3ds Max mixed modeling tutorials

[darn42 1,268]

Hey guys, this is my tutorial thread. I will be posting all my big tutorials in here before they make it to the omnibus then deleting them, and I will be posting all the smaller tutorials I make to help out individual people here as well.

I really hope these tutorials help you guys out. Making pretty much all of them helps me out and I enjoy doing it.

3ds Max Mixed Modeling tutorials

Modeling:

Part 1: This has some basic poly modeling techniques and some very basic spline techniques

Part 2: Advanced spline techniques

Part 3: More advanced use of modifiers Project files Hosted on mediafire. Feel free to rummage around in the scene to see my meshes.

Part 4 Using various tools available. Especially the graphite modeling toolset

Part 5: Intro to particle systems. Make realistic falling water.

Texturing:

This teaches how to create realistic textures without the use of 3rd party photo editing programs like photoshop or gimp.

edit: first tutorial is on omnibus, replaced it with this post.

  Edited December 24, 2012 by darn42  

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Wow, lots of interesting things in there. Lots of stuff I didn't even know about.

You should check out the lathe modifier if you haven’t already.

Btw, how long have you actually been learning this stuff for, and how many hours a day are you putting in?

[darn42 1,268]

I started actually learning modeling about 2 months ago I think. And between 5 and 12 hours a day

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Now this is how you supposed to model, keep it up!!! That's a good amount of hours to model I use to model almost the whole day, I just hope I can get back to that.

I think we guys need to get together and make a bunch of tutorial videos for modeling.

Oh another thing I think Cockatoo is right I think the lathe modifier could work too, but there's so many ways to model things.

  Edited June 28, 2012 by Aaron Graham  

[Cockatoo 2,256]

I started actually learning modeling about 2 months ago I think. And between 5 and 12 hours a day

Well, I guess we've found the sourse of your massive progress in the modelling department. Been going through lots of online tutorials?

I've been working with Max for a few years now and I can honestly say that you're modelling skills are far far above mine. I mean, I'd get the same result (render wise) in the end, but I'd spend a lot more time doing things in a far less efficent way. You really have a talent for this.

But now it's time to learn how to make those detalis you see in the viewport come alive in the render window. Right now, all that hard work you've put in just isn't translating. Once you get into learning how to light and render a seen as well as work with materials, then your work will really start to look good. Maybe in another two months, when you've learned how, you can come back and give us a followup tutorial.

[darn42 1,268]

Thanks. I am going to be doing a few more tutorials on modeling in the coming week. Once I learn texturing well enough to give a tutorial on it, I definitely will do so. I have gone through a lot of online tutorials also. I got a membership to digitaltutors.com and that has really been the source of all my progress. It's like taking a school course that you can take any time and pause and whatever. It's nice. I think I've done about 50 hours of tutorials with that site. And I plan to go through more.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

This is all beyond me, but I still enjoy watching it all come together.

Besides, tutorials like these are a tremendous contribution, and I'd like to thank you for taking the time and the trouble to post this useful resource here. 5 to 12 hours a day? Jeez, that's a LOT.

[darn42 1,268]

Cockatoo, about the lathe modifier, I know basically what it does, takes a shape and spins it around 360 to create a cool shape (I'm glad you pointed it out I'm sure I can use it) does it also allow you to make copies like what I showed with the pivot and instancing?

[Amthaak 1,501]

Remarkable! I hope you 'll continue to share your knowledge and experience! Thank you very much for that!

[darn42 1,268]

Pretty far done with the tutorial on advanced spline modeling I'm learning a lot of stuff by doing this as well. Gave myself a difficult thing to model.

[darn42 1,268]

New tutorial incoming.

[darn42 1,268]

Part 2 original post

Located here: https://www.simtropolis.com/omnibus/_/simcity-4/3ds-max-mixed-modeling-tutorial-pt-2-r241

  Edited July 1, 2012 by darn42  

[darn42 1,268]

Just wanted to tell you guys, that I have learned an incredible amount just from doing these tutorials. I'm really glad I decided to do them. Trying to explain something you do really helps you understand it

[T Wrecks 10,209]

*laughs hysterically*

*puts finger in mouth and runs aimlessly around making funny noises*

*ends up lying in fetal position in the corner of the room, endlessly rocking back and forth and mumbling gibberish*

I... I guess it's acceptable, yes.

