Architectural visualization with 3ds Max 2022 and Corona Renderer 7

1. Introduction: Assalamualaikum, my name is Widhi Muttaqien. I am an entrepreneur and also a lecturer in computer graphics disciplines. I teach 3D and 2D animations, web designs, motion graphics, game development, and other computer graphics related disciplines. I’ve been using and teaching 3ds Max for over 2 decades now. Since 2003, I’ve created thousands of images like these. I have worked with clients all over the globe in the architectural industry. I have clients in almost every continent that exists in the world. Long story short, besides being a teacher, I am also an experienced professional in the field of computer graphics, especially architectural visualization. Now, on to the big question “what will you get from this course?” In this online course, you will learn how to use 3ds Max and Corona renderer to create an interior scene from scratch. If you never used 3ds Max before or even used any 3d software before, don't worry, because we will start from level zero. We will cover the essentials and then move up gradually to the more advanced stuff. This is the final result of the interior project that you will create in this course. I guarantee you, in sha Allah, you will be able to create this 3d rendering if you follow the course from start to finish. Besides access to the lesson videos, you will also get the project files. They are 3ds Max files with all the related files such as textures and Photoshop files. There are so many things that you will learn from this course. It will be too long to explain all of them in this short video. You can check the curriculum section if you want to dig deeper. But, just for a quick preview. There are a total of 15 chapters in this course. In the first chapter, you will learn the UI of 3ds Max. You will learn viewport navigation and different display settings. In the second chapter, you will learn basic object operations such as creating, modifying, transformations, selecting, duplicating, etc. In the third chapter, you will learn scene management techniques, such as using the scene explorer, using layer, grouping, etc. In the fourth chapter, you will start learning 3D modeling using the editable poly object. You will learn different ways to create selections. And many different modeling commands such as extrude, inset, bevel, bridge, connect, cut, slice, and so on. Next, in chapter 5, you will learn precision modeling techniques. You will learn how to use the real measurement units, learn to use snapping, object alignment, etc. Then in chapter 6, You will start working on the interior project. You will model the picture frame, the coffee table, the TV, the shelves, the floor, the wall, the ceiling, the door, and the window. In chapter 7, you will learn 3d modeling using spline objects. You will learn different spline vertex types. Learn to create splines and modify them using many different techniques. And then learn to use modifiers to convert the splines into 3d objects. In chapter 8, you will continue working on the interior project. You will create the curtain, the floor lamp, the 3d pattern, the backdrop, the crown molding, the plinth, the loudspeaker, and so on. In the next chapter or chapter 9. You will learn the basics of subdivision modeling techniques. And then in chapter 10, you will apply the subdivision techniques to model a teacup object. And then model the sofa for the interior project. You will start with the leg, then the seating, the cushion, and finally the backrest part. In chapter 11, you will start learning how to use materials. Starting from the basic concepts. How to use the material editor, material map browser, using multi-sub-object material, creating your own material library, and so on. In chapter 12, you will learn the essentials of the Corona renderer. Learn how to create different lighting types, learn to use the Corona physical material, Corona interactive rendering, render element, masking, etc. In chapter 13, you will continue the interior project. You will add the Corona camera to the scene. Adding the environment lighting, and then the interior lights. And also adding basic materials. Next, in chapter 14, you will learn texturing and UV mapping. Learn how to use PBR textures with the Corona material, UV projection mapping, UV unwrapping, and the real-world map size feature, etc. Finally, in chapter 15, you will add textures to the interior scene. You will learn how to use the Corona material library. Add custom PBR textures to the floor and carpet. Learn how to optimize instantiated multi sub-object materials. Learn how to UV unwrap the armchair model. And then finally, render the project and create the final composition in Photoshop. After completing the course, in sha Allah, you will have solid skills in using 3ds Max and Corona Renderer. You can apply the skills later not only for interior projects but also for other architectural visualization projects in general. I hope you find this course interesting and beneficial. Wassalamualaikum. 