Geometric Theory

The basic knowledge you need to know about modelling is polygons. Basically primitives are made up of lots of different polygons, the more polygons the high quality the primitive is. A primitive is made up of lots of vertices and lines. Vertices are points in 3D space that are shown in 3DS Max, when these vertices are connected together this creates a line, and 3 or more lines connected together create a polygon.

Figure 1

To start off I will be following a basic tutorial in order to build my skills with 3DS Max. The tutorial I will be using is from CG Tuts and it is to create a robot arm. It is only a basic tutorial yet the skills I will be using will be helpful later on in order to design more complex models.

I will start off by making a basic primitive which will be the base of the Robot Arm. This was added using the tool bar to the right of the screen. You need to click on the "Create" menu, then select standard primitives from the drop down menu, and then select "Cylinder". This allows you to drag a cylinder into the scene and scale it how you wish. Which is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 2

This is the basic method of creating models within 3DS Max. You have a lot of choice when it comes to creating just simple primitives, these can range from simple squares to complicated spheres as you can see from figure 2. It is a very useful tool for making objects to go into a scene, such as desks and chairs.

Figure 3

Figure 3 shows how you can place simple primitives on the scene and create an object that you can place into the scene. Of course this is only the beginning but you can see how it can be changed into something detailed.

After designing the basic shape of the robot arm, I needed to add more depth and detail to the model. This is where more complex tools come into play. I started with the back blue box at the bottom. I needed to give it a curved edge. I used the "Connect" tool in order to add more lines to my primitive. I selected one of the lines and used the "Ring" tool to select the lines I needed.

Figure 4

Within figure 4 it shows me using the connect tool to add another line to the primitive, which adds more polygons, thus making the primitive more complex. Within the Connect tool I can "Pinch" and "Slide" lines across my primitive, which allows me to get an accurate lines.

After adding the lines I needed I can then move vertexs around and manipluate the shape.

After this I can copy the primitives by moving the shape holding "Shift" on the keyboard. This allows me to either create an exact copy of the shape, a instance shape ( which I will go into more detail later) . This will saves me time when I am designing complex shapes.

Figure 5

After I have duplicated the shape upwards, I can move onto curving the top copyed primitive. This is shown within figure 5 . This is done using the chamfer tool. The chamfer tool adds more lines into shape to curve an edge. This can be very usful to ensure a smooth curve. Once this was completed I added more primitives into this base model which adds necessary detail.

The cylinder base model needs more detail, and I need to add another cylinder on top, but a lot smaller and in the middle. To do this I decided to take a different route to just copying it upwards like I did with the box.

Figure 6

I first selected the top face of the cylinder and used the "Inset" tool. What this tool does is that it creates another circle with in the top face of the cylinder itself as figure 6 shows. After this it done, I can select the face of the smaller circle and then extrude upwards to create a small cylinder ontop of the previous one. This is a very quick way of creating this, and it is very accurate because it will create it directly in the middle of the primitive.

From this I need to change the middle rectangle that is sitting onto of the cylinder and change this into another shape. I am using this rectangle as a template to ensure that I get the right size for the primitive I want to place there.

Figure 7

I want to put a curved box in its place, and to do this, I created a small cylinder inside the box and then selected all the vertexs on one side, and moved them away from each other and then placed it correctly within the box. As you can see from Figure 7, the box was just used to make sure the cylinder fits in the right place and is scaled correctly. Once the cylinder is in place, the box was deleted.

After this I want to create a cap to go on the ends of the cylinder I just created. These will act as hinges for the arm. In order to create this I will create a sphere and then modify it in order to design the right primitive for the job I need.

Figure 8

I created a basic sphere within the model, to ensure the the circumference of the sphere is correct, then I selected all of the vertex's on one side and deleted them. This left me with half of a sphere that will atact onto the end of the box.

From this I selected the vertex's on the end of the sphere and deleted them, and then used the "Cap" tool to fill in the gap and create one polygon in its place. After this I used the copying technique I used earlier to copy the sphere across and ensure its a perfect duplicate of the original.

