planet 3ds max

by Didik Wijaya

In this tutorial you will learn how to create nice space scene. There are several objects you need to create: simple planet, asteroid belt, and then making all asteroid moving in circle. Also you will create a starry background. This scene is created from scratch.

1.First step, you need to create asteroid object. Create a sphere in Top viewport. Use Radius=10. After that, go to Modify tab, and choose Noise from Modifier List. In Parameters rollout, activate Fractal, and use Strength in each axis=50. You will get random asteroid shape.

2. Next, you need to texture the asteroid. Open Material Editor (shortcut "M"). In Blinn Basic Parameters, change Diffuse color to brown. Apply this material by dragging from sample slot to asteroid object in viewport.

3. Right click and save image below. You will use this image later. In Material Editor, open Maps rollout. Increase Bump value to 500. Click None button right next to Bump. Choose Bitmap and use image below. In Coordinates rollout use Tiling U=4 and V=4. Bump will simulate roughness in asteroid surface.

Right click and save image above.
Image is created using Photoshop (Clouds and Fresco filter)

4. Do a test render. Using Bump channel, asteroid is looks more realistic now.

5. To achieve more random looks, I should create another asteroid. I simply clone the original asteroid. Hold Shift+drag to create cloned asteroid. Make sure to use Copy for Cloning Method. Select each clone and go to Modify tab, change Seed and Strength value to create different asteroid shape.

When finished, select all asteroid and group them (Group>Group). Name this group = asteroid.

6. Next, we are going to create planet. Create a sphere with Radius=50. Open Material Editor. Click Get Material button. In opened window, Make sure Browse From=Matl Library. Search for Space_Jupiter material and double click to use this material. Apply this material to sphere.

7. Create tube in Top viewport. Use parameters below. Move tube until it is in the same axis as sphere. You will use this tube later for asteroid placement. Right click tube and choose Properties. Uncheck Renderable to make this object invisible when rendered. In next tutorial, you will create a whole bunch of asteroid surrounding the planet using Particle Flow.

box to car

Hi friends,

Today we are going to try our hands on that incredible Modeling Technique in 3ds Max, “The Box Modeling” we’ll be creating a simple SUV model from a Box

Before that I assume that you are having that basic idea in Max.

• We’ll start our things by placing a box in the viewport with these dimensions 90,50,50 and for the segments, we’ll go for 6,6,6

• After that we’ll convert our Box into an Editable Polygon(Right click>convert to>Editable poly)

• Then select the polygon sublevel and select the Polygons shown in the picture, we are going to make the front area of our SUV

• We will use the Extrude Option and use the default value for Extruding the selected polygons thrice for the Bonnet.

• Select the Vertex sub level and adjust the vertices in all viewports for getting the shape shown in the picture.

• Now select the Polygons shown in the picture for creating the front glass and then inset them with a small value, I used 1.0

• For the same Polygons we are going to apply a Bevel with both height and inset are -.5

• Use the same method for window glasses also.

• Select the polygons shown in the picture for creating a bumper and Extrude them using “local normal” to 1.5 units

Now is the time for Creating wheel arches, back dickey. We will use the Boolean Compound Object here. For that we will create 4 cylinders for wheel arches and a box modified using Editable Polygon method, as the dickey which I shown in the picture.

• For Boolean we will use a trick. We will attach four cylinders and the dickey object together from “Edit Geometry>attach” because after this Max will consider it as a single object and we can use the Boolean operation only once

• I used some Tubes and splines to modify the SUV like this..its upto to you.

• Its almost finished, we are going to make a Tyre. From a Chamfer Cylinder and an Extruded NGon, we can make it very easily like this

• Now for the front grill. First we will create new edges in the front using Connect option.

• And then Extrude the Edges with a small value like in the pic

Done.You have almost completed your Box Model. It’s very easy and effective for a Beginner.