2. Conventions, disclaimer, and exercise files: Welcome to the course. Before moving on, there are several things I need to mention and to make clear first. The first is about the structure of the course. I have carefully crafted the curriculum so that everything is placed sequentially. Each lesson you take on one level will become the foundation of the lessons in the next levels. Therefore, it is important that you take the course in order, step by step. Not jumping around. If you take the course by jumping around randomly, most likely you will get confused at some point. The second thing that I need to mention is you need to practice. For each video, please try out the lesson yourself at least once. The course is not just about theories. Most of the lessons are practical skills. So again, you need to practice if you really want this online course to benefit you. I used 3ds Max version 2021 to version 2022 when recording the lessons in this course. If you use an older version of 3ds Max, you may experience some differences. These can be the UI, the shortcuts, or even the features. To avoid these problems, I strongly suggest that you use the latest version available, or at least use 3ds Max version 2022. For the rendering engine, I used Corona Renderer version 7 as this is the latest available version when I recorded the course. The biggest change in version 7 compared to the previous is the material. Since version 7, Corona uses the physical or the PBR standards. So, be sure that you use at least Corona renderer version 7 to follow this course. Lastly, for image editing. I used Photoshop version 2021. Please note that this course is not about Photoshop. Although I used it here and there along the course, I won't be explaining it in detail. Throughout the course, I’ll be displaying a lot of images. Some of them are not made by me. I’m using them merely as sources of inspiration or as references. If I can find the name of the copyright owner, I will add credit for him or her in the video. Otherwise, I will just put the URL of where I got those images. If I don’t specifically state that the image is made by me or has my watermark on it, it means that the image belongs to their respectful owners. I do not claim those images made by me. Alright. For the exercise files or the project files, you can download all of them from this link. 3. 3ds Max UI: In this lesson video, we're going to learn about the UI or the user interface of 3ds Max. One thing that you need to know is that 3ds Max’s UI is customizable. So you may find other people’s UI a bit different from yours or the standard UI. For example, you might see other people have light-colored themes. Although dark-colored UI is easier on the eyes, especially in the long run. But if you do want to change the UI to the bright color theme, you can go to the customize menu up here, and then choose “load custom UI scheme”. You can choose this file “ame-light.ui”. And then click open. You may need to restart your 3ds Max after that. For this course, I'll be using the default dark UI. Alright. Let’s discuss the UI elements inside 3ds max. Up here you will find the menu. A menu is probably the most standard thing among windows based applications. Even in Mac and Linux, most applications will have this kind of menu on top. Below it, you will find the main toolbar. In this main toolbar, you can find almost all of the common tools when working in 3ds Max such as the move tool, rotate tool, and scale tool, etc. Now, in this main toolbar, we can see the “projects” panel. We’re not going to use this panel so let’s hide it. To do that, notice these lines here. Just right-click on it, and then turn off this “projects” checkbox. You may notice that I use 720 pixels resolution to record this video. That is why some of the main toolbar buttons are hidden. You may not experience this if you use a higher monitor resolution. But if you do need to work in a small screen resolution like mine. You can move your mouse cursor over the toolbar area, and then hold the middle mouse button and drag like this. This way we can see and access the hidden buttons. You can also drag the main toolbar using the left mouse button, but you may accidentally click the buttons inside it. Below the main toolbar, you will find the ribbon. For now, we’re not going to use the ribbon. And this panel is actually taking some space in our screen, so we’re going to hide this panel. To do that we can click on this toggle ribbon button up here in the main toolbar. If later you want to show it again, simply click on this button again. Next, on the left side, you will find this “viewport layout tab”, which is in my opinion not very useful and also takes up too much of the screen space. So we’re going to hide this also. But before we do that, I’m going to show you what this panel does. Basically, we can quickly change the viewport layout using this panel. For example, we can click on this caret button and then click on this layout preset. As you can see, we now have a different viewport layout. In this course, we will be using the maximize-minimize viewport toggle, so this panel is not that important for us. To hide this panel. First, we need to switch back to the standard viewport by clicking on this button. Then just right-click in this line at the top of the panel and turn off this “viewport layout tabs” checkbox. Next is the “scene explorer”. This panel is useful to display the list of our objects in the scene in several different ways. In theory, we can show or hide the “scene explorer” by clicking on this button up here. But in my version of 3ds Max, this button has some strange behavior. You see, if you click on it, it will open another “scene explorer”. So now we have 2 scene explorers. I don’t know if this is considered a bug or not. But to fix this issue. Just “right-click” on this line, and then click this “scene explorer” checkbox. Then you can drag this one to the left area, or simply right-click on the title bar and then choose “dock”, then choose “left”. Now, we can show and hide the scene explorer using this button up here. Next, this