Basic Level Modelling In 3ds Max
BendBlock ... you'll be happy to know there's not actually a lot of work required for this one. Do exactly the same as we did for StraightBlock ( or duplicate that if you wish ). Now we need to bend it...
Select one of the horizontal edges running along one of the wall sides, and hit the Ring button in the Editable Poly menu. Now scroll down to the Connect button, and click the Settings button to the right of it, A window will appear. Punch in the number 3 , and hit Ok. We have now gained 3 Width Segments, and are ready to get bending... ... Right after we move the Pivot Point , to make life super easy.
With BendBlock selected go to the Hierarchy panel ( to the right of Modify, which is to the right of Create ) and select Affect Pivot Only see below:
Now we are able to move this objects pivot point ( and you'll see why in a minute ), lets move it to the center of the object, and also align it to the maximum point of any open side ( a side without walls ). There are two easy ways to do this.
1 We can use the Axis Constraints. See Here.
In the example, I've selected my box, gone to the hierarchy panel, selected Affect Pivot Only . Then I enabled Use Axis Constraints from the Snap Options window ( the same window I told you to move somewhere out of the way ). Then making sure the axis is set to move along the X ( might be Y for you ), I dragged the pivot to the end.
Or
2 We can use the Align tool whilst Affect Pivot is selected.
You will find the Align button in the same top horizontal menu as Snap and Angle Snap , just hover over the icons to the right till you come across something that looks a lot like:
Once the Align tool is enabled, click your Box , a window will appear... it's all pretty self explanatory. Have a fiddle... you might like it.
Now we can bend... finally. With your BendBlock selected, go to the modifiers roll-out , and select Bend .
Set the Angle to 90 , and the Bend Axis to Y . If you experience some crazy results, you will need to Select the Bend Gizmo , and turn it 90degrees in any direction along the Y axis . Now if that all went smoothly, you should have something exactly like this:
Now, onto the StairBlock This is where things might get a little hard to follow, so I'll create a fairly large animation to go with these brief instructions.
Basically... what you want to do is:
- Erase all sides, leaving nothing but the floor and ceiling polygon.
- Select your end vertices, and align them on the X ( or Y ) with your end ceiling vertices. ( Do not move them on the Z Axis!)
- Select the two edges on the floor polygon that are lying in the direction you want the stairs to go.
- Hit the Connect button, but set it to 8 this time ( in the settings button to the right )
- Go into either Vertex , Edge or Polygon mode. ( I used Polygon for this bit )
- Leaving the first polygon flat, raise the next one along, over the first, so it's like a Step.
- Erase the planes you didn't touch.
- Go into the Polygon selection.
- Select the back two of the three segments remaining.( Leaving the flat ground one as it is )
- Using the Snap with Axis Constraints disabled , shift and drag ( clone ) and keep building steps.
- Stop when you're in line with the end of the ceiling polygon.
Half way there, here's what you should have done:
You might also notice some stuff happening with the vertices at the end of that animation, that was just welding up a lot of loose connections, I shall explain this further as we move on.
I cannot stress how important it is that the steps are perfectly aligned, If you've gotten to grips with the Snap tool in conjunction with Axis Constraints , then you should have no problems. But just in case, here's a side on image of what you should have ended up with:
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Notice that it aligns with the ceiling polygon, from start to finish, this is good, if you find yourself slightly out, just go into vertex mode and drag the end two points back ( or forward ) with Snap and Axis Constraints , linking them to the end point of the ceiling polygon. ( Again... do not move on the Z axis, as we're not moving anything up or down, just across ). Same goes for the Vertical areas of the steps, they must be aligned perfectly with the flat area below it.
Now would also be a perfect time to mention welding . When you cloned all of those steps and placed them with snap , all you've done is created several elements from one object , and we need just one element per object . Providing you used the snap tool wisely, welding should be as easy as this:
- Go into the Vertex selection.
- Select all.
- Hit the Weld button.
You shouldn't need to adjust the Weld Threshold , so there's no need to go into the Weld Settings , like we did with Connect .
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Our stairs aren't quite finished yet (as you may have noticed) So go to the next page to continue.
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