In next tutorials we will explore the 3d world very deeply…

plane part 1

by Didik Wijaya
This tutorial needs you to understand basic use of 3dsmax. You may find previous tutorial useful, like Modeling a Cartoon Pig, Modeling Using Blueprint and Modeling Apache Helicopter

This tutorial covers how to create low poly World War 2 plane model. In the early years of WW II, the Japanese Mitsubishi A6M virtually ruled the skies. There are several varian of A6M, one of them is A6M3. You will create this plane. This tutorial is suitable for newbie in 3dsmax modeling. Different from previous tutorial, Modeling Apache Helicopter, this tutorial is much simpler and easier to follow. In first part of this tutorial, you will create body and wing.

1. Download 3dsmax lesson file here (3dsmax ver 8, zipped). In this file, you can find blueprint to help you in modeling. Bitmap file for blueprint mapping is also available. After opening the file, right click each viewport, then activate Smooth And Highlight (F3) and Edge Faces display option (F4).

Create primitive object, a cylinder, in Front viewport. Use values below. Position cylinder to match body of the plane in blueprint. Open Material Editor, select one of unused material slot. Change Diffuse Color into any color you want, set Transparency=50%. Finally, apply this material to cylinder. Using transparent material will let you see blueprint behind clearly.

2. Right click cylinder and choose Convert to>Convert to Editable Poly. Open Modify tab. Then apply Symmetry modifier to this object, because the plane you are going to create is identical between left and right. In Parameter rollout, use Mirror Axis=X and activate Flip.

In Modifier Stack, click minus (-) sign on the left of Editable Poly. Then, select Vertex. Using Select And Move tool, move vertices to match plane segment. Use image below for reference. Select vertices in each bottom segment, and use Select And Uniform Scale tool to resize.

3. Now, activate Polygon selection. In Left viewport, select 1 polygon at the bottom of plane. In Edit Polygons rollout, click Extrude button. Next, click and drag in viewport to give extrusion. In Edit Geometry rollout, click X button right next to Make Planar. In Front viewport, move polygon to the tip of the wing. And use Select and Non-Uniform Scale along Y axis to make the wing thinner.

4. Change selection to Vertex. In Top viewport, move vertices to shape the wing.

5. Now, activate Edge selection. Select two edges at the top of the wing (look at image below). You can always select several edges altogether by holding Ctrl when selecting. In Edit Edges rollout, click Setting button right next to Connect. In Connect edges window, fill in Segments=2, Pinch=28 and Slide=-9. As result, your wing will be divided by another 2 edges horizontaly.

6. Change to Vertex selection. Select 2 vertices at the middle of wing (at the body). Then, in Edit Geometry rollout, change Constraints fo Face. Now, move vertices up. Notice that you can move those vertices along faces in body of the plane. After your wing has enough depth, change Constraints back to None.

7. Change selection to Edges. Select 2 vertical edges at the tip of wing. In Edit Edges rollout, click Chamfer button. Click and drag in viewport to chamfer those edges a little bit.

8. Now, we are going to create wing tail. Still in Edge selection, in Edit Geometry rollout, click Cut button. Click twice at the edges like image below.

9. Activate Polygon selection. Select polygon like image below and gives extrusion. Use Make Planar X to make this polygon parallel with vertical axis. In Front viewport, move and non-uniform scale this polygon to match blueprint behind. Next step, add chamfering like you did before.

10. Change selection to Polygon. Select 2 polygon at the top of the tail and extrude them. Use Make Planar Y to make them parallel with horizontal axis. Non-uniform scale to match buleprint.

11. Activate Vertex selection. Select two vertices like image below. Non-uniform scale them along X axis. Back to Polygon selection. Add another extrusion. Non-uniform scale to match blueprint behind. And finally, gives chamfering at edges.

12. If you deactivate all sub-object selection, and highlight Symmetry modifier in Modifier Stack, this is what you will get so far.

A6M3 WW2 Plane Modeling Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Any question or comments regarding this tutorial should be sent to:
Didik Wijaya, email: escalight@yahoo.com

particle

In this tutorial, I am going to explain how to make twinkling effects.
I explain the method of making twinkling effects from Shader
and the method of making from light.

---

shader for particles and objects

Assign a material to the object,
set over 0 value to the Glow Intensity.
(Any material is good if there is Glow Intensity)


In this case, I assigned a Blinn material to a sphere object.
The above figure is an rendered image. .


There is the shaderGlow1 in Hypershade,
double-click it and open the Attribute Editor.


