3ds max Spline Modeling Importing Illustrator paths to 3ds Max

3ds max Spline Modeling Importing Illustrator paths to 3ds Max I'm going to save it into the import folder which is where 3ds Max expects to see it and I'll change the name a little bit here to distinguish it from the other version. I'm going to add a suffix to the end of this, an underscore and a V and the numeral eight and the reason I'm doing that is because, I'm going to be saving out as an Adobe Illustrator version eight document and that's the latest version that 3ds Max understands. I click the save button and I get the Illustrator options dialogue, and critically I need to downgrade the version. I need to save as Illustrator 8, and we get some warnings here, we'll ignore that click OK. We get another warning saying that we're creating a file that's not going to be fully compatible, well that's fine we'll click OK as well and that file has been saved. Now let's import it into 3ds Max, I've got that open already. Go into the file menu, to import, import and this is for foreign file formats such as AI, and we're taken directly to the current project import folder, select the document and click open and we can choose whether we want to merge into the current scene or replace the current scene. I'll choose merge and click OK and we also have a choice of whether we want to import it as a single object or multiple objects. If we chose multiple objects then each glyph or each character would be a separate object. I'm going to keep that as a single object and click OK and the document has been imported and it's at its print size, so it's only a few centimeters on a side if it were printed and so that's what we see here. I've got my grid set to centimeters and I can tumble around maybe dolly back and the logo is tiny, we want to scale that up but we don't want to do it at the object level. Let's do it at the sub-object or component level and the reason for that is that I'm going to be using world units later in my workflow to apply a bevel modifier and it wouldn't work properly if I scaled the object. So I'm going to scale the components or sub-objects.

3ds max Spline Modeling Extruding with the Sweep modifier

3ds max Spline Modeling Extruding with the Sweep modifier So let's do that, we'll go back to the Create panel, to shapes, and make a rectangle. And you can create it anywhere, it's probably best to create it at the origin, so you'll be able to find it later. Go back to the top view port with Alt + W. Alt + W again to get really close, zoom in, and then let's create the rectangle at the origin here. We can turn on snaps, I'll use 3D snaps, and right click and make sure I'm snapping to grid points, and just draw that out, and then right click. Go into its modify panel, and let's rename it, we'll call it window profile. In its parameters, set the length and width to 10 cm. Type in a 10, press the tab key, type in another 10, press the tab key. And for a filleted shape, we'll give it a corner radius, let's make it one cm. Get in closer with the mouse wheel. We've got a rounded corner.

3ds max Spline Modeling Revolving a surface with the Lathe modifier

3ds max Spline Modeling Revolving a surface with the Lathe modifier And we can isolate that if we want. We can choose Isolate Selection and orbit around and check the shape. And once again, we can go back down into the Line, Sub-Object Modes and with Show End Result turned on, we can make any final adjustments to the shape of that lathed object. When you're finished, don't forget to exit out of Sub-Object Mode, and also exit out of Isolate Selection. And then we can just position this wherever we need it, rotate it, orient it so that it's oriented according to the slope of this monitor itself. Tumble around in the perspective view to make sure it's positioned where we want. And if we want to make the cord itself join up to that, then we can just select that cord, go into Vertex, Sub-Object Mode, and we can move those points around. And it looks like I've got a gray object here that's not showing up very well against the gray background. So I'll just exit out of Sub-Object, select that cord plug object. Let's give it a name up here, we'll call it cord plug, and change up the color as well so that we can see it against that gray background. And then back at our actual cord, edit its shape in order to make it line up. And we can always go back into our lathe object, exit out of Sub-Object Mode, reselect the lathe, and then go back into Line, Vertex, Sub-Object Mode and once again adjust the shape. We can, in fact, move all them and make that little bit thicker so that it matches up better with that cord. All right, I'll exit out of Sub-Object Mode, and that is how to create a lathe or a surface of revolution.

