Tutorials

Before we get started, i'll just go over a few of the basics, in case you're a complete novice.3D Studio max is a very comprehensive program and in making this little guy we will only scratch the surface of its capabilities. To begin with we have to create a box so look around on a tab panel to the right of the screen until you find a little arrow with a star at its point. This is the create tab, click on it to see all the options. It should default to "Standard Primitives" which is cool because we want to create a box. Click on the "Box" button and it will turn green. Take your crosshair cursor into the "Top" viewport and draw out a roughly square object. In this view you wont be able to see the height but cast your eyes to the "Perspective" port and you should be able to see the height. Have a few goes at it before you settle on one box or another. Your starting point will be a box that is roughly 1 x1 x 3 length, width, height respectively.

Okay, now we have our box, the fun begins. Go to the tab panel again and find the tab with the sort of blue rainbow motif. this is the "Modify" panel. I prefer to do my settings here because all of the rest of the modelling here is done with this panel open. The parameters of your box will be dispayed ONLY if you still have it selected. To make this phase easier, go to the "Perspective" viewport and select "Wireframe" by right clicking on the word "Perspective" . Your box should now just be represented by lines. In the modify panel you will see the readouts for lenght, width, height and selectors for segmentation. Set the segments 4,3,4 length, width, height. Next, we want to make our box into an editable mesh, so we can either collapse it by clicking on the little symbol that looks like a stack of paper or we can apply an "edit mesh" modifier to it. i normally just collapse because I know that i won't need to go back in the "stack" to modify the box. However, if you want to work ina purely proceedural way, you may want to just slap the modifier on it.

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Before we get started, i'll just go over a few of the basics, in case you're a complete novice.3D Studio max is a very comprehensive program and in making this little guy we will only scratch the surface of its capabilities. To begin with we have to create a box so look around on a tab panel to the right of the screen until you find a little arrow with a star at its point. This is the create tab, click on it to see all the options. It should default to "Standard Primitives" which is cool because we want to create a box. Click on the "Box" button and it will turn green. Take your crosshair cursor into the "Top" viewport and draw out a roughly square object. In this view you wont be able to see the height but cast your eyes to the "Perspective" port and you should be able to see the height. Have a few goes at it before you settle on one box or another. Your starting point will be a box that is roughly 1 x1 x 3 length, width, height respectively. Okay, now we have our box, the fun begins. Go to the tab panel again and find the tab with the sort of blue rainbow motif. this is the "Modify" panel. I prefer to do my settings here because all of the rest of the modelling here is done with this panel open. The parameters of your box will be dispayed ONLY if you still have it selected. To make this phase easier, go to the "Perspective" viewport and select "Wireframe" by right clicking on the word "Perspective" . Your box should now just be represented by lines. In the modify panel you will see the readouts for lenght, width, height and selectors for segmentation. Set the segments 4,3,4 length, width, height. Next, we want to make our box into an editable mesh, so we can either collapse it by clicking on the little symbol that looks like a stack of paper or we can apply an "edit mesh" modifier to it. i normally just collapse because I know that i won't need to go back in the "stack" to modify the box. However, if you want to work ina purely proceedural way, you may want to just slap the modifier on it.
	Lets get down to business. First of all we want to delete all of the polygons on the side of the mesh that we will be mirroring to. We are only going to model half the head to begin with. So go to the modify panel and find the "Sub Object" button. When active, this mode allows you to manipulate any part of the box in any way needed. First click the button with a little square symbol (not the triangle) this is "polygon" mode. Rotate your box in the viewport until you are looking at the left hand side. Click in one of the squares and it will turn red, it is selected, hold down your "alt" key and select the rest on this side. With all of the squares showing red hit the "delete" key on your keyboard and answer "yes" to any dialogs that appear. Yor box should now lok like the one to your left.
	Next, we make a REFERENCE of the box by holding down "shift" on the keyboard and dragging out the copy in the "X" direction. If you cant drag, you probably have "select" mode rather than "move" mode selected on your top panel (select is default ). Now, click on your reference box and go to "More" at the top of the modify panel. Clicking on 'more' gives you a list of all the currently installed modifiers. Find "Mesh Smooth" and click on it. It will apply itself to the box automatically and will give you a result like the pic on the left.
	Now, go back to your original box and hit "Sub Object". Hit the "Polygon" mode up again and select the leftmost middle poly. Go down the panel and find the "Bevel" tool hit the button and it turns green. Move your cursor back to the selected poly, click and drag over it. Depending on the normals, the poly will either go in or out. Get it to extrude out and then when its far enough out for you let the mouse key up. This is the bevelling part of the operation. The selected polys will shrink, then, if you go too far, they'll cross over and make a big mess. just tickle them to a slightly smaller square shape and you'll have some thing similar to the illustration. After this operation it is essential to delete the left facing poly of the newly extruded bit. If you dont the mesh smooth will screw up. When we come to finish this model we will have two identical halves that will have to be welded together. If there are any internal polys or polys facing eachother at the joint, the whole thing will go WRONG and you'llbe really ticked off.
It is really handy to use "snaps" when cutting. look for a little button at the bottom of the page with a magnet symbol on it. There are three options 2D, 2.5D and 3D. We want 3D and then right click on the button. Set the options to "Edge" and un-tick all the rest, then close the window with the "X" button	We can begin really moving the polys and start forming the shape now. The beauty of this is that the result is in front of your eyes as you work. Anything that goes wrong is just an "undo" away from being re-done the right way. Now that you have mastered "Bevel" you can use "Extrude " to make the eye socket. Use it the same as Bevel but in this case there is only one operation per click and drag. I have used "Cut" here to make the socket a better shape. to use "Cut", find it in the panel then click on the button. This can be a tricky manouver, so keep that undo button handy. With the cursor over the vertical line you want to cut, click once and then move to the line you want to cut to and click again. There should have been a dotted line following the cursor and after the second click, aline should appear between the two points, indicating a successful cut. Practise this until you get it down, we'll be doing more cuts.
	I'm well into the modelling here and i've done a wild and crazy thing!! I have made another reference of my reference with the "Mirror" command on the top tool bar. Look for two triangles facing eachother with a line vertically betwwen them on the button. The new reference is a mirror of the previous one and has now furnished me with an almost complete reference model. I have also bumped up the iterations to 2 on the mesh smooth to make the refernce look a little better. I have also moved a lot of the polys around by their intersection points known as vertices. To manipulate at vertex mode hit the button with the dots on in your Sub Object panel
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