The shaderGlow1 has two group of the Glow Attributes and the Halo Attributes


Set
Glow Type - Linear
Halo Type - None
you get the effects by only Glow.
The above figure is an rendered image.


Set
Glow Type - None
Halo Type - Linear
you get the effects by only Halo.
The above figure is an rendered image.

The shine near the shining object is the Glow.
Parting from the object and extending is the Halo.


In this case, we set
Glow Type - None
Halo Type - Linear
and we will set the attributes of Halo.
(Because Glow and Halo of the shaderGlow1 have the same attribute,
you may set it by either.)

The attributes are the following.
Star Points - the number of points on the star
Halo Intensity - the brightness of halo
Halo Spread - the size of the halo
Halo Eccentricity - the brightness of halo
Halo Star Level - set over 0 value, halo will be star shape


Star Points　4
Halo Intensity　5
Halo Spread　0.3
Halo Eccentricity　0.1
Halo Star Level　0.7


Star Points　4
Halo Intensity　5
Halo Spread　0.3
Halo Eccentricity　0.1
Halo Star Level　2
The star shape changed.


Star Points　6
Halo Intensity　5
Halo Spread　0.3
Halo Eccentricity　0.1
Halo Star Level　2
The star points became 6.




If you put the check in Hide Source of the material,
the rendering only of the halo effect is done.


You do the same setting for the particles.
I set Blobby Surface to the Particle Render Type, and assigned a Blinn material,
the above figure is an rendered image.

Please refer to the following for the setting of the particles.
Maya Tutorials:basics of particle

You can set the shaderGlow1 only by one per one scene.
If you want to set two or more shape of the glow or halo,
you should individually do rendering, and composite them later.

---

light effects
With Point Light, Spot Light, Area Light
you can make light effects by setting
Light Effects > Light Glow


Click of Light Glow


Then opticalFX1 will be made.

It is set in default as follows,
Glow Type - Linear
Halo Type - None
Glow Star Level - 3

It will be rendered as a star shape.
The difference between Glow and Halo is the same
as the shaderGlow1.


Star Points - 4 (default)


Star Points - 6

You cannot express the star with Halo
because there is no Star Level attribute in the Halo of the light effects.

DNA final

DNA Polymerase


Transfer RNA


The Nucleosome


Close up on the nucleosome



Anthrax Toxin


Green Flourescent Protein - makes jellyfish glow green in the ocean!
.

DNA 3

If you need to retain the relative atomic sizes and shading, you can use the jPivToParticle script to convert each atomic group. You could ungroup and run the script on the carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorous and nitrogen groups one at a time, and then re-group the resulting 5 particle objects together. If you set the particle render type to blobby surfaces or spheres, you can also set a radius and shading for each of these atom types. This is what I did for the anthrax toxin model pictured here.



fig 6: Anthrax toxin rendered as four different particle objects, one for each type of atom.

Part Three: Adding Dynamic Interactions and Deformations to the Molecule

When this article was first published in Highend Magazine, Maya 6.0 had not yet been released and thus you were not able to deform particle objects. If you have Maya 6.0 or higher you can add a deformer to the particle oblect, such as a lattice or a non-linear deformer, and deform the blobby surface version of the DNA model to your hearts content. If however, you are using Maya 5.0 or earlier you can use the script I describe in the next section to deform the particle version of the model.

Another terrific script allows you to add the ability to deform the entire particle object as you would a piece of geometry. This is also useful if you'd like to add collisions to your molecules. The script creates a crude, simple polygon object based on the positions of the individual particles in your particle shape. You can set this object as a goal for the particles and then deform or animate the poly object. The particles will follow. Additionally, you can turn the poly object into a rigid body and have it collide with other objects.

