is to add another 'Displace' modifier - you can add in any amount of 'Displace' modifiers to your box model that you want, which means more detail but it also means longer render times. For this tutorial you only need one more 'Displace' modifier. Add it in now and we'll take a look at the properties of this one, including another map.


Change the 'Map' type to 'Spherical' like on the previously added 'Displace' modifier, then set the strength to 0.3. Click on 'None' under the 'Map' sub-heading like last time, and this time select (with a double click) 'Noise' from the list that appears. Drag this into an empty material slot just like last time, and on the new material you just created there are some changes you should make here too.


Under the 'Noise Parameters' heading of the material's properties, set the 'Noise Type' to 'Fractal' by clicking it's radio button. Adjust the 'Size' property depending on how frequent and obvious you want the noise in your rock to be visible. Play with the setting and get something you like, or just set it to 1.4 if you want to follow along with this tutorial. This modifier will give your rock some bump map style details.


Now finally, to remove the spherical looking style of the rock and make it look more like it's sitting on the ground, add in a 'Melt' modifier to the stack. You may not need this, and that's up to your own discretion when considering the application of the rock, but if you want it to be sitting on the ground the 'Melt' modifier is going to give it a flat edge at the bottom which you can sit the rock on.



The default values of the 'Melt' modifier should be sufficient to give you the look of a rock, but if not experiment until you've got what you want. You can get some very interested rock formation possibilities when changing the 'Solidity' property.


That's it for the modelling process really. You can adjust the 'Size' property in your 'Cellular' displacement modifier to get different variations of rock shapes and sizes. The only other real thing to do is texture your rock.


In most modelling situations, texturing would be done after a grueling UV process, but luckily for this type of model throwing a texture straight on works quite well. I simply dragged on a rock texture from CGTextures and it looks great.

Construction of my Shark in 3DS MAX

16/03/2011
Hey guys

Today I'm going to be going over the process that is the creation of my Shark in 3DS MAX. From thought bubble to textured model we will explore the processes required to achieve such a thing.

Here is the finished render:

One of the first thing you have to realise when creating this model is, just like creating a human character, you only craft half of the model then use a mirror modifier to add in the other half, then finish it off with a lovely mesh smooth, which we will cover much close to the end of this progressive blog post.

The only other thing I want to make apparent to you before this blog post begins on the actual topic stated, is that it is incredibly straight forward to create. It's all from one cylinder primitive and is just a series of extrusions with a chamfer here and there (up until the UVW and texturing process, of course.)

1. Preparing to Model

Before you begin the modelling process you want to have something to reference your model towards. In any real modelling situation, you will never be without a reference.

Whether it's industry work where you will have concepts and references drawn by dedicated artists, mod work where you will still have art drawn by yourself or other team members, or just portfolio work in which you will still want to acquire some reference images or create your own (for maximum quality, because there's no point putting in a dreadful looking model into your portfolio.)

I have found a reference and if you want to keep as close to my final outcome as possible you may want to use it, otherwise feel free to use your own. I can imagine any fish modelling process is extremely similar to this so take anything I tell you with a grain of salt if you're not following it to the tee.

http://i54.tinypic.com/4r52ep.jpg

I didn't draw this reference, I found it on the internet somewhere. I've provided it simply for your own personal use. 

Now that you've acquired that image, it's not a simple case of having it in Windows Picture Viewer and skipping between windows and crafting your shark in accordance to the image by eye. We're going to actually put it into 3DS MAX and craft the shark in exact scale to the image, which doesn't necessarily have to determine the final scale of your shark but makes sure each part of it is in proportion with the rest of your model.

So the first part in this tutorial, that actually requires some work in 3DS MAX, is setting up a plane for your image to sit on.

Under 'Standard Primitives' object types, select the plane button. Then draw out a plane in the top view of 3DS MAX, then rotate it 90 degrees. Use the other view ports to make sure it's rotated accurately, and make sure you know the directory your reference picture is saved in.

You need to set up your image in the material editor so you can apply it to your plane:

Once you've set up the image as a diffuse on a material slot, you can drag it onto the plane to apply it to the primitive.

 And that it's, you've got your reference image on a plane now, and you're going to be relying on it heavily during the creation of the shark. There's going to be a lot of selection that spans across the plane and the shark itself, so it needs to be frozen so it can't be selected accidentally.

Select the plane, and right click it then go to Object Properties. On the left hand side, under the interactivity sub-section, tick the Freeze box. If you want to unfreeze it in the future, you can right click on the gray background in the 3D port and click unfreeze all.

Now that's done, there's nothing left to do for setting up your plane and reference image so now it's time to move on to some actual modelling.

2. Beginning the Modelling Process

Remember how I mentioned at the beginning that the shark is one primitive? We're going to put that into practice now. Under the standard primitives object selection, select cylinder and draw one out in the top view.

Rotate it on it's side in the front view so it's in line with the beginning of the tail of the reference image. Scale the cylinder sideways until the opposite side is in line with the beginning of the shark's nose/face, then scale it vertically until it's in line with the shark's main body, excluding the fins, see below for clarity.

Once you've got that lined up, you need to set up the model so you can see through it and be comparing the primitive to your reference image throughout the modelling. To do that, select the cylinder and right click, then go to object properties. Simply click See Through which is just underneath the Freeze option that we used for the plane earlier. This will make it a lot easier to craft the primitive around the actual reference image.

Right click the primitive again and turn it into an editable poly.

This will allow us to modify and edit further our primitive, with methods such as extrusions and applying modifiers. A very vital step in the creation of our shark.

Now we need to start getting the basic shape of our shark. Back on the right hand side under the Selection heading, select vertex selection and select, in the front view, all the vertex points on the left hand side of shark. Then, scale them down until they're more in line with the body of the shark. If they aren't quite scaling into line, adjust the position of the shark as a whole then continue to scale the vertex points until they're as in line as possible. Future adjustments are possible so don't fret too much if you can't get it completely accurate.

Continue to do this for the rest of the model, but exclude the fins as they will be created with extrusions.

Delete half of the shark in the top view, as we will mirror it later and this will make it easier to create the fins from extrusions later.

Examples of Work - Jack Ryan

Hello,

Below are some links which provide examples of all types of work I have done, mostly 3D level design but there are some more misc. elements included too.


http://s725.photobucket.com/albums/ww253/JERorly/HL2%20Map%20Scene/

http://s725.photobucket.com/albums/ww253/JERorly/zm_disclosure/

http://s335.photobucket.com/albums/m452/grudge93/Mapping/Breaking%20Point/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhDxTJeRU0M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHPkgF4bGFQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc_v_21qYM4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxjkizuBTa8