Hey Pete,
You should do the Gmax built in tutorials first, (again, just some humble advice). First though... there are two rules you MUST apply to the Gmax tutorial that comes with it.
1. Do the tutorial levels in order. Each level has tools that will be introduced and will be needed in the next level of the tutorial. If you jump to level 4 from 1, you will miss how to find and use the tools for levels 2, 3, and 4, leaving you lost. You 'must' do them in order.
2. Before leaving a level, you should be able to do these levels by memory. This means, closing out the tutorial, and repeatedly doing the level (making parts, effecting them, animating them) over and over with precision, finding the buttons on the toolbar to do this.
To add to rule 2, you should try these tools on other shapes of objects. One of the ways you learn how Gmax works is by exploration and experimentation. So much will be found by 'I wonder what this button does?' moments... Just 2 days ago, I was blessed with 2 more amazing techniques that enabled me to create door skin edges and cutting out parts on a painted surface without any degradation to the texture mapping. I have been doing this for over 10 years and only just found these things out.
Have fun. This is the main thing. Dont go too fast. If you do, you will get frustrated. In learning Gmax, you want to learn the base tools first, and you want to learn 'each tool' with precision. Focus on learning a tool, not making a plane. Its the tools that make the plane, so you need to learn the tools...
By the way, the terrain level in the tutorials is a bit odd, so is the animation of the character, but you will find out how certain things work, even though most of it you will not use in FS. Animation you will, and you might find yourself doing scenery one day, so do all that you can.. Every bit..
Side notes;
Main base tools; Move, Scale, Rotate... . (yep, only three). This is what FSDS uses that makes it so powerful (simple) is the 3 main tools. With Gmax though, you have tons of added tools for doing other things, like cutting out parts and things.
Other tools are;
* Smooth
* Mesh Smooth and adding 'Iterations' (levels of sophistication).
* Taper
* Bend (not used alot)
Mapping... When you 'paint' a plane or part, you will add UVW Maps. (Basically like assigning wallpaper to a part, and you use a texture to wallpaper it). Then you assign a UVW Unwrap to 'adjust' the part on the wallpaper. In Gmax, you are blessed with being able to assign several forms of mapping types, from flat to cylindrical to cube, etc, etc. Awesome for different parts, from a wing to a landing gear cylinder.
Also, note that a part or object is made of elements called Vertices, Polygons, Edges, Elements, and Faces. Basically you will usually only work with Vertices (point coordinates of a polygon(s), and Polygons (flat panels that are created from Vertice points). In Gmax you can work in Edges too, so you can operate on parts of a Polygon (flat area of a part). An Edge is unique and in Editable Mesh mode, you can extrude them, which is massively great for making additions and features to parts....
Remember... For now, just learn how to work one tool, and how it effects a model or part. Thats it.. Learn one tool, then move to the next. So easy..
Bill