large center area is called the "viewport". The "viewport" is like a window where we can see our 3D world from different angles. By default, we have 4 viewports. If we look closely at each of these viewports, we can see the name of the viewport labeled at the top left corner. This is the top viewport, where we are looking at the scene from the top direction. This is the front viewport which basically looks at the scene from the front side. And this one is the left viewport. And finally, the last one which looks a bit different from the rest is the "perspective" viewport. We’re going to discuss viewport navigation more in-depth in the next lesson. We can maximize a viewport by pressing Alt + W. But first, you need to move your mouse cursor to the viewport that you want to maximize. For example, if you move the mouse on top of this perspective viewport, and then press Alt + W. The perspective viewport will be maximized. If you press Alt + W again, the viewports will be back to the default quad layout. If you move your mouse cursor on top of the front viewport and then press Alt + W. Then we get the front viewport maximized. Alt + W again to see the quad layout. Down here we can find the timeline. But in 3ds max, we call it the “time slider”. Essentially the "time slider" is used to scrub the time pointer and place keyframes for animation. Because we’re not going to learn any animation in this course, we’re not going to touch this panel. If you want to hide this timeline, you can right-click on this line and then turn off this “time slider” checkbox. Next, down here you will find the max script console, status, transformation values, playback tools, keyframe tools. And in this area at the far right, you can find the UI buttons for viewport navigation. We will discuss some of these in later lessons. At the right area of the screen, you can find the “command panel”. So this big panel is called the “command panel”. It is divided into several sub-panels. First is the “create panel”. This is the panel we need to access when we want to create new objects inside 3ds Max. The second sub-panel is the “modify panel”. This is where we go if we need to modify existing objects. Then the “hierarchy panel”, where we can set up “pivot points”, linking objects, rigging, etc. The “Motion panel”, where we can set up and manage animations. The display panel, where we can control how 3ds Max displays objects. And the last one is the “Utilities" panel, where we can find some helpful features in different categories. 4. Viewport Navigation: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss viewport navigation. To practice navigation, we need some objects in the scene. Because we haven't discussed object creation yet, you can just open the file I provided for this lesson. Here you will see some teapot objects and a plane object. 3ds Max provides several methods that we can use to navigate the viewports. The first method is by using the mouse. The second method is using the "ViewCube". The third is using the UI buttons. And the last method is using the "SteeringWheels" feature. We're going to discuss each of these methods one by one. In this video, we will cover the mouse method and the "ViewCube" method. And in the next video, we will cover the rest. The mouse method is by far the most convenient way to navigate the viewports compared to the other methods. So, you should always prioritize this method and only use the other methods if you cannot find a mouse that you can use. For the mouse method, you will need a standard mouse with a middle mouse button. If your mouse has a scroll wheel, most likely it can function as a middle mouse button also. Just press down on the scroll wheel and that will be the middle mouse button. Again, you need to press down on the scroll wheel, not rotating it. If you use a drawing tablet. Then I recommend you assign the middle mouse button and also the mouse scroll function to the drawing tablet's express keys. Alright. The first navigation technique is dragging or panning the viewport. To do this you need to press and hold the middle mouse button. You can do this method on all of the viewports. Please understand that what we are doing now is viewport navigation, not object transformation. Meaning the objects in the scene do not move. It is the way we see the objects that are moving. Imagine that you hold a camera and then move the camera around. To zoom in and out of the viewport, you can rotate the scroll wheel back and forth. So, scroll forward to zoom in and scroll backward to zoom out. You can feel the stepped motion when zooming using the scroll wheel. If you want to zoom with smooth motion, you can do that by holding Ctrl and Alt keys together and then click-drag with the middle mouse button. Move forward to zoom in, and move backward to zoom out. You can also do this on all of the viewports. Next, you can rotate or orbit the viewport by holding the Alt key and then drag with the middle mouse button. But, for this last method, you only want to do this on the perspective viewport. This is because the perspective viewport is the only viewport designed for 3D viewing, while the others are designed for 2D viewing. If you try to rotate the "front" viewport for example. Now the viewport looks like the perspective viewport. But all the grid lines are perfectly parallel. It does not have any vanishing points. This is what we call the "orthographic" viewport, or also known as "isometric" in other software. You can see the word "orthographic" up here. If you click on this label, you can switch the viewport to