[Girafe 1,729]

I am not able to do 10% of this modeling

[darn42 1,268]

New Tutorial incoming Fountain is now finished.

  Edited June 30, 2012 by darn42  

[darn42 1,268]

Part 3's original post.

Located on omnibus now, here:

  Edited July 2, 2012 by darn42  

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Hey, I'm all for high quality images too... but at 1920x1080 and in PNG format this thread is really starting to take a long time to load. There's probably about 20-30 megs on this page.

For any further images, I think that it would be best to crop out the taskbar and irrelevant parts of the max UI, resize 800px wide unless you really need to show something in more detail and save in jpeg format.

Otherwise, you continue to amaze us with your fantastic modelling skills! Do you think it would be possible to upload the Max file itself? People who write tutorials often do this. Personally, I'd love to open this thing up and take a closer look for myself.

[darn42 1,268]

I can upload it sure, how do I do that? also it will be quite hefty in itself I think...

And I agree, I opened it up to see what you said and had to keep scrolling down constantly to try and read your post... lol

edit: http://www.mediafire.com/?9cswoawn4swocec

Here is the project file. Feel free to download and explore the scene.

  Edited July 1, 2012 by darn42  

[Cockatoo 2,256]

You can go to a site like Mediafire or Fileden, create an account, upload the file and then post a download link in this thread. Probably at the end of your latest tutorial post. Then, if you continue to work on the fountain, you can continue to post updated versions of the model as you go.

20MB is not that bad at all actually (for a Max file that is... not the images ). Put it in a zip folder before you upload it, that'll reduce the filesize by at least 50%. Max files compress really well.

[darn42 1,268]

Part 4 original post, now on omnibus.

https://www.simtropolis.com/omnibus/_/simcity-4/batlot-editor-tutorials/mixed-modeling-tutorials-part-4-r244

  Edited July 6, 2012 by darn42  

[darn42 1,268]

Made a tutorial on using blobmesh and a particle system to create the jets of water from the goats mouths. Should I make that a tutorial in itself or include it in the next one?

  Edited July 8, 2012 by darn42  

[darn42 1,268]

preview of latest tutorial

A nice park scene. Pretty much all modeling is done and some texturing. (the trees and the water)

  Edited July 10, 2012 by darn42  

[darn42 1,268]

I've changed some stuff with the lighting and added a grass texture.

Hope you guys like it. 2 new tutorials will be out soon.

[Amthaak 1,501]

"Should I make that a tutorial in itself or include it in the next one?"

Whatever you want... A tut for the water will be super welcome...!

  Edited July 10, 2012 by Amthaak  

[darn42 1,268]

Original post of part 5 particle systems, now on omnibus.

https://www.simtropolis.com/omnibus/_/simcity-4/batlot-editor-tutorials/3ds-mixed-modeling-tutorials-pt5-particle-systems-r245

  Edited July 11, 2012 by darn42  

[darn42 1,268]

Realistic Procedural Textures

Texturing is, as we all know, one of the most important parts of a BAT. Easily making or breaking a good model. The most commonly used method of getting good results in textures is using photoshop or gimp to make custom textures that fit the model. But for many cases, using the 3ds max procedural textures in combination with each other can create some very convincing results. They end up taking much less time, are more easily editable, and give a much nicer workflow.

I use procedural textures almost exclusively in my projects, and I'm always learning new tricks that give new cool effects, so this should not be the end all tutorial for what to do, but you should take it as a basis for your own experimentation.

For this tutorial I created a simple model and some textures that I think are decent enough (I don't pretend they are that good) to show my point.

The textures here were created using a mixture of different standard maps to create the effects I wanted. Mostly noise, gradient, composite, tiles, and cellular.

Tile maps are great. I recommend looking at them in more detail yourself, but just for this tutorials sake, I used the 1/2 running bond for the brick, and stack bond for the roof. Composite maps are even better though. They work with a layer system like photoshop or gimp, but it's significantly more powerful than gimp (imo) and I've never used photoshop so I have no clue how it compares, but the fact that it is all within 3ds max gives it all new power. Using a base procedural map as the base layer, then adding on more layers with procedural maps as both the layer and the mask continuously adds more depth. Each layer can be set to affect the layers underneath it in different ways; changing it to color dodge or burn or value or saturation, gives a variety of options to influence your base layer.