The script is particleDeformationPoly.mel by Alex Bigott, which you can download from www.highend3d.com. To use it, go back to the dna2.mb file saved before you centered the pivot of the particle object or moved it. Select the particle object and then use the script editor to open the particleDeformationPoly.mel that you downloaded into your scripts directory. Run the script, and the crude polygon object should appear in a few seconds. Select the particle object, then the polygonal object, and under the dynamics menu select Particles>Goal. Set the goal for the particles to 1.



fig 7: particleDeformationPoly.mel applied to the DNA particle object

If you move your polygonal object, you'll notice that the particles don't move. You're in dynamics land now so you have to remember that the particles won't update until you hit play AND you'll have to always rewind and play from the beginning, you can of course cache you rparticles as well. If you're making an animation, remember to give yourself some extra frames at the beginning so that the particle object can snap to the polygonal goal. Try putting a non-linear deformer like bend or twist on the poly object, animate it, and then press play.



fig 8: A bend deformer applied to the polygon object. The result is a bent DNA.

If you make the crude polygon objects rigid bodies, you can easily animate molecules bumping into each other. Apply a transparent lambert shader to the poly object so it doesn't show up in the render. Also keep in mind that the collisions will be calculated based on these polygons and not the particles themselves, so there may be some intersection of the particles at the point of collision.

An alternative to the particleDeformation.mel script is a little more mundane. You can "model by hand" a simple polygon object that roughly describes the shape of the molecule. Then parent the particle object to this dummy geometric object. Assign a transparent lambert shader to the dummy object and make it a rigid body. Deforming the polygon object using this method won't give you the same results as the particleDeformationPoly.mel script will, but it can help prevent strange intersections of the particles at the point of collision.

Creating a Ball and Stick Model

There is another script available that will automatically generate bonds between the atoms of a molecular model. It is called ballAndStick.mel and it was written by Geordie Martinez after this article was first published in Highend magazine. You can download the script from Geordie at his site www.negative13.com. He did make some small modifications to the pdbReader.mel script so please read his documentation when using the script.

After working through this tutorial, you should end up with at least three different versions of DNA and several options for working with molecular data. I've included renderings of several of my favorite molecules to demonstrate some creative ways Maya can be used to enhance the macromolecular structures. If you've worked through this tutorial carefully, I hope you'll have enough of an appreciation for the proper structure of DNA to cringe the next time you see it misrepresented in a movie or an advertisement! (I'm looking at you trailer for "DOOM")

DNA 2

fig 1. The pdbReader.mel interface with the DNA pdb file loaded.

The interface has a sample row from the PDB you're loading. Below this are fields for you to enter the atomic symbol and the X, Y, and Z coordinates of the atoms in the file. There are default numbers in these fields, but you may have to change them depending on how the particular PDB file you're using has been written. It's safe to assume that the default numbers are NOT correct for your file. The simplest way to figure out what to put into these fields is to count over from the left in the example row and plug in the appropriate coordinates. So our example would look like this:

ATOM 5 O5* C A 1 18.935 34.195 25.617 1.00 64.35 1BNA 6
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

Weird spacing can make it a bit tricky to tell where one column ends and the next begins. Be prepared to try this a few times before you get it right.

In this example row, the atom is column 3 (O for oxygen), and the X, Y and Z coordinates are columns 7, 8, and 9, respectively.

How do I know that the atom is in column 3 and not column 4? After all, "C" could stand for carbon. In this case, I've looked at the rest of the PDB file and noticed that column 4 contains ONLY "C","G","A", or "T". Since this is DNA we're dealing with, I surmised that the author of the file is using these symbols to indicate base pairs (Cytosine, Guanine, Adenine, and Thymine, respectively) and not atomic symbols. Therefore, I guessed that O5* stands for a particular oxygen atom in the structure. A little background info on your molecule's structure can go a long way in figuring this stuff out (as well as quite a bit of trial and error). Getting the right numbers into the right fields is the hard part; the rest is easy.

You can adjust the number of sections and spans in the spheres pdbReade.mel will create with the fields at the bottom of the interface. However, it's best to keep the resolution of the spheres as low as possible. If it's a big model, you don't want to bring your machine to a grinding halt because each of the 3,000 or so spheres has 8 sections and 16 spans.

Try running the script with our DNA pdb file loaded and see what happens. Type "3" in the Atom Field and "7," "8," and "9" in the X, Y, and Z fields. Make sure you hit enter after you put each of these values in. Occasionally, I've typed in the correct number, forgotten to hit enter, and gotten very strange results.