Figure 9

After this was completed I went on to change the arms bottom half. I needed to make the box that was already in place split in half, to create two arms that have a gap in them. From this I used the connect tool again to create two lines that create the depth of the new arms, figure 9 shows this. After this was completed I selected the polygons on either side and then deleted them, and used the "Cap" tool again to fill in the gap that is left.

Figure 10

After this was done I moved onto the top half of the arm. This is where I needed to create an instance of the shade. This is because the primitive I am changing is at a angle. This would be very hard to model on, so a instance copy allows me to move the copy and change the angle of the shape and work on a flat surface, and any changes I make to the shape will effect the orginal to.

Figure 11

I will be changing this basic primitive Box into a more complex shape using different objects that I will create inside it and replace it. I start off by dublicating the shape I made for the base and placing these inside the model. Then I spread these apart, atacted them to the model to ensure the original shapes have them, and then deleted the Box. This left me with two shapes that are floating in mid-air as figure 11 shows. Now I need to make something to attact them

Figure 12

From this, I created another primitive, this time just a simple cylinder, that I will place just before the first box I just created. The from this I wanted to make these connect. I started off by selecting a face and then dublicating it out, and scaling it to be just bigger than the orginal. From this I selected vertex's that are on the right hand side ( as shown in figure 12), then I move these vertex's outwards and cover the front of the other cylinder. Then I move this shape in so its touching the two shapes and attact it onto the shapes to ensure that the orginal has been changed. Then I copied it over to the opposite side and did the same.


After the body was made, I could delete the copied model, and this left me with a completed original in its place. Now to start modelling the head of the robot.

Figure 13

I started by chamfering the top and bottom of the head in order to make the head look realistic and not look box like. This was done by selecting the lines around the top of the box and using the chamfer tool, which makes it smoother. I only want to make it slightly curved so I will only use 1 segment and 0.8% chamfered within the tool itself, as figure 13 shows.

Figure 14

After this was done, I created a cylinder to be attached the the side of the head, and mirrored it across, to add more detail, and somewhere for the pincers to move from. This makes the overall head look more realistic.

Figure 15

After this was done, I went onto designing the pincers, by making two boxes and moving the vertex around to morph the box into an object that I was pleased with. See figure 15 for reference.






After this was done I attached it onto the body and the robot arm was completed! and the tutorial was finished. Here is how the arm looked after the tutorial was finished.

Figure 16

As with anything that you create in 3DS Max, you can always add bits onto it to make it look better and more detailed. I will now add detail that was not in the tutorial but what I decided to add. This was done to make the robot arm look more realistic and to help me develop my skills further as a 3D modeller.

Figure 17

I started with the base of the model once more. I wanted to make sure that it looks right, and it looked like it would work, so I added more cylinders around the base. This was done by using the basic primitive tool and creating a cylinder. Then I used the extrude tool to heighten the cylinder and selected the top vertex's and scaled them inwards, as shown in figure 17. Then I used the extrude tool again but extruded downwards to create a cylinder with a hole in the top. Then I copied the cylinder around the base of the model to make it symmetrical.

After this was done I continued to add basic primitives around the base of the model to add the further detail I wanted, shown in figure 18. In doing so I was increasing the polygon count of the model which makes the file size a lot bigger. This was only a practise model so I was not concerned about make it to big.

Figure 18

Figure 19

After this was done I wanted to make wires that stretched from the base of the model to the upper body. This was done using the line tool. The line tool is simple to use, and can be very effective. You select the line tool from the same tool panel you find your basic primitives from, and you draw the line where you want it to be. 

Figure 20

After this is done, you need to highlight all of hte vertex's you have just created except for the end ones. Then you need to right click on them and choose smooth from the menu. This makes the line you just created smooth and not have sharp edges. Then you can move the vertex's around to make it wrap around the objects you want. This is all show in figure 20.

Figure 21

From this you need to select the rendering tab from the modify panel and enable these following settings to ensure that the line is created into a wire. "Enable in Render" "Enable in viewport and you need to increase the thickness of the line to how thick you want your wire.

