3D Modelling & Animation: Week 1

Week 1 First exercise on 3D Studio Max

9 SHIP STEERING WHEEL EXERCISE

Create a ship steering wheel. Just create the basic shape using primitives, do not concern yourself with

trying to model rounded handles, rivets etc,…. Just the basic shape

=SHIP STEERING WHEEL EXERCISE

To create a basic shape of the ship Steering.

First I explored and tried all the different primitives geometries from 3Ds Max, then selected the ones which I found were suitable for the shape of the steering wheel.

First I used the tube to build up the centre shape, then added a slim cylinder for the bar.

By the AutoGrid box being ticked, I was able to build the cylinder on the surface of the tube.

When I built my tube, I edit the value in order to get 16sides, so that when I build the cylinders, I could make sure they were on the right places, as 16 = 8x2, which meant between every 2 edges I would build a cylinder.

Next I only had to repeat the process to get all the eight bars. Last I added a torus into the shape.

Exercise 1 : Done

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12 HOUSE EXERCISE

Create a house with four walls, a floor and a roof and a chimney. The house should also have an

opening for a door and two windows on the front and one opening for a window on either sidewall. No

window is required on the rear wall. The house should be made to a realistic scale.

=HOUSE EXERCISE

To create a basic shape of the ship Steering.

After I was a little more familiar with the tools and primitive shape 3Ds Max provided.

I decided to start this exercise by creating every "parts" of the house and then put them together.

So they would be in a perfect size when I created them.

These parts including 4 walls, a floor, a root and all little parts to be a chimney.

Next I put those parts together in order to have the basic shape of the house.

I used the Align tool and Rotate tool to help me, therefore it would be built perfectly.

Then I started to build more "accessories" for this model. windows parts, door parts, entrance platform etc.

I simply moved them onto the right place.

In following, I started to experiment the "Segs" values, which controls the number of polygons on the geometry. So that I could create the holes as opened windows or doors.

(By right click> convert to editable poly)

At last I found out the perfect combinations on the width and height segs values.

Opening door and window on the front.

And on either side of the side walls

Of course I did not forget the chimney too.

The final model:

In this exercise, I learnt how to convert a mesh into editable poly, editing polygons and using the align tool.

I also learnt to take care of the number of polygons when I built on 3Ds Max, which would be important in the modelling technique. As low polygon models could reduce the loading speed, especially in a game engine.

Exercise 2 : Done

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13 CASTLE EXERCISE

Create a castle: four walls with raised battlements and ramparts, arched entrance, a watch tower on

each corner and an inner keep with an entrance. You may also wish to add a moat and drawbridge!!!

Do not worry about texturing the model just yet! We will cover this in following weeks.

=CASTLE EXERCISE

To build a castle.

Last exercise of this week is to build a castle.

As the house building experience, I built the castle in a similar process.

First was to build all the "parts" of the castle that I would like to have.

Eg: Guard tower, rampart, walls etc.

After that I would put them together to form a castle.

These towers are formed by several primitives, such as cylinders, cone etc

And more importantly, it was the tools the I had used that mattered.

To put all those part together, I used the align tool.

By adjusting the x,y,z positions I could put them together perfectly.

The battlements on the towers, these could easily be created when I converted them into editable polys, then selected the polygons and used "Extrude" tool.

So they looked like the battlements, only point the I had to bewared of was the number of segs when I extruded the polygons.

One of the most important tool I needed was the group tool, because there were many parts to form up a tower, so group tool was used many times in the whole modelling process.

Another tool I used was the Boolean tool, in order to subtract holes on the model.

By doing that I could create the "windows" on a tower.

In the following, I built the entrance with a gate and the bridge.

The entrance was built by the Boolean tool, I subtracted a box n a sphere from the wall.
So that I had the shape of the entrance.
The gate was done with a L-shape primitive, and by the Extrude tool, I formed the shape of the gate.

There was another tool that I used for the pointed end of the gate, which was the outline tool.