Week 2

Week 2 Class Activity

Low poly modelling continued.

This week I was able to produce a bowl for the fruit to sit in as well as learning how to use some modifiers.

For the bowl I had to use the Line tool with a Lathe Modifier.



I found that I had to adjust the pivot point to the drawn object otherwise the Lathe tool would not create the correct shape.



Incorrect shape:



Correct shape & Pivot point:



By using the “Select & Uniform Scale option, I was then able to adjust the object into a realistic bowl shape. The problem was that the edges looked rather square.



To get round this I used the Smooth modifier. This allowed me to adjust how square or round I wished the object to appear.



I found that the higher the “Threshold”, the smoother an object would appear.

Week 1

Week 1 Class Activity

The purpose of this blog is to guide you through what I have learnt within the first 12 weeks of using 3D Studio Max. To start off with I will learn basic editing methods to produce a fruit bowl. Then, for my main project I will go on to produce 3 images that resemble 3 different months of the year.

Low Poly Modelling

I first learnt how to use the object tools, deciding to use a Sphere to resemble an apple.



By converting the object to a editable poly I was able to adjust the shape of the sphere to make the apple more realistic.




By adding a soft selection option I was able to edit the object without many square parts to the apple.

Research

My favourite month of the year is March. I choose this as my favourite month of the year because of my birthday and also my favourite sport (superbike racing) starts the new season.




Research: For this I will list words that link with the month that I have chosen and explain why the words link with the month.

The 3 months of the year that I have decided to concentrate on are:

December

Happy - Many people find it a happy time of year due to Christmas
Cold - due to the weather during this time of the year
Snow - even though its cold, it never actually snows even though it gets predicted
Laughter - shared between friends as it is the month of christmas
Family & Friends
Sadness - peopel remember the ones they have lost or can't be with them
Christmas


January

Parties
New Year
Celebration
Cold
New Start


August

Sunny - warmer weather at this time of year
Holidays - Many choose to go on holiday during breaks at school
Happiness - chance to chill out
Relaxation
Barbeque
Football - new season starts


Mood Boards:

August


December


January

Fruit Bowl

The fruit bowl that I have produced is the first time that I have tried to create an object using the AutoDesk 3DS Max software. The purpose of this task was to get familiar with the basic operations within the software. This meant finding out how to perform basic actions as well as familiarising with low poly modelling.

The following steps show how I managed to complete the fruit bowl.

Fruit Bowl

The edge of the bowl was created by using the torus object within the Standard Primitives menu. I manipulated the shape so that the edge of the bowl was quite high and so that the thickness of the edge would also be thin.
The base of the bowl was created using the cylinder object;, again manipulating its basic shape so that it gave the right look for the bowl. This meant matching up the edges of the bowl so that there were no gaps visible between the joins.

By using the material editor I was able to give the bowl a wooden effect which I used to try and give it a more realistic look.

Apples

I produced the apples using the torus object. I used a smaller diameter; more height and added more thickness to the shape compared to the torus object used for making the edge of the fruit bowl. This allowed me to produce a basic outline of an apple. By using the cylinder object it allowed me to fill in the centre of the apple (again leaving no gaps present when viewing the object as an image).

The stem of the apple was produced using the spring tool (found within the Dynamics Objects section) again adjusting the colour to give the apple a more realistic look.

Orange

To produce the orange I decided to use the sphere object, as this gave the closest resemblance to a simple object. From here I imported my first texture to use on an object.

For this I searched on the internet for an image of an orange, I then had to cut out an area to which I would want wrapped around my object. Then by using material editor I was able to import the image and drag it onto the object of my choice. I was able to choose where on the object I would want specific parts of the image by adjusting the basic parameters section.

Banana

I found that the banana was the most difficult object to create for the fruit bowl. To produce the banana, I had to make two separate objects and then link them.

First thing I had to do was to produce an arc (found within Splines section) and a 5 sided ngon. To link the two objects I had to first select the arc that I created; go into the compound objects section and select the loft option. Next, I had to select the “Get Shape” option which is also within the compound objects section and select the ngon that I had created.

This gave me a basic shape to work from which would allow me to make an object in the shape of a banana. To modify the shape to make it look more realistic in terms of shape I went into the Deformations section within the modify menu and selected scale.

Once I had found the correct shape I added a custom texture to make the object look more realistic.

Lighting

I decided to add some basic lighting, this was because I wanted to see how the basic alterations would work. To do this I selected the Omni Lighting option and placed several lights around the object to make certain areas to be darker and contain shading.