any type that you like. You can even see the shortcuts here, although not all view types have them. "Perspective" view is P. "Orthographic" view is U. "Top" view is T, and so on. Let's just click here. And then press F to switch the viewport to the "front" view. Before discussing the "ViewCube" method, I want to discuss the "zoom extent" feature. I believe this is the most important technique when it comes to viewport navigation. Essentially, "zoom extent" can help you to quickly frame the viewport to certain objects in the scene. For this, you can use the Z shortcut. You can frame a selected object, or frame the entire scene objects. If you select this teapot, for example. And that is by clicking on it. Then you press Z on the keyboard. The viewport will focus on that object. If you try to navigate away. And then press Z again. The viewport will be back to frame the object again. If you click on an empty area, this will deselect everything. If you don't have any object selected, pressing Z will frame the viewport to see all objects in the scene. So, if you ever zoom out or rotate the viewport too much. And you just kind of lost in space. Just press Z to frame the objects. The second method of navigation is by using the "ViewCube". The "ViewCube" are these white-colored cubes that you can see at the right top corner on each of the viewports. Although not as convenient as using the mouse. The ViewCube can be useful in scenarios where you cannot use a mouse or you are forced to use the laptop's trackpad, for example. To rotate or orbit the viewport you can move the mouse over the cube area and just click and drag it around. This is the same as using the Alt middle mouse button method. Another way of rotating the viewport is using the turntable method. To do this, you need to click-drag on this compass ring and just move the mouse left or right. As you can see the viewport rotation only happens in the horizontal direction. The next type of rotation that we can perform is rolling. To use this feature, you need to be in one of the 2D viewports. For example, this "left" viewport. Notice these two small arrows. If you click on one of them, the viewport will roll by 90 degrees increment. This is for the clockwise direction. And this one is for counterclockwise direction. Let's go back to the perspective viewport. This small button that looks like a home icon is used to reset the perspective view to the default. You can click on any of the sides, elbows, corners, or even the compass letters to quickly orient the viewport to that direction. Feel free to try each of them by yourself. In this course, I will be using a standard 3-buttons mouse, so I won't need to use this "ViewCube" feature. To hide the "ViewCube", you can click on the plus labeled viewport menu. Then choose "ViewCube", and click on this “Show the ViewCube” option. Now, the "ViewCubes" are all hidden. If you ever need them again, just click on the same option that we used to hide them. But from now onwards I will keep them hidden like this. 5. Alternative navigation methods: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss the alternative methods for navigating the viewports. We will be using the same file as before. Previously we learned the mouse method and the "ViewCube" method. Now, let's discuss the UI buttons method. You can find the UI buttons for viewport navigation at the right bottom area. But, before we start, you need to know that there are 4 default tools in 3ds Max. First is the select tool. Then the move tool, rotate tool, and scale tool. We will discuss these tools more in-depth in later lessons. For now, make sure it is set to the select tool here. You need to know this tool concept in 3ds Max because the UI buttons down here are also tools but they are not the standard tools. Alright. So to drag or pan the viewport you can use this tool that looks like a hand. When this tool is active, the button becomes highlighted and the mouse cursor changes to a hand symbol. In this mode, you can just click-drag with the left mouse button to pan the viewport. To exit from this tool you can right-click. Notice, we are now back to the last default tool that we used before which is the select tool. To zoom in and out of the viewport, you can use this tool that looks like a magnifying glass. While this tool is active we can click-drag with the left mouse button up and down to zoom in or out. To exit from this tool, just like before, you can just right-click. Or you can also manually select any of these default tools. For example the move tool. Now, this tool is also for zooming. But this tool will affect all the viewports, not just the active viewport. Next, to rotate the viewport, you can use this tool. But make sure you only do this on the perspective viewport. While this tool is on, you can see this rotation gizmo. You can rotate freely by clicking and dragging inside the circle. You can rotate in a vertical direction using this node and this node. You can also rotate in a horizontal direction using this node and this node. Lastly, if you move the mouse cursor outside the circle gizmo. And then click-drag, we are doing the viewport rolling. To exit this tool you can right-click again. Now, if you want to reset the viewport rolling, just switch the viewport to any 2D view and then change back to the perspective view. For example, we can press T to switch to the "Top" view. Then press P again to switch back to the "Perspective" view. And just rotate the viewport using the Alt and middle mouse buttons. Next, this button is used to maximize and minimize the