lesson 8 making a sword in max

Making a sword in max

Create a sword handle by drawing out a cylinder by eye, not using any form or reference.

Squash the cylinder on ether the x or Y axes and then convert it to editable poly. From hear select the bottom face and inset it and them move it to give the bottom a more a rounded edge, then select the middle egde and go into the soft selection tab and turn on soft selection, turn up the fall off and scale until you are happy with the result.

Extrude the top of the handle and then ring select the top side edges, hold ctrl and click polygon this will change the selection from edge to polygon. Extrude the selected make sure you select by local normal instead of group, scale until looks correct.

Scroll down to the smoothing group section and clear all.  Go into a side view and then select all the grip polygons and click 1 on the smoothing group section.  Do the same to the bottom but chose smoothing group 2.  Again same for the bottom of the guard and again select the second smoothing group so the grip doesn’t blend in with the grip. Keep this process going until the hole handle has a smoothing group attached.

Go into the create tab and instead of creating geometry go into the next one along with is create shape, from here click the line tool and draw out the blade as if you were looking down it. Right click the spline and convert to editable poly, this will turn it into a polygon.

Extrude the poly until you get it the same length of a blade, delete the end polygon and then go into vertex mode, select the end 4 vertexes and scale them in as close as you can to form a point with out them over lapping.

Select 2 of the verts and right click weld, change the weld threshold until they fuse together, repeat this task until both sets are fused. One you have completed this go into edge mode and select all the ones around the side and right click connect. Select how many connects you want by make sure you don’t do too many.

go into the side view and select the vertex’s and start shaping the blade as you want it. After this go into egde mode and loop the central edge, scale out to give the blade more definition more like a diamond.

Apply smoothing groups to all of the 4 sides make sure there is a separt smoothing group for each side, place the blade on the handle and prepare to unwrap.

lesson 7 making sledge hammer

Making sledge hammer in max

Look at images of hammer for reference 

Create a cylinder and change the sides to 10 in the parametres the reason we do this is because this item isn’t going to be seen up close by the player so it doesn’t need that much detail.Change the height to 3 segments for the same reason. 

Once we have the basic cylinder use the scale tool to scale it in on the X axes to give it a more handle looking shape. (scale tool located in the top tool bar), turn the object into editable poly and select both rings of edges in the centre of the object. (click one edge then click loop or double click another edge)

Scale the edges in on the Y axes until it looks more like a handle, if the model still looks to wide select by element and scale by eye until it looks more realistic. Select the bottom face and right click bevel, change the bevel accordingly to look of the image you used as research.

After you have finished modelling the hammers handle go into the top view and by eye drag out a box over the handle, give this object 3 segments in the length and it is important that the center of the box is align with the center of the hammer.

Select both the box and the handle and then click the align button which is located in the top tool bar (looks like 2 tabs) click both centre in the pop up tab that comes up and click apply followed by click maximum on both by only in the Z axes, click apply and ok.

Go into edge mode on the head of the hammer and ctrl select both edges on ether end, use the ring tool to select a ring of edges around the hammer as shown below.

Right click and select the tick box next to chamfer, change the chamfer until it looks as much like your reference as you can.  After you have chamfered you hammer inset both the end polygons and move them around until there is a slight roundness at each end.

Modifier, unwrap uvw and then go into polygon selection, click the end polygon and click the little plus in the uv tab to grow selection. Once you have the centre polygon and all the surrounding polygons around it go into the projection drop down and click plane, unselect plan and move the selection out of the way, repeat for other side.

Modifier, unwrap uvw and then go into polygon selection, click the end polygon and click the little plus in the uv tab to grow selection. Once you have the centre polygon and all the surrounding polygons around it go into the projection drop down and click plane, unselect plan and move the selection out of the way, repeat for other side.  Do the rest of the hammer in the same way except use the cylinder mapping not the plane. Remember to convert to editable poly after to bake in information.

Do the same for the handle.

Click the handle then go to attach,after clicking attack click the hammer head and then click off attack to make sure your not attaching more things in the scene.

lesson 6 making tree

Making tree in max

First open the tree image in photoshop make sure it is reasonable symmetrical, then hit CTRL + J to duplicate the background layer and then delete the background of the layer one with the magic wand tool.

Ctrl and left click the thumb nail and creat new layer, fill this layer in white and then create another layer below it and fill this layer is black. Save the image out some where you can find it as a JPEG.

Turn off the top layer off using the eye button and then create a new layer below the layer one, using the petet tool select the darkest color on the tree and then select the bucket tool to fill in this new layer with this dark color.

Select the burn tool on the layer one (mode set to highlights and opacity to 75) start painting over the highlights so they become darker, next create another layer above this layer and turn its layer options to color before going over the edges of the image with the brush tool.

Right click all three layer and merge then, save them out as tree texture.

 

Select the tree by clicking in the white on the top layer with the magic wand tool and then clicking on the background layer,  create new layer and you now have a cut out tree again.

Use the polygonal lasso tool to encircle the top of the tree and create new later to you end up with the same as the image above.

Use ctrl T to select the top of the tree and drag the pivot point down to the bottom so you can rotate it, keep duplicating and rotating until you have gone around 360 degrees.

Make new layer  below this layer after merging all the duplicates together using the merge layer tool (right click) fill this new layer with the dark color from befor.

Create another opacity black and white map the same as you did with the first tree and then save this one with the green background as the texture.

Go into 3ds max and create a plane which is 128 by 93 and then open the material editor, after opening the material editor where it says standard click the button and select multi/ subject and delete the present material so it goes black.

Go into the map selection drop down, load in the diffuse color the texture bitmap and in the opacity selection load in the opacity map for the tree.

Go to the top default layer and drag the texture onto your plane once done go back into the multi/sub object layer and turn show texture on, this will reveal your cut out tree on the plane.

To show your texture on both sides click the 2 sided option at the top of the options above the maps drop down tab.

Hold shift and rotate 45 decrease when the option box comes up select 4 copys to create the same result as the image above. Select all of the planes by pressing ctrl A and convert to editable poly then select one of the planes and click the attach option in the edit poly menu.

After you click attach a box will come up with everything in the scene, select them all and hit attach.

Go to the top view and create a cylinder as wide as the tree.

Convert the cylinder into editable poly and select vertex mode, pulling the vertex’s until the cylinder is cone shaped with a wavy edge.

Apply the textures for the braches onto the cone in the second id  slot the same way we applied them to the original tree plane. After they are applied duplicate and scale until they look similar to the image above.

Add cylinder for trunk.