3dsm Tips and Tricks

[H-Hour]

1. Create useful names for all of your planes, shapes and pieces. Particularly if you are working with a building that is several rooms, naming all of the different parts with a prefix like "2_object" or "hall_object" will help you keep track of exactly which parts need to be grouped with a room.

2. I work a lot with editable meshes and a flipped normal modifier. After I flip the normal, I like to convert it to an editable mesh again. It will get rid of the Normal modifier, but the normal will still be flipped. This way I can edit the mesh with the normal still facing the way I wanted it to face so I can get immediate visual results of my vertex manipulation.

3. If you're getting to the latter stages of your map and you've got all the trees on, lighting can be extremely painful, with 15 or 20 minute updates. Save a new, working copy of your 3DSM file and delete all the trees from it. Now you can work from that file on any non-tree elements and export and light it much more quickly and easily. When you are ready to test it with trees again, you can go back to your original file, select all the trees and "Save Selected". Then, you can import the trees you saved into the new file.

And I have a question. Does anyone have any good tips for quicker texturing? I feel like I'm making things harder then they should be. For instance, when I want to texture all sides of a box with a certain texture, I have to detach a specific poly just to texture it, because I can't seem to figure out how to manipulate the Unwrap UVW layout thingy to work for all sides.

[GRT]

H-Hour dunno if this is what your talking about...hope it helps though..look at the time (cant sleep )

Edited March 26, 2004 by IF_GRT

[H-Hour]

Yeah GRT, the problem I always have with that, because I use a lot of RSE textures, is that I can't just use the entire texture. They merged all their textures together so I use that Unwrap UVW to line up all the edges, and so far I have had very little luck with lining up those edges unless I break up every plane seperately.

[deleyt]

so far I have had very little luck with lining up those edges unless I break up every plane seperately.

You don't have to break them up.

Either use the build in face-selector (click on the + infront of the Unwrap in the stack to bring it up)

Or you can use EDIT MESH: select your faces, and apply an Unwrap Modifier.

If you want to change another face, simply add a new EDIT MESH, select your new faces again and apply a new Unwrapper.....and on..and on..an on..till you got all sides covered.

[H-Hour]

Thank you thank you thank you Deleyt. I knew there had to be a way to do it faster.

[Sarc]

2. I work a lot with editable meshes and a flipped normal modifier. After I flip the normal, I like to convert it to an editable mesh again. It will get rid of the Normal modifier, but the normal will still be flipped. This way I can edit the mesh with the normal still facing the way I wanted it to face so I can get immediate visual results of my vertex manipulation.

There's also the flip normal tool in the faces sub-object mode. You could use this instead of a normal modifier if it's specific parts of an object you want to flip. It's located near the bottom of the modifier options. I think you can also access it through the quad menus. Right-click on the viewport while the object is selected and there should be an option in the upper-left menu.

[San]

Use save as... and then hit the + button

Now it will save with a number at the end of the filename (mymap01.max).

This way you can always go back to previous saves if you made a mistake.

[porschefan8]

wrong topic, sorry.

Edited July 13, 2004 by porschefan8

[porschefan8]

I recently ordered a book on amazon.com that comes with the max 5 demo disc. If this:

Discreet has confirmed that Hotfix 823980 – contained in the Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 - causes the corruption of 3ds max and Autodesk VIZ (.max) files.

is already installed and I start making files in max, will the files have problems, or does the service pack only cause problems if you already have .max files on the system and then you install the service pack?

[porschefan8]

I'm trying to reply to the "3ds max tips and tricks" topicm, but obviously it isn't working as it keeps posting my replys in this topic.

:wall:

Edited July 13, 2004 by porschefan8

[Biro]

Terrain Tutorial

I have captured a little tutorial on video on how to create a terrain in 3d Studio Max by using editable polygons. My english is a bit bad, but you will see and understand how to create some shapes with a little amount of polygons. Most beginners starts out by using a displacement map, this looks good, but has some bad sides as it's hard to shape it up exactly as you want it and it also takes up some more polygons. Others start by creating a plane with alot of polygons and edit this, but this can be very timeconsuming and it's hard to get the right shapes on it.

This video is very simple and I haven't used a extreme amount of polys here, as I didn't have to much time to edit the vertices. (The video is for beginners in Max.)

The video shows some basic things:

*Inserting vertices.

*Using "CREATE" to create new polygons between vertices.

*Using "Left-Shift" to extrude new polygons from edges.

*Using the "CUT" tool to create new shapes as rocks and stones in the ground.

*Using "TARGET WELD" to join up two vertices till one.

*Using "Backspace" to delete vertices from a edge.