viewports just like how we use the Alt + W shortcut. This button is used to zoom-extent the viewport to frame the selected objects just like how we use the Z shortcut. This will work on the active viewport, but this one will affect all the viewports. Finally, this button here is used to change the field of view. You can only do this on the "perspective" viewport. Now, this is different from the zoom tools. This is equivalent to changing the lens thickness in photography. If you click and drag down the mouse, the field of view will be larger. Just like using a wide-angle lens. If you drag up the mouse, the field of view will become smaller. Just like using a telephoto lens. Right-click to exit this tool. To reset the field of view back to the default. You can switch to a 2D view. For example, to the "left" view by pressing L. Then press P again. And then rotate the viewport. Or, if you prefer to input a certain value for the angle degrees, you can do so by clicking on the right-most viewport menu here. Then choose "per-view preferences". Then you can type in the value here. By default, it is set at 45 degrees. You can type here for example 90, then press Enter. Now we have a wider field of view. In 3ds Max you will often see this type of small up and down arrows. This is called the "spinner". You can click-drag the spinner up and down like so, to change the value. If you ever need to reset the value of a spinner, you can simply right-click on it. As you can see, the default value is 45 degrees. The next method of navigating the viewport is by using the "SteeringWheels". This is a hidden feature in 3ds Max, that honestly, almost nobody uses it. I never see any 3d artists who use this feature for navigating the viewport. But it is there if you ever need it. Some features of the "SteeringWheels" are actually useful for presenting our work to other people in real-time. And it can be used to complement the "ViewCube" navigation method in a scenario where you have to work without a standard mouse. To activate the "SteeringWheels" you can click on this plus button. Then choose "SteeringWheels", and then “toggle SteeringWheels”. You will see the "SteeringWheels" following your mouse cursor around. To close the "SteeringWheels", you can click on this X button. Besides using the menu, you can also press Shift + W to toggle it on or off. The "SteeringWheels" has many different variations. For example, if you open the menu again. And then click on this “view object wheel”. You will get something like this. If you choose the “tour building wheel” instead, you will get something like this. You can also switch between these variations by right-clicking on it and then choose any of these modes. For now, I will only cover the default mode, which is this “full navigation wheel” option here. You can explore the other modes yourself as mostly they work the same. Essentially, to use the "SteeringWheels" you only need to click-drag on the buttons. For example, to pan the viewport, you can hover the mouse on top of this "pan" button and then click-drag on it. To rotate the viewport, you can click-drag on the "orbit" button here. And to zoom in and out of the viewport, you can click-drag on the "zoom" button. What is unique in the "SteeringWheels" feature is this "rewind" button. If you click and hold, and then drag to the left. You can go back in time to see the previous views you have before. Next, the "center" button will center the viewport to the mouse cursor location. To use it, you need to click and hold and then drag the mouse cursor to a certain location, and then release the mouse. The "walk" button can be used to mimic a first-person controller in 3D games. The "look" button can be used for VR-like viewing where you are standing at a stationary location, while your head can look around freely to see the surroundings. And finally, the "up-down" button here, can be used to move our view up and down. 6. Display settings and startup file: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss the display settings and also how to create a start-up file. We will be using the previous file for this lesson. If you look at the perspective viewport. You can see that the objects here look solid, while the objects in the 2D viewports are not. This type of look is called the wireframe mode. To switch between the solid and the wireframe modes, you can press F3 on the keyboard. If you are using an older version of 3ds Max, you need to click or right-click on the viewport first, until it is highlighted like this. Then you can press F3 to toggle the wireframe mode. But, if you are using the current version of 3ds Max. You only need to hover the mouse cursor over the viewport and then press F3. I strongly suggest that you memorize this F3 shortcut as you will need this a lot especially in the modeling process. If you ever forget the shortcut, you can also open the fourth label menu. And then click on this "wireframe override" option here to toggle the mode. The second most important shortcut that you should memorize regarding the display setting is the "edge display" mode. You can press F4 to toggle the visibility of the edges in the viewport. Of course, this edge display feature only works if you already set the viewport to be in solid mode. If the viewport is in the wireframe mode, pressing F4 won't affect anything as the edges are already visible in the first place. In case you forget the shortcut, you can also access this feature from the fourth label menu. And then clicking on this option "Edge faces". 