• There seems to be an up tick in Political commentary in recent months. Those of us who are long time members of the site we know that Political and Religious content has been banned for years. Nothing has changed. Please leave all political and religiours commentary out of the fourms.

    If you recently joined the forums you were not presented with this restriction in the terms of service. This was due to a conversion error when we went from vBulletin to Xenforo. We have updated our terms of service to reflect these corrections.

    Please note any post refering to a politicion will be considered political even if it is intended to be humor. Our experience is these topics have a way of dividing the forums and causing deep resentment amoung members. It is a poison to the community. We apprciate compliance with the rules.

    The Staff of SOH

  • Server side Maintenance is done. We still have an update to the forum software to run but that one will have to wait for a better time.

I want to start modelling......

Take head on what Fr. Bill (N4Gix) put in there. You 'cannot export a model' if you do not have that scale preset in your settings in Gmax......


Cannot...
 
Thanks Lionheart, now i want to form a body of the aircraft but im having the trouble of forming it.... any help will be a HUGE help here. and thanks to everyone here for all the help!
 
Ahh, thats what clever people do LOL, see, I aint clever nor great on memory, so I just keep everything in metric :).

Best

Michael

n4gix said:
There are TWO configuration settings in Max/GMax that are very frequently misunderstood:

System unit scale: must be 1 unit = 1 meter - always!

Preferences (Modeling unit scale): can be any system you are comfortable with, meters, decimal feet, inches, fractional feet, etc.

During modeling, you can switch your Preferences (the Modeling unit scale) as often as you like. Some of your source materials might be using meters for example, while other data may be in feet/inches. This setting allows you to use whichever system is most convenient for YOU...

...the System unit scale will automatically ensure that the proper conversion is done to all measurements to make them uniform and consistent!
Click to expand...
 
Cag40Navy said:
Thanks Lionheart, now i want to form a body of the aircraft but im having the trouble of forming it.... any help will be a HUGE help here. and thanks to everyone here for all the help!
Click to expand...


Once you learn where the tools are, and how to use them, and how to 'fold, spindle, and mutilate' them, then you are off to making nice planes. Figure 2 weeks to learn the very very basics, getting things to export, etc.


Making a sophisticated object such as a fuselage is a strategic challenge. Its like playing a game of chess in a way. Like a sculptor that stands and looks at a block of marble for a week, figuring out how he will begin, how to attack the rock, and to 'see' (visualize) what it will be like is step 2 (after you learn to work the chisles and hammers).

I often will make several fuselages before I have one that I like. Dont be afraid to just make a bunch of them. Figure, the more you make, the more you learn, the more relaxed you become about modelling, etc...

Dont go to fast though.. You might get disgruntled.. angry.. develope a bitter beer face, have all your eyebrows turn gray... develop instant stress syndrome and deep breath 'sigh' syndrome...


:d
 
I wanted to model too but I don't have the legs for it ... :bump:

Actually I've got GMax and unfortunately with my technical background in mechanical engineering and using engineering cad programs for the better part of my life and career, I couldn't wrap my head around the free form way of working in gmax ...

:sleep:
 
Snuffy said:
I wanted to model too but I don't have the legs for it ... :bump:

Actually I've got GMax and unfortunately with my technical background in mechanical engineering and using engineering cad programs for the better part of my life and career, I couldn't wrap my head around the free form way of working in gmax ...

:sleep:
Click to expand...

Snuffy,

Gmax is awesome... I am formerly into drafting and design and technical renderings. In this program, you can work in a giant window, work in 3D, and move things around without needing a 3-View. They have 1 key shortcuts to views, such as L for Left View, and shortcuts to zoom, such as E key, and with that, you can move around (oh, and view rotate, which is V key), you can move around in blinding speeds and work even faster.....

Amazing design engine. I wish I had 3DS Max and Lightwave. They say those are even better.

Some incredible modelling software out there now...

NOTE: They 'also' have the old style 3 views, 4 views, and editable views to totally make things extremely personalized.


Bill
 
I'm not much into multiview when I'm doing my cad either ... I use one screen and not dual screen and I do all in 3D through one window ... using the alternate views as I need for verification.

But its the free form thing again Bill that gets me ... I'm so hardcore into everything needing a dimension and specifications. :mixedsmi:
 
ahhh.. I see what you're saying..

