Chapter 1, First Launch: Getting To Know 3ds Max, covers starting from scratch with 3ds Max. This chapter should help you get up to speed. It covers the essential starting points for those making their first launch into 3ds Max.

Chapter 2, Model Shakedown: Make 3ds Max Work for You, examines model handling using readymade assets. The main asset is a rapidly constructed vehicle used for testing a prototype game. Our purpose is to cover the necessary model handling skills before we undertake actual modeling in the next chapter.

Chapter 3, The Base Model – A Solid Foundation in Polygon Modeling, covers getting started on a model, starting with a reference image. We'll examine the modeling skills needed to create a base model. It also introduces the challenge of constructing forms that match a design while keeping within the constraints of four-sided topology, with an eye towards surface-detailing requirements.

Chapter 4, Mod My Ride: Extending upon a Base Model, demonstrates ways in which various modifiers can be used to adjust modeled content quickly. The main emphasis is to provide alternative designs with little work by modifying existing content. We also cover basic concepts for soft-surface modeling, smoothing groups, and generating geometric models from shapes or curves.

Chapter 5, The Language of Machines: Designing and Building Model Components, demonstrates the usefulness of developing an internal library or vocabulary of visual memes for your tech, mech, and hard surface models. It is very difficult to make a fictional model of a man-made object without some familiarity with how real man-made objects get their look, especially in terms of fabricated or manufactured detail. In this chapter, we'll analyze some prevalent ideas about depicting 'sci-fi' tech along with time-saving methods for constructing parts to reference in models.

Chapter 6, The Cutting Edge: A Closer Look at 3ds Max Polygon Tools, examines newer features related to modeling in 3ds Max 2013 such as the Freeform tools, live cutting, edge loop modes, and some of the more peripheral modeling tools that are nevertheless really handy to know, such as working with Boolean compound objects.

Chapter 7, The Mystery of the Unfolding Polygons: Mapping Models for Texturing, demonstrates methods of UV Mapping and stresses the importance of becoming fluent in the process of preparing a model for texturing a stage, which bridges modeling and texture painting while calling on somewhat different skills. The challenge is simply to put a 3D surface onto a 2D image plane. 3ds Max's mapping toolset ensures the user is well-armed to meet the challenge.

Chapter 8, Custom Body Job: Painting using Viewport Canvas, shows how the extensive tools in Viewport Canvas can be used to directly paint on a model with texture coordinates, with many direct comparisons to Photoshop painting tools. We go through material and channel setup, brush settings and hotkeys, and approaches to importing layer content, managing custom brushes, and using layer masks to paint non-destructively.

Chapter 9, Go with the Flow Retopology in 3ds Max, shows different ways to get a highly detail model down to a useable polygon count without losing key detail from the original, primarily looking at the brush-based PolyDraw tools.

Chapter 10, Pushing the Envelope – Model Preparation for Animation and Games, walks you through the envelope weighting, paint brush weighting, and vertex weighting tools in the Skin modifier, which is used to bind a mesh to a rig. In this case, we use CAT to provision a rig and we use SkinWrap to match a low-resolution version of a skinned model to a higher resolution version.

Bonus Chapter, Containers and XREfs, discusses Xref and Containers. We will learn how to create and edit a Container. We will also learn how to use Xref and Xref scene.

You can download the Bonus Chapter from http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/Containers_and_ XRefs.pdf.

The following software are required:

This book will appeal to anyone interested in 3D modeling who wants to improve their speed modeling ability, particularly artists whose work is relevant to industries where hard surface modeling or model prototyping is required, such as games, films, or visualization.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "You may like to try the ModularToolbarsUI, which exposes more than what the default UI does."

While there are very few cases where code is referenced, a block of code is set as follows:

FOR batch in selection DO
(
local newUVW = Unwrap_UVW()
addmodifier batch newUVW
newUVW.pack 0 5.0 true false false
)

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "In the menu bar at the top of the screen, go to the Create menu and choose

Standard Primitives | Box".

Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <[email protected]>, and mention the book title via the subject of your message.

If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.

Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.