After these details were added this is how my modelled looked.

Figure 22

Lighting


After I have modelled the robot arm, I needed to give it a scene and basic textures in order for it to look real. lighting will also be added to the scene in order to give the model realistic shadows.

Figure 23

To start off I needed to add a simple plane for the model to sit on and have a shadow on it. From this I need to add simple lighting which is called a sky light, this just gives the model a base lighting to ensure that you can see everything when you render it.

Figure 25

After this has been inputted we need to add more directional light in order for the model to cast a shadow. Within figure 24 you can see the rendered model with shadows turned OFF in the side menu, you need to make sure you select "Shadows On" to make sure everything casts a shadow.




Texturing


From this I want to texture a few parts of this model in order to show you how to do a simple texturing. This is the simplist way of texturing your models in 3DS Max, in order to get a better quailty render and textures you need to spend a lot of time of the model. If you have a brilliant model but bad textures your model overall will look bad.

Figure 26

From this you need to Go into the material editor and select one of the presets, then you need to make sure you select Diffuse colour which is the base colour of the model. If the Diffuse colour is set to bitmap this gives the colour a picture, which can be a texture. After adding this in, you can add glossiness or ambient colour to edit these texutres further to get a better quailty texturing. As I said eariler you can spend hours texturing a model to ensure that it looks good. After you are happy with the texture you have you can drag and drop it onto the primitive you want to texture. For example in Figure 26 I dragged the texutres onto the base of the model.

Figure 27

Camera

After this if you want to record your model for animation purposes you need to adda camera into the scene. The keyboard shortcut for this is CTRL C, which is not to be used if you want to copy and paste, as you will add more cameras into the scene accitendally.










Wire Frame

Figure 28

Wire frame modelling is very useful, because it lets the user see all the lines and vertex's in your model without seeing the sides, so it will allow you to see all the lines clearly so you can select and edit them without the need  for constantly changing the camera angle because you cannot see.
For example within figure 28, you can see all the lines in the chair and you can see through it and see the top of the base and all of the legs. This is very handy if you want to move things around such as vertex's and lines.


Now I will explain a powerful and simple tool , which is extrusion modelling, this is where you create a simple primitive and change it into a complex one by selecting faces and extruding them outwards to change the shape of the object.


Extrusion Modelling

Figure 29

We start with a simple cylinder within the centre of the screen, using the "create" tool panel, and then go to simple primitives from the drop down menu. From there we want to create a hole in the middle, the easiest way to do this would be to copy the object and use the "boolean" primitive and use the copy as a template.

Figure 30

As you see from Figure 30 you need to stay on the "create" tab and then go to "Compound Objects" in the drop down menu and select "Boolean" then you will need to select "Pick Operand B" and select the object you copied inside the cylinder, this with create a nice hole in the middle of your object. After this is done, change the Boolean object back into a Editable Poly.

Figure 31

After this is done change the mode into vertex mode, and select the top outer vertex's, that's the vertex's that circle the outer rim of the cylinder, like Figure 31 shows, and then use the scale tool to scale the vertex's in on each other to create a curved edge.

Figure 32

Now you need to select the polygon tool in the editable poly tool bar down the right hand side of the screen. Once this is selected you need to select every other poly within the centre of the cylinder, use Figure 32 for an example as to what I mean.

Figure 33

From here we will finally use the extrusion tool! select it from the polygon tool bar, with your polygons still selected and extrude them all outwards towards the centre until they all meet in the centre and form a wheel like object, as show in Figure 33.

Figure 34

After this is done you need to select all of the middle vertex's of the extrusion you just created, and pull them upwards so the arms are all facing upwards. After this is done, select only the top vertex's and scale them outwards so it creates a slanting edge that slants towards the middle.
After this is done this is a lot more complex that what we started with, and you can go on to edit it even more to create even more complex models.


Extrusion modelling can be a very quick way of creating a model that you need to put into a scene. For example what I was creating here was a globe stand to go on a desk within a scene for a bedroom. I will show you the finished globe within the scene.

Figure 35