3ds Max Speed Modeling for 3D Artists

422 Pages·2012·46.086 MB·English

by  Thomas Mooney

3ds Max Speed Modeling for
3D Artists
Flex your speed modeling muscles using 3ds Max
Thomas Mooney
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
3ds Max Speed Modeling for 3D Artists
Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing
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First published: October 2012
Production Reference: 1111012
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
35 Livery Street
Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-84969-236-6
www.packtpub.com
Cover Image by Thomas Mooney ([email protected])
Credits
Author Project Coordinator
Thomas Mooney Joel Goveya
Reviewers Proofreader
Vincent Bourdier Jonathan Todd
Conor O'Kane
Indexer
Hemangini Bari
Acquisition Editor
Wilson D'souza
Pramila Balan Graphics
Aditi Gajjar
Lead Technical Editor
Pramila Balan Production Coordinator
Shantanu Zagade
Technical Editors
Zinal Shah Cover Work
Shantanu Zagade
Sharvari Baet
Manmeet Singh Vasir
Kedar Bhat
Merin Jose
Copy Editors
Brandt D'Mello
Insiya Morbiwala
Aditya Nair
Alfida Paiva
Laxmi Subramanian
About the Author
Thomas Mooney grew up in New Zealand. He now lives in a jungle with
squashed frogs, mosquitoes, and regular thunderstorms and power cuts. He is
a lecturer in design and also works as an artist. You can learn more about his
work at www.tomofnz.com.
Tom tends to work, play, teach, and sit around all day with computers, and also likes
to do comics, films, maps, screenplays, novels, storyboards, and iPad doodles.
His book Unreal Development Kit Game Design Cookbook, Packt Publishing was
published earlier in 2012.
For my mother, a good, kind soul.
I would also like to extend a hearty back slap to all my students for
being the subject of numerous tests (of patience mostly) during this
book's development.
About the Reviewers
Vincent Bourdier is a twenty-six year old developer who is French with a passion
for 3D. After self-learning 3D modeling and programming, he went to the University
of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard (UTBM) in 2003 and received an Engineering
degree in Computer Sciences, specializing in imagery, interaction, and virtual reality.
Passionate about computer graphics and image processing, he remains curious about
existing and new technologies in a lot of domains such as AI, CMake, augmented
reality, and so on.
He has been working as a 3D developer at Global Vision Systems (Toulouse, France)
since 2008. He is now a Technical Leader on a 3D real-time engine.
Global Vision Systems (http://www.global-vision-systems.com) is a software
developer and publisher offering innovative human-machine interfaces for
aeronautics, space, plant, and process supervision.
I would like to thank my parents for their encouragement, even if
they don't understand a word of my job, and my employers for the
opportunity to live my passions and giving me challenges to meet.
Conor O'Kane is a game developer and teacher from Dublin. He lectures on game
development at RMIT University in Melbourne, in courses covering game design,
low-polygon art, character modeling, and iOS game development. He has worked as
an Artist and as a Technical Artist for console game developers since 1999, and has
been producing his own games independently since 2007, primarily with the Torque
2D engine. He currently develops games for Windows, Mac, and iOS platforms.
Conor lives with his wife and two children in Melbourne. When not making
(or playing) video games, he enjoys practicing martial arts and learning to play
the piano. You can download his free games and read articles and tutorials at
http://cokane.com.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: First Launch: Getting to Know 3ds Max 7
Quick start: Jump into making models 8
Getting to know the User Interface 12
Default and custom UI schemes 17
Switching UI presets 17
Making changes to hotkeys 18
Customizing the Quad menu 20
Making changes to the view layout 22
Deciding on the best view navigation 23
Pan, Orbit, and Zoom 24
Navigation with the ViewCube 27
Making adjustments to the ViewCube display 27
Navigation with the Steering Wheel 28
Using the Steering Wheel 29
Displaying your model for modeling 32
Model display 34
Setting scene units 37
Searching for content in the scene 38
Creating your own selection sets with Named Selections 40
Common changes to 3ds Max default preferences 42
Determining the hardware shading settings to use 45
Summary 45
Chapter 2: Model Shakedown: Make 3ds Max Work for you 47
Setting filters in the Display panel 48
Display panel filters 48
Hiding and freezing objects 49
Display Properties 50