3ds max Spline Modeling Adding a Bevel modifier And then we can select both of those points at that location and weld them. And we can verify that it worked by selecting and moving, and it moved as a unit, whereas this one down here that hasn't been welded yet. If I select just by clicking and dragging, you can see that, in fact, there are two vertices there. I'll undo that, drag a rectangle to select them both, and then weld, and then test it. So that's one thing that you'll want to do is weld nearby vertices. I'll undo that. You may need to add detail as well. It'll be easier for us to see why once we've actually applied the Bevel. So I'll exit out of Sub-Object Vertex, dolly back, I'll just zoom with the Z key. And from the Modifier list, add a Bevel. And let's look at this in a shaded view. So I'll go back out to the forward view ports, Alt + W, and in the perspective view, it's black on the front, and it's actually shaded correctly on the back. We need to adjust a bunch of the parameters down here. So we've got different levels to the Bevel. We have the start outline first, and that is the size of each closed spline. And let's get in close.
3ds max Spline Modeling Adding a Bevel modifier . Dolly in with Control, Alt, and middle mouse. I can turn the snaps back off again and play around with this start outline. As I increase it, what happens is, the letters get thicker. I'll undo that. If I decrease the start outline, things go wrong. See, it's actually crashing into itself. So I'll set the start outline to zero, and that's probably the best setting for the start outline is actually zero so it's not doing an outline at the very front of that object. Then we have level one, and this is an extrusion. It has a height and an outline. And these values are relative to the level above them. So if I do a height value here, it will extrude either forward or back relative to the start outline position. And I want to actually extrude backwards, so I'll give it a negative value, click and drag. Let's set it to negative 10 centimeters. Now let's take a look at what this outline does. If we click and drag on this level one outline, we can see that we're able to create an angle or chamfer there. All right, pretty neat. Let's say I want to have a straight extrusion, but just a chamfer on the edge. Well, then I would want to enable level two and give that some negative height. And there I got that result that I was seeking. Well, let's change this up a little bit. I'll change these values to make them much lower so that we'll have a small chamfer around that edge. Set the outline to one centimeter, If we want a chamfer on the back, then we can enable level three and give it some non-zero height and outline. I'll extrude backward another centimeter, so negative one centimeter for the height. And now we can see that extrusion. It's got an edge loop there, and the outline also negative one. So what I've done is I've started with an outline of zero at this location here. Then I've given it a positive outline and then no outline, and finally a negative outline.
3ds max Spline Modeling Adding a Bevel modifier. pretty cool. We can also choose Curved Sides up here. Set this to Curved Sides and increase the segments, and we'll need to change these values. The curved sides do weird things, so you'll have to change these values quite drastically in order to get a good result. And it's not very intuitive. You're just going to have to play with it and try to figure out how to do it best. It's kind of trial and error. All right, well, I'm going to undo all those changes. I'll just right click on my undo, and I've got a bunch of parameter changes. I don't know how far back I'm going to go, but let's say I'll go four steps back and click Undo. All right, I'll keep going back with Control + Z until I'm back at, let's just say we'll choose Linear Sides and we're good. All right, so I've got a height of negative one, outline of one, and for level two, height of negative 10, an outline of zero and for level three, height and outline both negative one, and that's a classic straight chamfer. Now let's look at this in more detail. If I press F4, we can see that we don't really have a lot of detail on this. F4 is edged faces, of course, and I need to actually subdivide this if I ever want to maybe deform this shape. So that's when you would want to go into the Editable Spline and maybe refine it. So let's try that. So I'll go into the Editable Spline, turn on Show End Result, and then go into Segment Mode, and we can see the orange segment superimposed. I can select one of these segments here and then go into the Geometry rollout, scroll down. And we're looking for Divide. It's near the bottom. And if I divide with only one segment, I will add one vertex. So let's add two. So I'll set that value to two and then click Divide, and now I've got two new vertices on the spline, resulting in two new edge loops on that side of the model. Okay, so that's something that you may need to do in order to avoid issues if you're working with deformations. All right, so let's go even a little bit deeper than that. I'll go back up to the Editable Spline. I'll exit out of Segment Mode. Go up to the Bevel, and we have here Cap Type, Morph, and Grid. And we won't be able to see the effectiveness unless we disable Faces Only. 3ds max Spline Modeling Adding a Bevel modifier
