Right… I’ve opened 3Ds Max for the first time ever and I hold a degree in 3D modelling and texturing… so this should be easy right?

Wrong.

I’m trained in Softimage XSI and I’ve just opened up a completely different looking piece of software with an entirely new layout.
I may as well be learning to knit.

This will be the first of several tutorials, following the modelling of a car from start to finish. As I am new to this software myself,
I will be learning as I write these so lets see what I can teach us!

In this tutorial we will go through the basics of the interface and how to set up your blueprint images. Its always useful to have reference images
behind your model to keep proportions and shape in check.

Before diving into the 3D bit, find a blueprint of a simple car online and use photoshop to cut it into seperate images. www.the-blueprints.com has over 23,000 to choose from.
I use guides, snapping and copying each view into a new file.
Save them as something obvious like “side.jpg” “front.jpg” “back.jpg” and “top.jpg”.

Now for the 3D.

First things first. Learning to get around the interface, which on first appearances can be quite daunting.
The UI or User Interface comprises of a standard windows menu (orange), central viewports, animation timeline (red), a small navigation box (green),
a main Toolbar (yellow) and a Create/Modify Panel (blue)

As we are only modelling, we can ignore the timeline and windows menu and we’ll start with viewport navigation using the tools in the green box.

Put simply, the central viewports display our work from a variety of angles. This allows us to make changes from one direction and see the
effect it has on others. Left clicking in each window will make them “active” allowing us to make changes in them and each angle can be changed
to another with a right-click to the top left corner and selecting View.
Dragging the borders between each of the viewports alters their proportions and Alt+w maximizes the active viewport to full size.

The following icons can be used to manoeuvre around the scene, all of which have a mouse equivalent on the middle wheel/button.

- Scroll wheel - zoom

- Middle click - pan
- Alt + Middle click - rotate

(If rotating in one of the flat views, a strange three dimensional view appears which has NO perspective. This and all viewport movements can be
undone with Shift+Z)
Right Click - Deselect tools

We will set up the blueprints as textures on flat planes so lets begin to make those. The creating/modifying and generally doing anything useful
menu is on the right (highlighted blue).
The tabs along the top represent from left to right: Creating, Modifying, object Hierarchy, Motion, Display and Settings. For now we’ll just need
the creation and modifying tabs.

Within the Creating tab, the row of icons below is the type of object that we wish to create.

Under primitive objects, select a plane and left-click-drag a shape into the perspective viewport. Any size will do as we will modify this shortly.

Now that we have an object in our display, we need to get to grips with how to move, rotate and scale it.
All of which can be found on the top Toolbar (highlighted yellow). The first buttons we need to know are as follows.

- Undo/Redo (Ctrl+Z Ctrl+Y)
- Select (Q) Select by name
- Selection draw method
- toggle selection via intersect or surround
- Move item (w)
- Rotate item (E)
- Scale item (R)

(in all cases click on different coloured axis of the gizmo to manipulate in specific dimensions. Blue for Z, Green for Y and Red for X.
Click between axis to manipulate in two or in the centre for all three)

IF ANY GIZMOS ABOVE FAIL TO SHOW, PRESS X.

Our first plane is sitting correctly but we need one for the side and front.

With the first plane selected and in move mode (W),
hold down shift and move the plane. Upon letting go, a box will appear. Leave the settings unless you wish to change the name and hit OK.
You will now have an unlinked copy of the first plane.
By using the rotate tool and a third plane, align the the two new planes to their correct angles. For more accurate 90 degree rotates you can use the
information boxes at the bottom of the screen.

Now, in explorer, find your image files and get up their properties so you can see their dimensions. Back in XSI under modify>parameters input
these dimensions to rescale each plane to its correct size, ready for the images.

Creating textures in 3DS Max is comparatively simple compared to XSI. Press on the Toolbar or (M) to bring up the materials menu.
Each sphere represents a texture so simply find your images and click and drag each one onto a seperate sphere. This will make 4 different textures
for your four different car views.

To apply these textures, simply drag them from the material menu on to the plane of your choice. As we have already
made the planes the correct size, no tiling should occur.

Now all we need to finish off is align each plane with the others. Select one object and press . With this align tool, select the plane you are
aligning with and a menu will appear. Basically click buttons until the planes have aligned correctly. I’ve yet to make head or tail of which axis make sense
so its very much trial and error.

Another good idea is to select to bring up the layer panel. With all the planes selected with Ctrl, create a new layer and move selected onto it.
Checking “freeze” will make them unselectable while we model. Very handy indeed.

Hopefully atleast some of that made some sense because next time, I’ll be trying to explain polygon modelling!