Turkish Tutorial Series: Basic 3ds Max Tools

[Turkish]

Hello and welcome to the Discovery GC developer's den, otherwise known as the +1 I would tap that taproom. Some of you have probably wanted to start modding freelancer and developing content for Discovery, and that's great. Of those of you that have I'll bet my left toe-sicle that you want to model ships.

That's also great, ships are a great way to learn the basics of using any 3d modeling application. What you learn playing around and reading tutorials can be applied to any program once you have a grounding in it's tools and UI, and that's what I'm here to help with.

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On first glance the user interface for 3ds Max is fairly complex and daunting, you have drop-downs, buttons, tools, mouse-overs, the works essentially. First thing to tell yourself: These are all here for a reason. Down the line you can edit your UI to suit you needs, however for the extent of this tutorial I'll be using the default UI config. With that said let's get started.

• Take note that from here I'mm be referring to the User Interface as the UI.
  

This is the default 3ds Max viewport configuration, Front, Left, Top, and Perspective. Each viewport offers it's unique orthographic view of your model (perspective excluded). From these, the perspective view especially you'll begin to grasp the shape of your model and hopefully be able to edit it better as a result.

Viewport configurations can be cycled, saved, and edited from your preferences (as with most things). I will not be touching on this however, I'm advising you to play around.

Select and Move



This is the Select and Move icon, it allows you to manipulate your mesh along the X, Y, and Z axies. It allows you to do this both as a solid object and as sub-object types, eg. Vertex, Polygon, Edge.

It is one of the most useful and most used tools within the 3ds Max itself.

Rotate



As Select and Move is to manipulating an object along the horizontal, vertical, and diagonal Rotate is to rotation. With it you will be able to affect rotations on your object again both as a whole and as sub-objects.

Again, a very useful and readily used tool.

Scale



This is the scale tool, it's primary function serves to upscale and downscale your mesh. What this means is that with it you can make your mesh smaller or larger. Along with this basic functionailty comes more non-linear scaling options.

Holding down on the icon for a moment will allow you to <strike>check these out</strike> play with them.

Orbit



I'm touching briefly on this one, it's afairly straight forward tool to manipulate your perspective view. Using it you can pan and rotate your camera angle to get a better and more complete view of your mesh.

Select by Name



Again, very simple and very useful. When pressed this button will bring up a list of all objects in your scene by name (as well as giving a count).

An example of the list selection window.

Taking a break now from the overhead tools I'm going to move more towards the meat and potatoes of basic modeling, and for anyone familiar with the art will know what I mean. If you guessed primitives you're right (have a cookie on me).

Basic Primitives



What you see here are the basic primitves that are included in 3ds Max. These include cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones, etc. They're given the name primitives because of their simple mesh and shape. Don't let that fool you though, primitives are some of the most used shapes in modeling.

Modifiers



Modifers are at the core of modeling, they allow for the manipulation and alteration of your mesh on many levels. The simplest being to edit it, some of the more complex ranging to mimicing and generating natural behaviours and reactions from your models.

Regardless of which modifier is chosen and how it's used they are your friends.

Material Editor

This is the 3ds Max material editor, it's where you'll be loading your texture files as well as crafting materials. In it's basic functionality it allows you to create materials in a variety of colours as well as with a variety of reactions to the lighting in your scene.

eg. Reflection and Refraction.

Learning to work fluidly with your material editor will be a true boon to your work flow.

Rendering



This is the drop-down menu for your rendering functions, as you can see you have options like Environment and Render Setup ontop of the obvious Render function. Simply clicking render will result in what it says, a render.

The results aren't glamorous but they are functional so exploring your features as well as the second rendering engine included with 3ds Max (MentalRay) is never a bad idea. The second aspect to this is the previously mentioned Render Setup button, these functions are integral to achieving a eye catching or pleasing render no matter which renderer is used. An example render has been included below.

• Render Setup can also be reached via the f10 button on your keyboard.
  

The 3ds Max Render Setup window.

Example render used with stock render settings. Default Scanline Renderer.

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That's the extent of what I'll be covering in this for now, there may be updates or additions on tools when I have the time to write more. If you have any comments, critiques, suggestions, or even requests on a specific tool or problem please contact me via PM (Private Message).

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I have a fetish for all things Norse.