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

Forming the base model


If you are working to a set scene scale in order to match your model with other models, you can scale your reference planes once you have set their relative size. Scale using Local transform and set Use Pivot Center and the two planes will scale individually from their pivots.

A starting scene ModelStart.max is provided in the next section, which has been scaled down to about one-third of its original size, to better fit the model's export scale, to the game level it is intended for. It continues from the point where the last section finished.

From this point on I'm going to assume you're using the preset UI \Packt3dsMax\UI Settings\Packt2013_UI.ui. You can load it from Customize | Load Custom UI Scheme.

To get started on modeling, for this model, we should probably start with a box rather than a sphere, even though the general form is spherical, because of the way that a sphere's edges gather into triangles at the top and bottom into a pole. Triangles, especially those...