3ds max Spline Modeling Setting shape detail with Interpolation

3ds max Spline Modeling Setting shape detail with Interpolation it's going to change the level of detail. Well, in our case, the Adaptive option looks pretty good, and I'm not going to be animating this so maybe I'll leave that on. And I can exit out of vertex sub-object mode and dolly back, take a look at this, and maybe look in the other viewports. I'll minimize that view with ALT+W once again, tumble around, maybe getting closer. So that's how to control the level of detail for an editable spline object. And that detail will ripple forward into certain modifiers, but it will not necessarily ripple forward into, for example, the loft compound object. As we saw earlier, we can control the level of detail of a loft with its parameters. And the loft actually ignores these interpolation settings. But modifiers may actually respect those interpolation settings. Finally, if we want to convert this to an editable poly in order to bring it into a game engine or something, whatever values we see in the viewport is what we will get when we convert to an editable poly. So, we have Adaptive enabled right now, and if I convert this is editable poly, then I will be pretty much stuck with those typology choices and it'll be hard for me to change the level of detail. So just make sure you have exactly what you want displayed in the viewport before you convert an editable spline to a polygon object. That's how to control interpolation for an editable spline.

3ds max Spline Modeling Rendering shapes

3ds max Spline Modeling Rendering shapes Unless we turn on this additional switch that says use view port settings, and if that's turned on, then we have two different sets of settings. We have the renderer settings and the view port settings. And we may want to for example, make the view port have fewer sides and that would optimize the view port and make it run faster, better performance. But I don't actually recommend doing this 'cause it gets really confusing. So let's not use the view port settings, and we'll have a what you see is what you get situation where these settings are used for both the renderer and the view port. I'll set the thickness down to

3ds max Spline Modeling Editing Bezier splines

3ds max Spline Modeling Editing Bezier splines  Right click on that and enable the axis constraints toolbar and here it is and this tells us what our current access constraints are. We're currently constrained to Y, so I can choose X or Y over here and now finally I can drag that Bezier handle in any direction in the space here of the front view port. Right so axis constraints are kind of important, so I'll actually just park those up there. I've got my UI locked so I'll go to customize and unlock it and drag and drop that up into the main toolbar and then re-enable lock UI layout. This is very helpful, and there are keyboard shortcuts for that if you want to use them. F5 is X, F6 is Y, F7 is Z and F8 will switch between the three axes of XY, YZ and ZX. So each time you press F8 you'll cycle between those three. Alright so finally I just want to move this last point so that it's positioned where I want it to be near the monitor and then I can re-enable the transform gizmo because we'll need that later. So Ctrl + Shift + X to re-enable it and then finally we can exit out of sub-object vertex by just clicking at the top level of editable spline and we've made some simple adjustments, and now we've got a nice curve there. Again there are a lot of tools in editable spline and we just barely scratched the surface. 

 3ds max Spline Modeling Editing Bezier splines Alright so we go into our front view over here and maybe play around with that too, give that some believable shape. Now you might run into an issue here where you're trying to extend a handle, let's say you're trying to drag this handle and you want to move it in the X and Y space of this front view port. But when you click on that you're only able to move it in Y and not in X and that's because of the transform gizmo kind of getting in the way here. So we can hide that move tool gizmo if we want and there's a keyboard shortcut for that which is Ctrl + Shift + X and that's kind of a secret. There is another command over here, show transform gizmo but that's a completely different command and that's actually not what we want. You can see that it's still enabled. So I'm pointing this out to you so that you'll know you don't want to use this, you need to use the Ctrl + Shift + X keyboard shortcut and that actually changes a preference in the customize preference menu. Okay so now we can see that we still have our axis tripod, and we can see that the Y axis is highlighted meaning that we can only move that tangent handle in Y. Now the next part of this is enabling the axis constraints toolbar so that we can change the axis. So go to any toolbar or panel, and find the textured bar at the top or side of it. 3ds max Spline Modeling Editing Bezier splines

3ds max Spline Modeling Editing control vertex types

3ds max Spline Modeling Editing control vertex types so I'm moving the entire curve. I can deselect all of the points and just select that one. So those are Bezier control verticies. There's a variant of that that has broken tangent handles that can be adjusted independently. When we move these tangent handles around they move together. But I can right-click once again and choose Bezier Corner, and now we can move each one independently with broken tangent handles. To reconnect them, I can right-click once again, and choose Bezier, and notice that they both snapped to being tangent to that line. So now, they're connected once again. And those are the four different vertex types, Smooth, Corner, Bezier, and Bezier Corner. I'm going to leave these all at the type of Bezier. And then I can exit out of Sub-Object Vertex Mode. That's how to convert a freehand spline. And also, how to convert various vertex types on an editable spline or line object.