3DS Max 5: Basic Work Flow Tutorial

3DS Max 5: Basic Work Flow Tutorial

The aim of this tutorial is to make you model faster, i will present you some basic techniques you should use while modeling, they make your life pretty much easier.

This tutorial isn’t restricted to WC3 modding only, the basic handling of 3DS MAX 5 ( or Gmax) can be used for everything else.

so start up your program…


SETTING UP VIEWPORTS:

This is a short introduction in how to individualise your viewport areas as you wish.

Right-click on the little icon in the bottom right area of the screen (marked red here)
Change the register to “Layout” and choose between the different styles.
You can keep the default viewports aswell, but the one highlighted on the screen is my favourite. It gives you a full overview from all sides, still shows the model itself big enough in the perspective view.
(scroll down for view modes description)



INDIVIDUAL SHORTCUTS:

This enables you to use you keyboard piano style. It cuts much point’n’clickin’ in the modifiers tab and sppeds up your moddeling.

As is do not know how the things are called in English I made some screenshots and marked the necessary pints red.

You should edit following modifier shortcuts:

Net – work on net
UVW – Map
UVW – cut out
(these are the direct translations and I do not know the appropriate terms in English, again I’m sry for that)

I made them use Q W and R (as E is for the transform Gizmo) which is the logical order when editing primitives.



TOOLS LIST EDITING:

I never recognized a cute little icon which would have made my life so much easier…
Whenever I wanted to preview a model I had to click several buttons to get to the viewer.
Modifying the tools list helps out:

Click on the tools list icon and afterwards on the red outlined button.
Edit the maximum amount of buttons displayed in the list by clicking on the upper arrow.
I changed it to 13 here as I want one blank button between the standard buttons and the Warcraft related ones

You see that you can scroll down once you have made the amount higher.
Drag and drop the function you want to show up in the normal list as well onto one of the blank buttons.

They should appear on the main list after clicking “OK” now.



PANNING AROUND OBJECT:

Long time I didn’t notice that I could actually pan around the modelled mesh, I used all viewports to check whether the model looked ok or started up the previewer.


Just push “ALT” and use the middle mouse key to change the cam (I didn’t move the teapot in these two screens)



VIEWPORTS:

Make sure to use different viewing types, this is more necessary when moddeling characters, because you have to see that the polies have the right direction to bend properly while animated.

Try out all of these functions and you will see that they all have their pros and cons.



FREEZE AND HIDE:

When moddeling meshes which consist out of many things you maybe want to freeze or hide single meshes. You wont be able to select them then.

Use unfreeze all to make them selectable again.





This was short, I know, but these are a few techniques I just found out recently.
They make moddeling much more fun and I hope some of you can learn a little bit and enjoyed reading this!

Cool.