If you look at the original PDB file you may find a group of rows at the end of the file that start with "HETATM". The script can read these rows but you may notice that the columns are shifted and thus the numbers the script are using for X,Y,and Z, are now off. The best way to fix this is to cut and paste these rows into another file and save that as a separate PDB which you can add to the scene once you have the molecule loaded. You may not need or want this data, ask you local science nerd if you're not sure. The DNA PDB file we're using for this example does not have these rows.

Go ahead and run the script.

Calculating the molecular structure can take some time if it's a big model. Even on a fast machine, I've waited up to 5 minutes while it was building the molecule. This particular DNA structure is not big, so it should be quick.



fig 2: DNA successfully loaded into Maya as NURBS spheres.

Once it's done, you may see nothing on your screen. The molecule may be very large and behind the camera, so zoom out to see if there is something there or not (Shift-A will focus the camera on the whole scene, of course).

If you look in the outliner, you'll see that the spheres are arranged in groups according to atomic symbol (nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and phosphorus). A phong shader has been automatically created and assigned for each type of atom. Congratulations - you've got your DNA. Save the model as dna1.mb, and now let's have some fun with it.



fig 3: The Outliner shows the atoms in groups.

Part Two: Space Filling Models Using Particles

There are several ways scientists represent molecular structure. These include wireframe, stick, ball and stick, space-filling, ribbon, and backbone. If you open a PDB file in Chime or one of the other PDB displaying programs I've mentioned, there are usually display modes that allow you to chose from one of these types of representations. The pdbReader.mel script only brings molecules in as spheres, which is pretty close to the space-filling representation. There are no options for adding sticks or for an alternative representation. In this section, I'll show you how to convert the model into a particle object which you can then render as blobby surfaces. Later, I'll talk about another script you can use that will generate bonds between the atoms if you need to create a "ball and stick" version of the model.

Save your file as dna2.mb and make sure you have downloaded and installed the jPivToParticle script from www.highend3d.com (under the MEL scripts section>dynamics/FX) in your scripts directory. Select all the groups in the outliner and ungroup everything so that the outliner lists all the spheres in the model. Select them all and then type in the command line jPivToParticle "DNA_"; . The script will take a moment to run. It will rename all the spheres DNA_1, DNA_2, DNA_3, etc. and will add a particle object. The script places a particle at each of the pivot points for all the spheres. Select all the NURBS spheres and either hide them or delete them. Save this file, and then save it again as dna3.mel. We want to have one version of the model saved at that last stage.



fig 4: DNA as blobby surfaces

Center the pivot and move the object to the center of the grid. Scale it down a bit if you want to. I'm fond of rendering my molecule particle objects as a blobby surfaces. To do this, set the particle render type to blobby surface and hit the "Add attributes for current render type" button in the attribute editor for the particle shape node. Play with the radius and threshold attributes until you get something you like.

One trick I like is to add a radiusPP attribute and then write a short creation expression to randomize the per-particle radius. To do this, go to the attribute editor for the particle shape node, scroll down and hit the "General" button under "Add Dynamic Attributes." In the dialog box, choose the particle tab and select radiusPP from the list. In the particle shape node per particle array attributes list in the attribute editor, you'll now see a new field for radiusPP. Right-click on the field and choose "Creation expression." In the expression editor, type an expression like particleShape1.radiusPP=rand(.5,1.5);. If you rewind and play the animation a bit you should see a randomization of the sizes of the particles. If you include this technique in an animation, just remember to render starting on frame 1 or higher instead of 0 so you don't have any weird resizing at the beginning of the animation.

This technique spices up the look of the model. But it also (artistically) compensates for the fact that by using the jPivToParticle script to turn the model into a single particle object, we've lost the relative sizes of the individual carbon, hydrogen, phosphorus, and oxygen atoms. We've also lost the individual shading for the atoms as well. What this means is that we've reduced our technical accuracy for the sake of aesthetics, but in some cases that might be OK (depending on what you're trying to show in your animation). Adjusting the threshold on the blobby surface render attributes will add that blobby look; when combined with an interesting shader and some lighting effects, this can yield some cool (but less accurate) results.



fig 5: DNA as a single particle object, rendered as blobby surfaces.