[wauzie]

In my first english tutorial i want to explain the basics of edit poly in 3ds max.

Needs:
-3ds max

Step 1:

Open 3ds max and create a box with 5x5x5 segments.


Head over to Edit Poly (rightmouse on your box -> convert to editable Poly).
Select by vertex en press T to open the Top view.
Select the same vertexes as i do and hit the Scale tool. Scale the vertexes to each other.


Take the same vertexes as in the picture and move them to the right.


Move the other vertexes a little bit to each other to make the TV more realistic/smooth.



Now take the other vertexes and move them to the left.



The result from now on:



Now we are gonna do the same but now from the side, press L (left view). It should be something like mine, but make sure you got the right view by rotating your view a little bit, when it's ok press SHIFT + Z to undo the view change, otherwise press R (for the right view).


Move those vertexes like i do.



Take the same vertexes and scale them a bit to each other to make it a little bit smoother.


This is what we got, now we're gonna create a nice front.

[wauzie]

Head over to the Perspective/User view and select the same edges.


Now choose Loop so the whole 'circel' is selected (sometimes you only have to select one edges, but now we have to select one of each edge).


With these edges selected you have to press the button next to Chamfer (the circel in the picture is wrong).
In the amount settings you could set the distance between the 2 new edges, i took 1. Press OK.


Now select by Polygon and select the polygons who become the screen.


Scale these polygons until you got a good 'border'.


Use the effect Bevel by pressing the square next to Bevel. Bevel is almost the same effect as Extrude, but now you can scale the new polygons.



An old TV has got a convex screen so we are gonna create that too.
Open the tab Selection and choose Soft Selection. You'll the whole model moves when you move that polygon.


Move the polygon a bit outside.



I think the TV could get smoother, so selectect the same lignes as i do (with the loop function ).


Press Relax.



This post has been edited by wauzie on Sunday, Oct 30 2005, 11:17

[wauzie]

Now smooth the TV by using Chamfer.


Result, an old TV:



Result, with a MS smooth.



Thit was the end off my tutorial, i hope you'll learn from it.

[Kitteh]

Interesting approach, quite strange workflow.

[Augh]

Geez, that took a while to load <_>

Oki, great effort man, and thanks for putting a little more modeling howto out there, but there is a lot of ambiguities in this tut which make for a pretty bizarre workflow.

You're starting from a high density primitive and not really making use of maybe more than 50% of the edges, I don't even have half that many steps per side when I start to model a human head, let alone television, this is a little like reversed box modeling at the moment. Not really such a concern for high res portfolio stuff, but for a game model this would be horribly redundant.

Could use a little more information on why use such and such a tool generally, things like you seem to be using a relax to scale an edgeloop, but you didn't even touch on the existence of the scale tool, which is a real basic. Confused as to this one. Of course, there's some effect on the cornering, but you altered that back again with the very next step. Just strikes me as odd.

Personally I'm a complete chamfer whore, but I really would mention the difference between chamfers and smooth groups in terms of polygon counts, vertex counts and render calls, all this stuff gets fairly vital inside a game engine or any game modeling environment. On the subect of which, there isn't really any info on smooth groups, which the model doesn't appear to have any of either.

Soft select can be a very different beast depending on the envelope it's using Can't even be sure it's doing anything in the example shown, doesn't seem to be really, if it did the border would be inverted by the movement, given the low density of the screen, confusing again.

Turn is one of the most important functions out there once you're dealing with anything that'll be triangulated ingame. I can see on the corner of the screen a concave quad already, things like this are good to get covered early to teach good habits.

I guess that's about it, sorry to just dump a bunch of basically negative crits, as I said cool effort and thanks for it. Maybe try and work in some of these background infos next time though. A little knowledge goes a long way innit.

Nice one, cheers

[wauzie]

Thanks Augh . i'll try to work on these points. I now see that i'm using to much triangels/polygons. The next time i want to create a thing like this i'll use quickslice or something.

Btw, i looks like i'm using these effects all the time...but i wanted to show you what's possible with this functions .

[Augh]

Gotcha. It's a good idea, and noone's actually done it (I know it shouldn't really be necessary but well, it is), trying to think which functions I generally stick to in edit poly, there don't seem to be really that many, I do virtually everything via move, scale, extrude, cut, and connect, come to think of it. I never even got around to working in a poly splitter, I should really do that... Uh anyways, you gonna do a few more of these or just leaving it at this one? I was gonna write an unwrap one, but never got around to it.

Muhaha, why not start with a 1x1 cube? Serious question, I make most things outta 1x1 cubes these days, cube is the center of the universe. You ever use box modeling or not so much? It can be sweet for this kinda thing.

Cheers

[Suction Testicle Man]

If you want, you can report your first post and have this moved to the Tutorials Forum.

<3D

[wauzie]

Ok, you can move it .

[xmen]

how can i export *.txd