*Others tips I don't know about I guess.

The video last for 11 minutes and it's on 25MB in a .zip file. You will need Xvid-Mpeg4 codec to view it.

DOWNLOAD HERE!(ftp://guest:enjoy@66.250.220.145)

And this is how it turned out after some more tweaking:

Have fun!

Edited August 8, 2004 by Alpha_Biro

[San]

SANLove virus

It's not mine

[deleyt]

Very informative Biro! I'm sure that will help a lot of the beginning mappers.

I'm wondering why on earth you're making a video at 03.30 in the morning though...don't you have other things to do at that time?

[Biro]

In the morning though...don't you have other things to do at that time? 

Lol, no, my girlfriend was out of town and I work best at the nights when there's quite around me.

San, you have problems with virus or is it me?

Edited July 24, 2004 by Alpha_Biro

[GRT]

Im having problems watching it. Whats really strange is its crashing my pc . I downloaded the codec the tried to watch it in WMP and winamp and what happens is my screen goes black and i can heard your voice but dont see nothing. Dunno why it does this.

[Biro]

Hmm...that's weird GRT, it should work as Deleyt had watched it. You can try to download and install the 6in1 codec pack. That's the one I'm using and it works here.

http://www.codecpack.com/allin1.php

Edited August 8, 2004 by Alpha_Biro

[GRT]

Dunno what it is alpha..i downloaded that allin1 and it still goes black screen then when i try to press esc or any button it crashes my pc and tells me to restart.

[Biro]

Hmm, ok, it has to be something with your PC cause I know atleast 3 guys that have seen it (Deleyt, Sleeper and Chiel_Mic). Hard for me to say what it is as I'm on the other side of the globe...

[Zeko]

@RR_GRT : GSpot will tell u what codecs u r missing.

[deleyt]

Stumbled upon this site with some realy good and easy step-by-step tutorials regarding modeling in 3D Studio.

Definitly worth checking out for any wanna-be modelers:

Onno Van Braam's Website

[BornToKill]

Although this link is a Photoshop tutorial, but could be extremely useful for a modder making their own Seamless Tileable textures.

http://egir.dk/index.php?page=wal_tiling/wal_tiling.htm

[Biro]

Building tutorial by Biro

Download HERE!

Ok, I have made a very basic building tutorial, showing off how to do some operations in max with buildings. It's 15mb and is hosted by Zeko. Thank you man!

Here's a short explanation to the video as I didn't wanna put sound on it because of the size and my sexy voice:

First off I have created a box with 2 length segs. I use polygon mode to delete the edges I don't need with BACKSPACE key. This is to save unnecessary polygons. Next I raise the two vertices I wanna use to shape a roof. Next I connect two and two vertices on top of the walls so I can extrude them to make the house look a bit better.

Next I create three new boxes. One for the window, one for the door and one for the inside of the house and then I used boolean to create it right. The basic layout for the house is now done.

As you can see I have set up two textures for my house. One for the inside of the house and one for the outside. I go to editable mesh mode and polygon mode and then I select the polygon on the outside walls of my house. Then I apply the texture. Next I use Unwrap UVW to texture the house right. Select two and two sides to get it right. If you select all four sides I think it will mess up the textures on two of the sides.

Then I start to select all inside walls (and I get a message from Boris..sorry!) I detach this wall as I might wanna group this walls as room2. (_02). This is not necessary in all situation, sometimes it's just as good as just leave the inside of the house in room 01 aswell and use occluders in the walls instead. I texture one of the walls aswell.

Now I select two of the polygons that makes my doorframe and delete this ones using the DELETE button. During boolean operations it can happen that this polygons is not there and because of that I wanna show you how to get them back.

Now I had to attach the outside to the inside there again to get it right, so the first three sided polygon I made was wrong as you could see. I went to editable poly mode and used create to create a new polygon. I detach the inner walls again after I have done this operation.

Last I create the roof for the house. Notice that it miss a polygon on the backside there. I used Border and cap to create that one.

Hope you learned something and if anybody else have other ways to do some of this things I would like to know that so we can share some knowledge.

[Zeko]

Very nice tut Biro! I'm sure it will come handy for begginers.

[sleeper]

Awesome. I'm downloading it now, if it's anything as good as your terrain tutorial we should have some of these new guys cranking out quality maps in no time. My modelling skills can always use a great amount of improvement and i'll be sure to point the new guys your way too.

[deleyt]

The tutorial is good but some procedures can be done a lot faster, easier and a lot more precise.

But it's a good start and that's what counts ofcourse.

Edited October 27, 2004 by |rsi|™deleyt