holy crap that video makes so much sense. Isoline display and keeping turbosmooth on and dragging edges. Something simple like that has just trippled my workflow speed!
Thanks for hosting that video. Looking forward to the other parts!
Hey Lee! I got a broken CRC on part 2 and 3, using 7zip. What program did you use to rar them? I am thinking I might need the exact same to uncompress them properly maybe.
Ho thanks guys! Winrar did the trick.
(as well as a less obsolete release of 7-zip. Hehe. My bad!)
Also, about that NURBS image Ivars posted - MOI Moment Of inspiration is now out of beta stage, reaching release 1.0 for 150$. A great way to create smooth hard surface shells.
Ho thanks guys! Winrar did the trick.
(as well as a less obsolete release of 7-zip. Hehe. My bad!)
Also, about that NURBS image Ivars posted - MOI Moment Of inspiration is now out of beta stage, reaching release 1.0 for 150$. A great way to create smooth hard surface shells.
Looks nice. And nice stuff in the gallery. I take it 3ds max nurbs and/or patches don't work this well? (I've never touched them)
Thanks again Lee for the upload.
Can anyone post an image of the first frame of each of the three videos which show the shape sathe makes in that particular? (i have to be cautious of what im downloading as im on dial-up )
Also, in the third part, how does sathe apply a standard blinn material to the objects without opening up the material editor? He added like a standard mat. once and a high specular one the second time.
Can anyone post an image of the first frame of each of the three videos which show the shape sathe makes in that particular? (i have to be cautious of what im downloading as im on dial-up )
Also, in the third part, how does sathe apply a standard blinn material to the objects without opening up the material editor? He added like a standard mat. once and a high specular one the second time.
Search this thread for the parts that Sathe makes in his tutorial. There's a picture of it in a post he made.
If you've downloaded and understand the third then the first two are just similar but more basic stuff.
And I don't know specifically how, but I'm sure you can write a script that applies a certain material to a selected object. And then either bind that to an icon or a hotkey or a toolbar.
Also, thanks Lee for hosting those and to Sathe for taking the time to explain your workflow!
Also, in the third part, how does sathe apply a standard blinn material to the objects without opening up the material editor? He added like a standard mat. once and a high specular one the second time.
You can use this:
$.material = meditMaterials[1]
It will apply whatever material is in slot 1 to whatever you have selected. Turn that into a macro script and assign a key to it. To do that:
- Open up the script editor (Main Tool bar > MAXScript > New Script)
- Paste this
- Save, it. Run it once.
- In, Main Tool Bar > Customize > Customize UI > Keyboard Tab, set the category to My_Tools.
- Assign a keyboard shortcut to Mat1.
- OR Go to the tool bar tab and drag Mat1 into a empty spot in a tool bar. (if you don't have an empty spot make a new tool bar, dock it some where or keep it free floating)
I wrote a little script that covers this and a little bit more like wire color, clearing the material editor bla bla bla.
It kind of depends on what the high poly will be used for. Creating normal maps, or just to do some high poly work?
If its just high poly, you can do whatever looks good, allows you to work efficiently (not optimizing every last tri) and as long as it doesn't chug your system you're fine
I don't see anything wrong with floating the buttons in either case but you should probably create little depressions for them to sit in, because buttons on a flat surface could look bad. Buttons don't encompass the holes they sit inside of them. Some times the holes have pretty significant bevels.
For high poly I'd probably just model the depressions, as doing #2 would probably be noticeable at certain angles.
If it was for normal maps, I'd probably paint the depressions & bevel into the normal map.
With on object like this, you first want to make a blockout to get your main shapes looking correct, and try to leave loops that follow the contours and curves of the main detail areas, so when your blockout is done you can easily go back in there and add some edges to tighten up the details in sub-d.
Painting in indents or whatever would be a huge waste of time, if you're going to float detail on, you can easily float on indents as well, this should take about 30 seconds to model. =D
First off, fantastic thread everyone. Lots of good information in here, I can't believe its just now that I am reading it.
So, for the past few days I've been trying to grow my highpoly skillset and for lack of a better word, its been uncomfortable. While I can handle a lot of shapes & forms, theres something I've yet to grasp, specially from an execution standpoint.
I'm currently tackling a large vehicle. I figured I'd start big with something that's hard-surface and made up of 'organic' shapes. I've done highpoly in the past, but not to this extent so I really wanted to hit this head on.