3ds Max's viewport provides a lot of settings that you can tweak. If you click on the third label menu. Down here you can see the "lighting and shadows" sub-menu, where you can turn on and turn off lights and shadows, etc. For example, I can turn on the "shadows" here. And to turn it back off, you can simply click on the same option. In this menu also, you can access the "materials" sub-menu. Here, you can enable or disable the transparency effect and also some other options. You can safely experiment with these settings as they only affect the viewport display and will not affect the rendering result. For now, if you are not sure which settings to turn on or off, you can simply choose one of the presets up here. You can choose between the "high quality" preset, "standard", "performance", and "direct X mode" preset. For 3D modeling, I usually just use the "standard" preset here. And sometimes when working on materials and textures, I use the "high quality" preset. If you want to know the differences between these presets in more detail, you can click on the third menu, and then choose "per-view presets". In this window, the settings down here will change based on the preset you select up here. So, for example, if I choose "Standard". These are the settings for the standard preset. If I choose "high quality". Then these are the settings for the "high quality" preset. I'm sure you get the idea. Now, if you are in the "high quality" preset, but then you make changes such as turning off this "ambient occlusion" option. You will get this "asterisk" symbol and a warning message. At this stage, you can create your own custom preset by clicking on this save icon and then give the new preset a name. I actually don't want to do this, so I just click cancel. Let's just close this, and then choose the "standard" preset. Next, let's discuss the display styles. If you click on the fourth label menu, you will see several display modes. If you select "facets" for example. All the smoothing effects from the objects' surfaces will be removed. So, in this mode, the surfaces look faceted. If you select "clay", you will get this ZBrush-style Matcap effect on the viewport. You can even use a stylized look such as this “color pencil” mode, for example. Honestly, I have no idea why I want to use this kind of stylized display mode. But they are here if you ever need them. For now, I will stick with the “default shading” mode. Again, all these display styles will not affect the rendering result. They will only affect how we see the 3d objects in the viewport. Alright. One of the most frequently asked questions regarding the viewport settings is changing the background. By default, the perspective viewport has a gradient color from a dark grey down to a lighter grey color. While the 2D viewports use a solid color. If you want to change the background. For example, you want to change the perspective background to solid. You can click on the fourth label menu. And then "viewport background" sub-menu. And choose "solid" here. Now, the background only uses a solid color, not a gradient. If you also want to change the color to something other than grey, you can open the "customize" menu. Then click on the "customize user interface" option. In the "colors" tab. In the "viewports" elements pull-down list. You can find the "viewport background" option. If you select this item list, you can change the color by clicking on this box. Personally, I already like the current color, so I'm not going to change anything and just close this window. If you already have certain preferences for UI as well as viewport settings, you don't have to set anything over and over again every time you start 3ds Max. You can save it in a special file named "maxstart.max" which will then be used as a reference every time 3ds max starts. Let's see how we can do this. First, you need to set the file to the ideal condition that you like. Let's say I want to have a solid color for the background just like this. Next, I want a maximized perspective viewport like this. And of course, I don’t want to have all these objects in the scene. So, press Ctrl + A to select all. And then press Delete. And then you can rotate the viewport until at the angle that you like. So, let's assume that this is the file condition you want to have every time you start 3ds Max. The next thing you need to do is to save the file. Click on the "file" menu. Then choose "save as". Make sure you save the file to the default 3ds Max's scene folder. Then, name this file "maxstart", without any spacing. Click save, and that's it. Now, if you close 3ds Max and try to start it again. This is the file condition that you will get every time you start 3ds Max. 7. Create and modifiy objects: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss how to create objects and also how to modify them. Basically in 3ds Max if you want to create a new object, you need to go to the create panel which is this tab at the left-most location in the command panel. But if you want to modify existing objects, then you should go to the modify panel, which is the second tab after the create panel. So again, you need to remember this basic UI concept in 3ds Max. Whenever you need to create a new object, any type of object, you should go to the create panel. And if you already have an object, and you want to modify it, then you should go to the modify panel. Okay. If you look at the create panel we can actually see sub-panels in a form of these small buttons. Each of these sub-panels represents the type of object you want to create. This one is the geometry sub-panel where