This is my setup for the brick material

My base layer in this case was a tiles map with a small amount of color variation,

As you can see in the coordinates section, I set the texture to tile 5 times. This is important. I'm not sure why, but i used to change the UVW map size to influence the size of textures, and it's a bad habit. Changing the tiling of the texture itself will allow for the other procedural textures to work to their full potential and not tile at all, like they should.

For the next section you will need an understanding of the composite materials

The basis of this map is red-the layer and green-the layer mask. The layer mask gives the layer transparency based on the value of each pixel. Black is transparent, white is opaque. After deciding what the layer and the mask should be, there is a third very important thing; that is the grey bar in the middle. That determines what the layer does. Normal is the same as any other bitmap, it just stacks the images. Color dodge brightens everything below it based on value- white is maximum dodge, black is none. Color burn does the opposite. These are just two important ones, but all the other options are useful and worth experimenting with.

Now for the material description. On top of the base layer, I used a fractal noise map of medium size, and a large noise map, set to color dodge, to create some more variation across the wall. Opacity I set to something like 50 for almost every layer except the first. Just something slightly noticeable. For the streaks at the top, two different gradient maps, one as layer one as mask with lots of noise under a color dodge. I messed around with the colors, the 2nd color position, and the low point to get a better result, but that's about it. The last layer I put down was a color dodge made from a cellular map and another gradient as a mask because I wanted this to be mostly at the bottom. It ended up being something I liked. The cellular map gave a very strong dodge, very localized, waterstain look that I have taken note of.

That's about it for the brick texture. I didn't go too in depth in each part of it because I want you to play around with the maps yourself to figure out what all the buttons do. Just in general, fractal means it creates a more "smokey" effect around blobs of noise and is my favorite type of noise, low point and high point change how dark/light the noise is, and size changes, well, the size.

Here are some examples of why I love using procedural textures:

All of these were created by just changing a few parameters in the tiles and the noise map that was providing the color.

Now that we've covered what it can do and how to do a basic wall, another thing that I really like about this method of texturing is how you can add decals, and you can add them very well. The decals don't have to be actual images, but you can add specific grime with the same process and using procedural textures.

For this decal, I'm using my original brick texture. The look I'm going for is an old coca-cola add with chipping paint and kinda worn off. The way I'm going to do this, is by choosing a bitmap online and using composite to add this in before the tiles map. To get the worn chipped look, I'm going to use noisy gradient and the stucco map in conjunction to get a nice look.

This is the material setup

As you can see, it looks quite a bit more complicated than the first one, but it really isn't. I have my noise giving the base color of the brick, then I have 2 bitmaps with color correction as layer 2 and 3.

Note: I increased the tiling of all radial gradients and bitmaps to 2, and unchecked tiling. This decreases the size of the bitmap/gradient, and let's you place it, like a decal, anywhere you want.

I have 2 because chipped paint looks like it has a second layer underneath. The masks for those two layers are nearly identical. I have a radial gradient with some noise, and instead of having white, I used a stucco map, with black being where I want the holes (For some reason i decided to use a color correction and invert the stucco because I made the holes white). I then copied the stucco over and made a composite with the gradient, using color burn, as you can see, to darken the stucco more. Then, I copied over everything for the second bitmaps mask, and increased the size of the holes for the stucco. And that was it.

In the end, this was the render I got.

I should have decreased the saturation a bit more to give it a more worn paint look, and if I wanted to spend the time, I could have made a bump map using the same techniques (also using a dent map) to create a more worn brick look. And the decal looked square. Masking the gradient with another non noisy gradient/black and white circle would have solved that. But for this tutorial I decided not to.

If you are wondering how I made the roof, I'm not going to explain it or show my steps, instead try it out yourself. I'll give you a hint though, I use noise, radial gradient, and cellular (chips) in no particular order.

Post if you didn't understand something, I'll edit the post when I can to hopefully explain it better. Either way, I hope this tutorial helped you guys, Enjoy!

[darn42 1,268]

Basic poly modeling: Box

 

In this tutorial I go through the ui for box modeling. All those buttons in the modify panel. I was asked to do a video tutorial and so I thought this was a good starting place. My first video so comment if you want anything. 

 

Definitely watch if you are new, and maybe watch if you are a veteran, you might learn something depending on your experience.

 

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Wonderful work this can really help out new batters.

[libellibicus 396]

As soon as I can get more than half a nano second spare, I'll be working my way through these tutorials. Many thanks for taking the time and effort to do these.