I'm at a point now, where I'm just spinning my wheels. It's has to do with creating shapes such as paneling, divots, 'techy' components, etc. etc.
Outlined in green is a nut I am trying to crack now:
I've been told a few things from different people, the common piece of advice is to keep it floating on top of the base mesh. Thats fine and totally doable on my end. It's creating the floating stuff on the top I have trouble with.
Do I make geometry and extrude, chamfer bevel? Or do I lay out a spline and have a shape conform to that? Is there a good, solid tutorial out there for creating your trim shape, drawing the spline, having the trim conform to that spline perfectly, then going from there?
My first attempt at the following image was done with splines, but since most verts weren't connected (or couldn't be welded) it looked like shit. So then I figured I'd draw some planes and play with extruding, beveling, etc. then make sure my support edges were drawn and go from there.
So I ask, what's the best method to go about this? I'm using Max 2008 and am constantly frustrating myself by seeing what the final product should be, but not being able to execute on the idea properly.
Heres some more shots to show what I have. It's a mixture of trims following splines and shapes being extruded and ass you'll see, it's shit.
Yeah I come across these kind of problems alot too (the curved panels). I usually end up subdividing my curve more before I start extruding/beveling/chamfering details onto it, that or I decided it'll look good enough once baked onto the normal map.
As a general rule I just consider that anything that is gonna be curved, is gonna need more edges, even before turbosmooth kicks in, some of them may feel useless at first, but once you start adding detail in, they usually pay off, as you get alot less funky deformations.
This helps a lot. I was trying to get my head around making a twisted rope for a tow cable on a Tiger model I've been building on and off forever. So, cheers
Hey adam, as pointed aboved more curved and separated pieces are the way I would do that part...not saying you should do it this way but it is the easiest for me, so I thought I would share, as, as you ll see, you can have different topology for each separated piece if you want to... far more flexible that trying to stick everything together.
Basically each seam on the concept is a separated mesh (well more often than not but not always)
model them flat and use a wrap deformer to bind it on a plane and then just deform the plane to match the surface of the pot
oh wow, super easy! i've been banging my head trying to do this with Max's skin wrap modifier - too many options -ha ha. Thanks!, i'll do this tonight and post a screen
edit: so heres my screen, if anyone has some pointers about what i could do better i would greatly appreciate it. Looking at it now, i think I need to add more loops to the wrap plane because the wings do look a little wanky.
i struggled to make the wing shapes and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to approach the modeling process?? -thanks!
Ok I'm trying to do something similar. I have my objects modeled (sofar) I have essentially what is one link in a chain and I'm using Symmetry to make the chain larger.
My problem is I want to now wrap those chains around the base of this cylinder. But I'm not sure how/what type of deform modifier I should be using.
Replies
Thanks for hosting that video. Looking forward to the other parts!
yep no luck here either. I can host as well if we need room.
http://digitalapprentice.net/Community/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=67&Itemid=154&mosmsg=Item+successfully+saved.
Rars have been taken offline.
YEah thanks lee, I've added you on the PS3 network as well.
great stuff. Now i know what that grid align thing in max is for XD
Thanks for the upload anyway!
pretty good stuff by the way definately worth checking out if you haven't.
Awesome videos, thanks for the upload.
(as well as a less obsolete release of 7-zip. Hehe. My bad!)
Also, about that NURBS image Ivars posted - MOI Moment Of inspiration is now out of beta stage, reaching release 1.0 for 150$. A great way to create smooth hard surface shells.
http://moi3d.com/1.0/docs/pod.htm
Looks nice. And nice stuff in the gallery. I take it 3ds max nurbs and/or patches don't work this well? (I've never touched them)
Thanks again Lee for the upload.
And of course, thanks to Sathe for taking the time to make them
Also, in the third part, how does sathe apply a standard blinn material to the objects without opening up the material editor? He added like a standard mat. once and a high specular one the second time.
Search this thread for the parts that Sathe makes in his tutorial. There's a picture of it in a post he made.
If you've downloaded and understand the third then the first two are just similar but more basic stuff.
And I don't know specifically how, but I'm sure you can write a script that applies a certain material to a selected object. And then either bind that to an icon or a hotkey or a toolbar.
Also, thanks Lee for hosting those and to Sathe for taking the time to explain your workflow!
- Open up the script editor (Main Tool bar > MAXScript > New Script)
- Paste this - Save, it. Run it once.
- In, Main Tool Bar > Customize > Customize UI > Keyboard Tab, set the category to My_Tools.
