Getting started with 3ds Max - Part 2: Creating and editing your model

When I first tried the trial of 3ds Max, I had no idea what I was doing, and just assumed that everyone created their models from the basic shapes listed on the right (the Command Panel). However, that is not the case. You can watch the video above, or read the article below, they both cover the same material, but this article is more in depth.

Command Panel

The Command Panel consists of 6 tabs.

Create

Modify

Hierarchy

Motion

Display

Utilities

We will discuss the first two tabs in this blog entry. The first tab, the Create tab is where you will create a base for your model, something to work from. Most people will choose a Box or Plane, they are usually the easiest to manipulate. If you were to click on the drop down that says Standard Primitives, you will see more options, these will show you more objects to pick from.

If you notice, just above the words Standard Primitives, there are 7 icons, with the first being highlighted. These are more objects you can create, but they are different types. They are as follow:

Geometry

Shapes

Lights

Cameras

Helpers

Space Warps

Systems

We will just be talking about the Geometry type today.

It all  begins by creating your first object. To do this, click on the Box button on the Command Panel. Then, in any viewport, click and drag. This will create the first face of your box. Release the mouse button and you will see that the box moves with your mouse. The next time you click will set the height of the box. Right Click to exit creation mode, otherwise you will keep creating boxes. You can adjust the parameters for the box by adjusting the values in the Command Panel.

In order for you to see the segements change, you need to click on [Smooth + Highlights] and select Edged Faces or you can press F4.

Now for the most important part, making your object editable. There are two ways to do this. The first is that you can Right Click on your object and go to Convert To: and choose Convert to Editable Poly.

Or, you can go to the Modify Tab and add an Edit Poly modifier by choosing Edit Poly from the Modifiers List drop down menu.

Either method is fine, I will go into more details about the differences of the two methods in another blog post. Now that your object is editable, you can create any shape you want. To do this, you need to choose a mode in the Selection section of the Command Panel.

There are five selection modes you can use to edit your object:

Vertex

Edge

Border

Face

Element

After selecting a selection mode, there are three basic ways to edit your object via the Main Toolbar:

Move

Rotate

Scale

There are also several different ways to manipulate your object through the Command Panel. Each selection mode has its own different ways, and the Command Panel changes whenever you change selection modes. The video at the top of this entry goes through some of the different methods briefly.

The last thing I will discuss is how to navigate your viewports:

Pan - Hold down the Middle Mouse Button (MMB) to pan your screen.

Rotate - Hold down the Middle Mouse Button and the Alt key to rotate around your selected object.

Zoom - Use the scroll wheel on the mouse to zoom in and out.

Zoom Extents All - Press Z to have all of the viewports zoom to your selected object.

As I said before, I won't post many tutorials, but I thought it was important to cover the basics of how to use 3ds Max. I recommend that you just do a Google search for 3ds Max tutorials.

My favorite site for tutorials is Cgtuts+

http://cg.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/autodesk-3d-studio-max/