Week 2 pushed us deeper into the world of 3ds Max. We were taught some of the interface and the commonly used windows and panels and how to operate them. Most important was the command panel which is split up into tabs according to function. Everything you need to create, manipulate and animate objects can be found here.
In 3ds Max, you can directly affect geometry objects and you can transform two dimensional objects into three-dimensional geometry. Extruding, beveling, lofting, and lathing are just some of the ways to create geometry from splines.
Making a Chest of Drawers is a good way to show all of this in action.
Start off with a cube and modify the parameters to suit your needs. Have height segments too as this helps later on. Select all of the box and covert to editable poly!
Select the top polygon of the dresser and start beveling!
I used 6 bevels to get the curve right!
While we are still in Poly sub object we start work on the bottom of the dresser
Start using the extrude panel to carefully pull the bottom of the dresser away and insert (on the same panel) to move the polygons towards the center.
After extruding and inserting;
To cut a design I selected the relevant polygons, locked the selection. Then turned off shaded edge mode (F2) this selects the poly by highlighting the edges of the poly not the face then edit geometry panel to select the slice plane tool.
Using slice plane tool, select quad menu and rotate the splice tool 90 degrees on the y axis.
Then I cut 4 slices at each end of the dresser, I want to be able to precisely move individual parts to form a design.
After four slices on each end are maneuvered into the correct position;
Next we need drawers;
Splice the middle of the top six polygons, then extrude & insert like I we did for the bottom of the dresser to make drawers stand out. Then do the same for the other drawers at exactly the same calculations.
Using splines and a few surface creation tools we create the drawer knobs for the chest.
Here’s a quick rundown of what a spline is: a spline is a group of vertices and connecting segments that form a line or curve. To create the knob profile, we are going to use the line spline, shaped in the outline of, you guessed it, a knob.
Step 1, select the line tool from the shapes panel in the create tab. Draw roughly a door know like the photo it doesn’t matter if if goes squiggly we can adjust it by selecting one of its sub object modes, I used vertex and by just moving one of them I got the required effect.
Then all you need to do is rotate the knob and stick it in the appropriate place,
then clone it horizontally and vertically and align them correctly.
To cut a design I selected the relevant polygons, locked the selection. Then turned off shaded edge mode (F2) this selects the poly by highlighting the edges of the poly not the face then edit geometry panel to select the slice plane tool.
Using slice plane tool, select quad menu and rotate the splice tool 90 degrees on the y axis.
Then I cut 4 slices at each end of the dresser, I want to be able to precisely move individual parts to form a design.
After four slices on each end are maneuvered into the correct position;
Next we need drawers;
Splice the middle of the top six polygons, then extrude & insert like I we did for the bottom of the dresser to make drawers stand out. Then do the same for the other drawers at exactly the same calculations.
Using splines and a few surface creation tools we create the drawer knobs for the chest.
Here’s a quick rundown of what a spline is: a spline is a group of vertices and connecting segments that form a line or curve. To create the knob profile, we are going to use the line spline, shaped in the outline of, you guessed it, a knob.
Step 1, select the line tool from the shapes panel in the create tab. Draw roughly a door know like the photo it doesn’t matter if if goes squiggly we can adjust it by selecting one of its sub object modes, I used vertex and by just moving one of them I got the required effect.
Choose Modifiers, Patch/Spline, Editing, Lathe. Go to Parameters rollout and under the Align Heading, click the Max button. It’s a knob! You just have to change the alignment of the axis so the lathe revolution would be correct. Rotate the Perspective view so you can see the top of the knob. You should notice a strange artifact. To correct this, check the Weld Core box under the Parameters rollout for the lathe.
Then all you need to do is rotate the knob and stick it in the appropriate place,
then clone it horizontally and vertically and align them correctly.
