Lesson IV - Introduction To The 2D Shaper
In this lesson we shall learn about the 2D Shaper and its menus. We shall also take a glance at the the various tools available for creating 2D shapes in both 3D Studio R4 (3DS R4) and 3D Studio Max (3DS Max). NOTE : There is no 2D Shaper module in 3DS Max because all 2D Shaping has been incorporated into the main interface.

3D Studio R4
The main functions in the 2D Shaper are Create, Select, Modify, Shape and Display. There is only one view in the 2D Shaper and that is "Shape". Everything here is as the name implies - 2D. This however is the place where all basic designs are created. You must understand of course that most 3D objects must start from a 2D origin.

The Create Function
Under the Create function you will see a submenu containing the commands : Line, Freehand..., Arc, Quad, Circle, Ellipse, N-gon..., Text..., Copy, Open, Close, Connect, PolyConnect and Outline, Boolean. These functions are used to create basic polygons and shapes. We will explore these functions in further detail in coming lessons.

The Select Function
Under the Select function you will see a submenu containing the commands : Vertex..., Polygon..., All, None and Invert. These tools are used to select various object and elements to be modified. This is very useful when you only want to modify certain items or parts of shapes.

The Modify Function
Under the Modify function you will see a submenu containing the commands : Vertex..., Segment..., Polygon... and Axis... These commands are used to manipulate the shapes that you have already created. They can be used to change basic shapes into complex polygons.

The Shape Function
Under the Shape function you will see a submenu containing the commands : Assign, All, None, Hook..., Check and Steps. These commands are used to select shapes that will be used to create 3D objects. Use this function once you have created your desired shape and are ready to change it into a 3D object.

The Display Function
Under the Display function you will see a submenu containing the commands : First..., Tape..., 3D Display and Freeze.... These commands are used to control the display, active shapes, shape display properties and to make measurements.

The Hold , Undo And Fetch Functions
Here we shall discuss the functions that we did not discuss in the previous lesson. Under the Navigation Tools, you will see a row of buttons labeled Hold, Undo and Fetch. Although These are present in every module, I have decided to discuss them here as all three buttons are present in the 2D Shaper. In other modules the Undo button is usually missing.

The Hold Button
The hold button basically saves a temporary file of what you are currently working on. When you exit the program the temporary file will be deleted. This temporary backup is used as a failsafe against unexpected errors or crashes. Whenever you do a major modification or creation you should hold your work. You are also advised to do so periodically - just in case. In the case that your PC crashes or hangs, the temporary file will still be in your harddisk. It will be located in a directory within your 3DS directory call TEMP\ (ie. C:\3DS4\TEMP\). The file name will be have a *.tmp extension and will have a "$$$" string in it. Various holds for various modules have different names. For example the 3D Editor hold will be MODEH$$$.TMP. To restore such a hold you would have to rename it to a readable file. For example rename MODEH$$$.TMP to MODEH$$$.3DS . Just change the extension to the respective module's standard file save extension.

The Undo Button
The undo button is found only in the 2D Shaper and the 3D Lofter. It is used to undo your last action. This can be considered as a short term hold function. This undo button only works one step back so you can only undo the very last action. This is very limiting and therefore encourages the use of the hold button.

The Fetch Button
The fetch button is used to retrieve the last hold position. It is used whenever you wish to remove your current work and revert to the last hold position. NOTE : there is no undo for the fetch button - once pressed your current work will be totally erased and replace with the last hold position.

3D Studio MAX
The equivalent of the 2D Shaper in 3DS Max is the Shapes menu under the Create tab. It contains several other commands such as Star and Helix. Basically the creation methods are the same except that you shape can be 3D. This means that the shapes you create are not necessarily flat but can also have depth. One good example is the Helix. These 3D Shapes are called splines. These are treated like any other 3D object in 3DS Max and standard transforms can be applied to them. When rendering a scene these splines are always invisible. Although you can have your splines right in the middle of your scene where everything else is it is advisable to create your 2D shapes far away from the main scene although they don't render because it is very hard to distinguish the meshes and the splines when they are all in the same place.

Undo And Redo
3DS Max's version of the Hold, Undo and Fetch buttons are the Undo and Redo buttons. These are located on the tool bar below the menu bar (they are the two arrows pointing left and right). They can also be access from the Edit menu or directly from the keyboard (Ctrl-Z and Ctrl-A respectively). They are much better then their counterparts in 3DS R4 because they retain a long chronology of actions. You can undo and redo several actions - therefore a hold command is not needed.

This ends the short introduction to the 2D Shaper. In our next lesson we shall learn how to use the commands in the Create menu.

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