Introduction to 3ds Max 2011

In this lesson, we'll use splines to create some detail around the cockpit. So let's say we want to have some interesting looking pieces coming out from the base here, around the cockpit. We can use splines to do that, and we'll use them in a slightly different way than we have up to this point. So let's go to Create. And we'll go to Create a Shape, a spline, and let's just create a line. We'll start inside the base here, and let's just drag a few points out to follow along with the shape of the cockpit here. So something like that. We can go into Modify and grab those points. And if we need to move around the tangent handles, we can do that-- maybe get them a little bit closer to the shape that we have here. Now if you'll notice, this is right in the middle, which is where we want it. It's right in the center. Now, we're going to use this as our first spline, but we need to create a couple more splines to go with it to create our surface. So we'll take this spline, Shift, drag it over in the x. Maybe something like that-- not too far. And so you can see we've created a new copy of this. Now with this new copy selected, let's go back into our left-hand view. And I'm going to move this point down. And I'm going to actually take all the points and move them down in the y. And I just want to keep them about the same distance. And then this one, I'm just going to pull it back in this direction. So just keep them about the same distance from one another. We can go into here and modify the shape, so getting the point down here, we can kind of pull this over a little bit. Start to pull these in slightly to create a little bit more of an interesting shape, here-- thinking about creating a shape from these splines. So once we have this spline, we need to get the same spline over on the other side. And we can actually use mirroring to do that. So to mirror that over-- and we want to mirror in the x direction. So we can use mirror, but we want to change the axis first. So right now, it's going to be mirroring across that axis. Let's actually use a working pivot. So we'll go to our Hierarchy panel, Use Working Pivot. And then we can go to Mirror. And it's set to Copy. If it's set to No Clone, you're going to see it pop over to the other side and your original's going to disappear. We want to actually create a copy instead of just mirroring that initial spline over to the other side. We want to create a new spline. We want to do it in the x direction. You can see that that's already basically what we want. You can also offset, although in this case, we don't really need to do that. So if you need to mirror something over, this is going to be a good option for you. So say OK to that. Now we have three distinct splines that we're working with here. Let's take our first spline, and we just want to combine these together. So let me grab the splines here. Get our edged faces so we can see a little bit better what we're doing. So we'll go ahead and take the first spline that we have, and this is the-- I'll get it to where we can see a little bit better-- this is the first change that we made. This is the center one. That's the third one. So we'll take that first one. We can go to Attach, and this is under Geometry Rollout, remember. So Attach. And then we can go in and attach those different splines. So now we're dealing with one spline, basically. I'm going to just hit Alt-q to isolate this, so that we can see it a little bit better-- you can just see that we've now got option for exiting. But everything still there. We just want to see only one piece, only the piece that we're working on. Now, to create a surface from this, we need to create a cross-section first. So that's going to create the lines that are going in this direction. And one of the ways to do this is just go in our Geometry, go to Cross-Section, and I'm going to click on this one. Click over to the middle. You can see how the icon changes. It creates that one, and then continue on to the last one. And that's going to add that. Go ahead and turn that off. So this doesn't create any geometry at this point, it's only creating the splines. So to create some geometry, let's go ahead and add a surface modifier. And you can see it's black right now and green on the bottom. You can flip the normals around to see the outside, and you can see that we've now created some geometry from those splines. And we can see how the shape that we've created here is giving us this nice curve, and we've got a nice point on the end. We can also add-- if we want to add a little bit of thickness to this-- we can add another modifier. We can just add a shell on top of this. And so let's go ahead and add just a simple shell, and we'll just give it a very small inner amount. You can see how that gives us a little bit of thickness there. And again, we're just working with splines. So let me go ahead and turn that off. And so now, we've got this strut coming in from the top. Now, if we wanted to go ahead and make this a bit larger, we could scale that up. We could also modify the spines that we have. Now, we want to maybe do the same thing over here on the side. So again, coming in from the side, here. We want to draw some more spines. So let's go to Create Line, and let's just create some spines coming in from this direction. So one, two, and maybe three. And then maybe one more. So we end up with something like that. We can go ahead and we'll turn off our working pivot. And let's Shift and drag this down to the middle. Make a copy. And we could do another one-- we could've made a couple copies there. And then we can start to modify the points here, before we even get to making our surface. So we could take this one and move it down. Maybe take this one and just define how this shape is going to look. So this one, we maybe want to have a point right here. So we can grab some of these other lines and maybe move them back. And just to the same sort of thing we did with the other point. And again, whatever shape that you want to create. And we'll do the same thing over here. Kind of pull this back a little bit. And if you want to take a look in 3D view, you can. Right now, all of these lines are in the center. You can see right there. So we can grab all of those and move those off to one side. So let's just move them one side or the other. And then we need to come in and get those into position. So right now, they are kind of all straightened out, so what we need to do is just modify those points. So we can take that point, move it in here. Take this one, kind of move it in there. And just work this out in 3D, since these are going to be a little bit different. And we'll go ahead and pull that in. And some of these curves you may need to modify a little bit. Let's get the middle one-- pull those points in, pull that last point in there. We may have to rotate the points slightly. Same thing over here. And so if you want to create something that is the same, just repeat the same sort of motif, if not, you can create something different. Let's do the last one down here. Just pull this into the black piece on the back, there, it's kind of what we're focusing on as far as connecting this in. So it's kind of extending over the top of our glass. And we can modify this a little bit, take this down a bit. Pull this out so it's not penetrating in here. And I actually want to rotate this. So it's going to take a little bit more tweaking than the other one did, but we'll just get it roughly dropped in here and then you can figure that out. So something like that. And again, we just want to come in and attach those together. So grabbing one of those splines-- let's grab the bottom one. We'll go Attach. Attach both of those. And now, let's go ahead and isolate that. We want to do a cross-section. So click from here to here to here. Exit out of there, and we'll add our surface modifier, once again. I'll flip our normals around, and that will give us that piece. And then if you want to mirror that piece over to the other side, you can do that-- add the thickness and do all that good stuff. So just keep that in mind. You can create some interesting objects with splines as far as creating some shapes here and then using the cross-section and the surface modifier to get some geometry on top of those, so just keep that in mind as you work. So once I get both of those created, the next thing that we're going to do in the next lesson is to start to add some detail underneath the cockpit here. So using some cylinders, tubes, and looking at some extrusion techniques that we can use, we'll build some detail underneath. So let's do that in the next lesson.