- Assign a keyboard shortcut to Mat1.
- OR Go to the tool bar tab and drag Mat1 into a empty spot in a tool bar. (if you don't have an empty spot make a new tool bar, dock it some where or keep it free floating)
I wrote a little script that covers this and a little bit more like wire color, clearing the material editor bla bla bla.
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/matclean
Your matclean script is awesome, i've been using it since you posted the initial code way back when.
There is the great little script called Auto Material as well...
It works fine in Max 2008 and Max 2009 despite it only listing max 7x and 8x...
Check it out!
http://paulneale.com/scripts/autoMaterial/autoMaterial.htm
He's got a ton of other stuff up there too which I've found to be pretty handy.
http://paulneale.com/scripts.htm
Excellent links you guys
http://digitalapprentice.net/Community/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=67&Itemid=154&mosmsg=Item+successfully+saved.
I was hoping that one of you guys could show me how I should high poly model the buttons and antenna.
Thanks.
By floating geometry do you mean the buttons aren't connected?
If its just high poly, you can do whatever looks good, allows you to work efficiently (not optimizing every last tri) and as long as it doesn't chug your system you're fine
I don't see anything wrong with floating the buttons in either case but you should probably create little depressions for them to sit in, because buttons on a flat surface could look bad. Buttons don't encompass the holes they sit inside of them. Some times the holes have pretty significant bevels.
For high poly I'd probably just model the depressions, as doing #2 would probably be noticeable at certain angles.
If it was for normal maps, I'd probably paint the depressions & bevel into the normal map.
Painting in indents or whatever would be a huge waste of time, if you're going to float detail on, you can easily float on indents as well, this should take about 30 seconds to model. =D
So, for the past few days I've been trying to grow my highpoly skillset and for lack of a better word, its been uncomfortable. While I can handle a lot of shapes & forms, theres something I've yet to grasp, specially from an execution standpoint.
I'm currently tackling a large vehicle. I figured I'd start big with something that's hard-surface and made up of 'organic' shapes. I've done highpoly in the past, but not to this extent so I really wanted to hit this head on.
I'm at a point now, where I'm just spinning my wheels. It's has to do with creating shapes such as paneling, divots, 'techy' components, etc. etc.
Outlined in green is a nut I am trying to crack now:
I've been told a few things from different people, the common piece of advice is to keep it floating on top of the base mesh. Thats fine and totally doable on my end. It's creating the floating stuff on the top I have trouble with.
Do I make geometry and extrude, chamfer bevel? Or do I lay out a spline and have a shape conform to that? Is there a good, solid tutorial out there for creating your trim shape, drawing the spline, having the trim conform to that spline perfectly, then going from there?
My first attempt at the following image was done with splines, but since most verts weren't connected (or couldn't be welded) it looked like shit. So then I figured I'd draw some planes and play with extruding, beveling, etc. then make sure my support edges were drawn and go from there.
So I ask, what's the best method to go about this? I'm using Max 2008 and am constantly frustrating myself by seeing what the final product should be, but not being able to execute on the idea properly.
Heres some more shots to show what I have. It's a mixture of trims following splines and shapes being extruded and ass you'll see, it's shit.
Thanks ahead to anyone who can help!
Here's how it looks from a working angle:
As a general rule I just consider that anything that is gonna be curved, is gonna need more edges, even before turbosmooth kicks in, some of them may feel useless at first, but once you start adding detail in, they usually pay off, as you get alot less funky deformations.
This helps a lot. I was trying to get my head around making a twisted rope for a tow cable on a Tiger model I've been building on and off forever. So, cheers
Basically each seam on the concept is a separated mesh (well more often than not but not always)
Max 2009 file
OBJ file
Hope it might help some!
http://edgesize.com/files/curvedcrap.obj
I'm trying to figure out how to model the wings on the pot. any suggestions??
heres my progress so far on the project:
oh wow, super easy! i've been banging my head trying to do this with Max's skin wrap modifier - too many options -ha ha. Thanks!, i'll do this tonight and post a screen
edit: so heres my screen, if anyone has some pointers about what i could do better i would greatly appreciate it. Looking at it now, i think I need to add more loops to the wrap plane because the wings do look a little wanky.
i struggled to make the wing shapes and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to approach the modeling process?? -thanks!
My problem is I want to now wrap those chains around the base of this cylinder. But I'm not sure how/what type of deform modifier I should be using.