Introduction to 3ds Max 2011

In this lesson, we'll create some more pieces for our pod, including some stress around the center cylinder. So, this is area that we're talking about. And under here, we want to fill this out with some mechanical detail. We can do that just using some primitive pieces, and creating a number of those to create this sort of network of struts coming in here. So let's start by going to Create, and we'll just drop in a cylinder. Using keyboard entry, we'll just go ahead and create. Let's move it into position here. We'll go to our modified panel and let's change the radius. We'll drop that radius way down to, maybe something like .25. Go ahead and bring that up. All right, and I want to take the height down, something a bit lower. So I can penetrate in, but we don't want to go all the way through there. All right, so we end up with something like that. Now, we want to create a few duplicates of this. So the first thing we'll do is, let's go ahead and just rotate this. I'm going to rotate it about 60 degrees. I just want to make sure that it's long enough, because this is going to be a little bit longer there. So it's been rotated 60 degrees. So 60 degrees back would be straight up. So I actually want to make a few copies of this. So I'm going to actually hold down Shift, and then rotate this back, and let's rotate it back 30 degrees. So we want to make one, two, three, four copies. So now we've got some struts there. We can go ahead and take these, and if we want to make these part of the same object, let's say we don't want them to be all separate, we want them to be part of the same object. We could take them, and we have to convert them to an editable poly first. So you need to make sure that all of your parameters are set the way you want. For instance, if you want to dial this down, maybe take this down to 18 sides, then you want to do all of that before you attach. So we'll go ahead, take all that down. Down to 18 here, just to save on resolution. And then we'll take the middle one, let's say, and let's convert it to an editable poly. We'll go to Edit Geometry, and here we can, again, just attach, start attaching these. And now they're all part of a single editable poly. And we've sort of looked at this before, but it's an important concept, the fact that you can take these polygon objects and then attach them together. And so you can still access the different elements individually, by using your element sub object, otherwise, you can deal with all of these as one. Let's now hold down Shift and just move this back to create another row of these. And now we've got some more struts back here. We can add a color to those if we want to. I'm just going to maybe make those black. OK to that. Now that just gives us a little bit more detail. And you can add a little bit more detail in here if you want to, mechanical detail inside here. It's up to you. All right. The next thing that I want to add is kind of a piece coming over the top here. And so let's go ahead and turn off this turbo smooth. So I want to get this geometry here. So, I'll go to Polygon Selection. Let's grab, basically these polygons right here. And this time, instead of attaching, we are going to detach. So detach, and again, as we've done this before, will detach this clone. We can turn that turbo smooth back on. And now we have this piece here. So, we want to add some thickness. So we could extrude this up, or we could add a shell, either one. So let's go ahead and just add a shell modifier. And let's just add that shell. And let's get an outer amount, so it sticks out a little bit more. Now, beyond kind of just converting this and collapsing the stack, we can just create a larger stack and continue to edit this. So if we want to edit some of the sub objects here, we can add an edit poly modifier, on the top of our shell, and that will allow us to come in and edit this while still retaining the shell, the functionality. So, for instance, we could come in with our-- actually, let's do a connect. So we would select the edges-- get an edge selection here. Select these edges. And then we can do our connect-- go down to Edit Edges, Connect. We add one line right in the middle. So you can see this is actually part of a modifier, and not in the original editable poly. So if we had, for instance, a primitive down here, we could use an edit poly and retain some of the functionality here. So that's also kind of a good way to work sometimes. So, once we got this edge, let's go into our vertices on the top, and let's just grab those. I'm just going to pull those up and out. And here, I'm going to pull this out, and just create a little bit more of a sharp line there. Just pulling this out. Now, we can grab our swift loop if we want to, and just add an edge on either side of there. And again, we don't have to collapse this. We can add, let's say a turbo smooth to this. And so you can see, you can start to build up this stack the way you want here. So, let's say I want to go back and add an edge and sharpen this up. I can go back to my edit poly-- you can see how I might need an edge there. So back on our edit poly, which will give us the ability to come in with some of these tools and start to add some detail there. And then we can go back and check it with our smooth. You can see how that's raised off there a little bit. So, we can take the shell, increase that. So you can go through your stack and just tweak the settings that you need to tweak. So if I need to sharpen that up, again, go back, and let's turn off our turbo smooth. And I can come in with the swift loop and maybe add another edge right across here, and here. Turn that back on, and you get something nice and sharp. And you see I still have the functionality here to be able to change the shell, the edit poly and the turbo smooth. And then once you're done, if you want to collapse that down, you can. Just keep in mind that your smoothing will be baked in if you do that. Now, in the bottom, I want to also add a piece on the bottom. So let's go ahead and create a new piece. Let's create a sphere. Let's kind of mirror the top piece that we created. So, we'll drop that sphere in. Let's change some of the parameters here. So, I want to actually create a hemisphere, so maybe something like that. Let's actually rotate this around, so I'm just going to rotate it around in the x, around 180 degrees. Let's give it a few more segments, so it's nice and smooth there. And let's take the radius down a bit. We'll move it kind of back into position here. And then we can just take our scale, and I just want to scale that out a little bit. You could use your FFD as well, if you wanted to do that. And I'm just going to kind of move it up here, up against the bottom part of our pod. If you want to add some detail down here, let's go ahead and just make this an editable poly. Get a polygon selection going here. So let's say we want to take these and just make a little area down here. So we could use our inset. We say OK to that. Maybe extrude this up a bit. Maybe inset it a bit. Get back here-- I can't do that. So we end up with something like that, which then we can turn on our NURB smoothing if you want to, to give that more of a smooth shape. If you want to size that, make it a little bit bigger, you could do that. I just want to give a shape to mirror this top part. And you can add more detail underneath there if you want to. The next thing that we want to do, now that we've got some of those little details added, and feel free to add your own details, of course. The next thing we want to do is add some sort of fins up here, some paneled fins that are sticking off the side up here in the front. And we can do that using splines, and it'll be a familiar way of doing things. But we can create those and group them together, and create some nice panels up here on the front. So let's do that in the next lesson.