Syllabus
Week 1
Course
Introduction
Weeks 14
Thanksgiving
Holiday
Week 16
Final Project Due
Week 4 Notes
Editing meshes, Polys, and splines
Meshes and polys
Sub-objects
Soft selection
Mesh and poly editing commands
Editing splines
Mesh exercise:
Create a sphere. Use the Edit Mesh modifier to edit the sphere into a raindrop. Hint: Use soft selection on the "north pole."
Compound objects
Booleans
Lofts
Shapemerges
Terrains
Terrain exercise:
Start a new max file. In the top view, create a series of concentric closed curved splines inside a circle. Modify the vertices to look something like this:
Go to the Front view, and move each spline up a bit so they stairstep up to the small inner spline.
Select the outer circle, and start the Terrain command. Click the Pick Operand button, and select each spline from the outside in to create a terrain object. Save the file.
Vase exercise:
Start a new max file. in the Front view, create a spline in the shape of one side of a vase. Edit the spline so that it looks something like the image below.
On the Modify panel, activate the Spline sub-object level and select the spline again - it should turn red. Find the Outline button in the panel; grab the up spinner arrows and drag it until the spline is outlined a bit - it should be about the thickness of a glass vase. Don't outline twice - undo and redo it if you don't get the right thickness the first time. Deselect the sub-object button.
Find the Lathe modifier in the dropdown list on the Modify panel. Change the parameters so that it lathes 360 degrees and looks like the image below.
You will probably have to change the parameters to Y and Min. Increase the segments to make it smoother. Save the file.
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Architectural objects
Walls
Doors and windows
Doors and windows should cut the hole in the wall automatically. If they don't, you may have to create a box the height and width of the door/window, place it in the wall, and Boolean subtract it to make the opening. Then create the door/window in the opening. This is not the ideal solution, but it works.
Railings
Foliage
Note: Foliage objects can be memory hogs and lock up the computers – use sparingly
Stairs
House Exercise:
Import the file houseplan.dwg into a blank max file. Set Snap to Vertex. Start the Wall command (AEC Extended object) and set the width to 8", height to 10', and justification to Right. Start at any outside corner of the house, and select each successive corner going counter-clockwise. Weld the intersection back at the start point, then right-click to end the wall.
Create the exterior doors and windows using the floorplan as a guide for placement. Doors and windows should be created in the perspective view because you need to see both sides of the wall, as well as the full wall height when creating a door or window.
Create doors and windows full wall height first (snap to the top and bottom edges of the wall) then change the height from the create panel. If the door/window does not cut the hole in the wall, undo and try again.
Cameras
Cameras
Camera position
Lens settings
Camera motion controls
Field of view & perspective controls
Assignments
1. Read chapters 6 and 7 in the Visualization Curriculum Student Workbook and complete the exercises.
2. Create an apple and a banana by editing meshes or polys. The apple starts with a sphere, and the banana starts with either a 5-sided Ngon lofted along an arc, or a bent gengon. Create a bowl and place the fruit in it. Render and save a good perspective view.
3. Complete the walls, windows, and doors on the small house started in the exercise above. Both interior and exterior walls and doors should be done. Render and save a perspective view .
4. Extra modeling practice - Complete the tutorial "Modeling a low-poly LCD monitor" at 3DValley.com.
5. To see another method of creating a small house, look at the “Yellow House” tutorial by Huseyin Karaaslan at free3Dtutorials.com.