Book Image

3ds Max Speed Modeling for 3D Artists

By : Thomas Mooney
Book Image

3ds Max Speed Modeling for 3D Artists

By: Thomas Mooney

Overview of this book

Production of 3D art is an exciting medium, but the task of modeling requires intense attention to detail, so speed and efficiency are vital. This book breaks down speed modeling workflow in 3ds Max into stages you can easily achieve, with a focus on hard surface modeling and methods you can apply to your own designs."3ds Max Speed Modeling for 3D Artists" will help level up your 3D modeling skills. It focuses on hard surface modeling, and shows the range of tools and techniques in 3ds Max 2013.This book shows content creation methods aimed at 3ds Max modelers preparing to show their skill to the industry. The key feature of modeling that artists must exhibit is speediness while preserving technical accuracy. The author helps you follow set project guidelines while pushing creativity and outlines the entire workflow from concept development to exporting a game-ready model.The book begins with introductions for new users to the interface and modeling tools, and progresses to topics aimed at users already familiar with 3ds Max, who want to improve their content creation process. You'll also see ways 3ds Max content is used with other applications, like sculpting software and game editors, and learn features of speed modeling, efficient workflow, re-use of content, and tips on getting more done, more quickly.By the end of this book you will have learned key topics in modeling, ready to face professional level work with elan.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
3ds Max Speed Modeling for 3D Artists
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Creating your own selection sets with Named Selections


In most scenes, you will have certain objects you select often. Quick access to these is very important. Also, some objects can be hard to directly select if they are surrounded by or covered by others.

By default, the H key is reserved for the Select by Name option, but if you take up the free script Outliner, you may have to change that. You can also use Named Selections, which lets you create a hot list of entries of your own. This rolls down from the main toolbar, as shown in the following screenshot, where it says Sky:

  1. Open Begin.max, and go to the expand icon for the Named Selection Set list and notice there is an entry Lines and an entry Sky. Click on Sky. This is a huge sky dome that provides a background for the scene. When you launch, it is hidden and frozen, but when you choose it, you'll see a prompt checking whether or not you want to reveal it. This prompt appears because its hidden state is set for its layer.

  2. You can either choose Yes, and the object will be revealed, or No, and the object will be selected but remain hidden. Its entire layer will be affected.

  3. Add to the list of Named Selections by choosing some objects in the scene and then typing an entry in the Create Selection Set text field where Sky is included. After typing, be sure to press Enter to commit the entry.

  4. Now you'll want to edit entries in the Named Selections list. Click on the icon next to the text field, or go to the Edit menu and choose Manage Selections Sets, which pops up the same window.

  5. Let's add an object in the scene to the existing set of Lines. Select Cylinder01 by using either Select by Name

    in the Named Selection Sets window's icon row, then press the Add icon

    .

The icons for managing objects include Remove

(which removes a list or objects from a list; it doesn't remove them from the scene), Select Objects in Set

(which works if you don't have them selected to start with), and Highlight Selected Objects

(which shows in the list the items currently selected in the scene if they belong to a given Named Selection Set). They are highlighted in blue.

Tip

Using a Named Selection is a good way to add a selection shortcut to each joint in a biped when you do character animation.