Like Organic shapes..! Its a real trick, creating a freeform object, such as a human, a nice, radically reclined, styling seat, a fuselage that has nice wingroots coming out of the sides, molded into the mesh as one piece.

It takes some studying... One of the people that taught me about blending mesh and creating parts to blend into mesh parts like that, is Kweetnix (Gerard), God rest his soul.

What you can do is make a basic rough shape and then use Smoothing with 1 or 2 Iterations to turn it into a very liquid, flowing shape. What I do now is make cross section Splines, join them, add 'Cross Sections' to it, then add 'Surface' to that as well. Adjust to 0.0 on 'noise' (tension on mesh), go to 0 or 1 Iterations, flip Polygons if needed, and Voila, you have a shape made from cross sections.

Also, to make that even easier, you can do only half the side, and clone the other side for checking. When you are finally ready to copy the one side, copy it and weld the vertices together.


For those of you that might try this, remember to use 'Edit/Clone' to clone objects, and remember to mirror them through the RH control panel flyout. Do not use the Mirror toolbar button as its corrupt when working with FS models...


Bill
 
BEFORE ANYTHING, organize your computer setup. Decide where you want to place your project files, texture files, tuts, etc.
On my system, all of my projects, and background 3-views are in the 3DMax/scenes folder. All the tex's are in a folder I named, you guessed it, textures. Which also resides in the main Max folder.
Then sooner or later(hopefully sooner) you will have to get and organize your texturing program, tex conversion apps, and a bunch of other things for refs, airfiles, gauges, etc...
 
Piglet said:
BEFORE ANYTHING, organize your computer setup. Decide where you want to place your project files, texture files, tuts, etc.
On my system, all of my projects, and background 3-views are in the 3DMax/scenes folder. All the tex's are in a folder I named, you guessed it, textures. Which also resides in the main Max folder.
Then sooner or later(hopefully sooner) you will have to get and organize your texturing program, tex conversion apps, and a bunch of other things for refs, airfiles, gauges, etc...
Click to expand...

im getting there and im exploring GMAX. as soon as a learn more and get warmed up with it, ill give my first aircraft a shot.

now, while i was looking at the tut on the first page.... i see milton was able to "shrink" a row of verts on the cylinder and i want to know how he was able to "tie" that row to be smaller and more conformed ot the aircraft's shape. how am i able to do this?

Ref. of example
Image607.jpg

If you see the row of vert around the back of the aircraft, how do you "tie" them off like that?

also, how do i put a pic of the aircraft in GMAX like in the pic also....
 
Cag40Navy said:
i

now, while i was looking at the tut on the first page.... i see milton was able to "shrink" a row of verts on the cylinder and i want to know how he was able to "tie" that row to be smaller and more conformed ot the aircraft's shape. how am i able to do this?

If you see the row of vert around the back of the aircraft, how do you "tie" them off like that?

also, how do i put a pic of the aircraft in GMAX like in the pic also....
Click to expand...

Hey there,

I can only repeat what the others said as well. The questions you are asking are the very basic steps in modelling. In this case you would use the scale tool.
However, please do the tutorials FIRST and you will be able to figure out this stuff all by yourself. It's much more rewarding, trust me.

Again, you can also look get a lot of nice training from the 3D Buzz course, and you can watch a lot of free videos on their site. Got to

http://www.3dbuzz.com/xcart/product.php?productid=38&cat=10&page=1

..then go to the bottom of the site and find "Select a video". There you can watch all videos introducing the UI and also basic operations. For example for the scaling tool etc. watch the video "Transforming Object". The complete course is just awesome. I can really recommend it.

What you can also do, and this info might be of interest for other people too, is taking a course at he Game Institute. They offer three 3ds max courses and when you enroll, you can get a student license for 3ds Max.

http://www.gameinstitute.com/3DStudio_Max_for_Games_Module_1.html

I just enrolled in Module I, because I really want to learn the modelling process, the UI etc. in detail, before I start with an aircraft. I know, the temptation is great, to jump at an aircraft right on, but I am patient and I am pretty sure that doing it this way is paying off in the end.

...and by the way "I want to start modelling" as well :)
I haven't said "Hi" really on the forums, so I want to do that now....

I am Pete and I want to say "Hi" to this great community :wavey:
 
My hat is off to you Cag40Navy, and to all of the rest of you Poly Masters. Don't forget how important Placards are when you build your models.

5840_115331603646_548613646_2374827.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top