you can create 3D geometrical objects such as box, sphere, cylinder, etc. This one is the "shapes" sub-panel where you can create vector shapes such as line, rectangle, circle, etc. This sub-panel is used when we need to create light sources. This one is for creating cameras and so forth. We’re going to discuss these different types of objects step by step in time. Right now we’re going to focus only on the geometry objects. If we look at the geometry panel, notice that it also divided into several categories in the form of a drop-down list. We can see standard primitives, extended primitives, compound objects, and so on. It is worth to mention that when you install third-party plugins into 3ds Max. Some of these plugins may provide new types of objects. So you may get new categories on this list. For example, if I don't have Corona plugin installed, this "Corona" category will not exist. Okay. Now, let’s focus on the standard primitives. The techniques of creating objects in 3ds max are varied. They depend on what type of object you want to create. But mostly they follow a certain pattern. Let’s start with the simplest method which is clicking and dragging. For example, let’s create a sphere. Click the sphere button here. Notice how this button becomes active. And then in perspective viewport, click and drag like so, then release. And we have a new sphere object created. Now pay attention to this button. As long as this button is still active, whenever you click and drag and release again in the viewport, a new sphere will be created. So you are in this mode of creating spheres. To exit from this creation mode simply right-click. So again, this is very important to remember. In 3ds Max, if you need to exit a certain mode, you need to right-click with your mouse. Okay. Next, let’s try creating a plane object. Click the plane button and click-drag, then release. We can also do the click-drag method to create a teapot. Just click on this teapot button then click-drag on the viewport, and then release. Remember to right-click once to exit the object creation mode. The second technique which requires more interaction is by using the click-drag method followed by dragging and then click once to finish. For example, let’s create a box. Click the box button, then click-drag on the perspective viewport. Now, the first click-drag process will create this base area for the width and the length. There is no height yet. After we release the mouse button, now we’re moving on to define the height of the box. I'm not touching any button now. I'm just moving the mouse up and down to define the height. Notice that the height can be a negative value which makes the box goes below the ground. After we are satisfied with the box’s height, click once on the mouse to confirm it. And we just finished creating a box. As always you are still in the creation mode. We can see the box button here is still active. If you want to exit, you need to right-click once. We can use the same technique on the cylinder object. Click on the cylinder button, click-drag to define the base, release, move up, click once, and we have a cylinder. Right-click to exit the cylinder creation mode. Next, let’s discuss the last technique in the object creation which involves several clicks after the first initial click and drag. One of the objects that require this method is the tube object. So let’s click on the tube button. Click-drag in the viewport. This will actually define the first radius or the outer radius of the tube. After we release, we need to define the inner radius by moving the mouse back and forth. After we click once, we can then move the mouse back and forth again to define the height of the tube. Then click once to finish the process. Right-click to exit the tube creation mode. So, by now, I believe you already understand the pattern of the object creation process in 3ds max. I recommend you to explore creating other objects by yourself. You can see, there are a lot of objects that we can create inside the "standard primitives" category. There are even more in the other categories. You can try creating the extended primitive objects such as hedra, torus knot, chamfer box, etc. Now, let’s discuss how we can modify objects in 3ds Max. If we don’t have any object selected. And we open the modify panel. Notice the modify panel is empty. It doesn't show any parameters. But, if we select an object by clicking on one of these objects in the viewport. We can see the modify panel now displays the parameters of that current object. So basically, the modify panel is a contextual panel. Meaning, it can only show the parameters of the currently selected object. Now, because different object will have different set of parameters. The modify panel doesn't have a consistent UI. For example, if I select this box. We can see the parameters of the box object in the modify panel. We can see and edit the length, the width and the height of the box in the modify panel simply by click and dragging these spinners up and down. So this small up and down arrows button is called the spinner. Now if I choose this sphere, notice we no longer see the length, the width and the height parameters of the box. Instead, we can see and edit the radius and other parameters belong to the sphere object. Now, besides clicking and dragging on the spinner, up and down. You can also do a simple click on the up or the down buttons to nudge the value. Or you can also type in the value manually in the input field. For example I can double-click to select the whole text like this and then type in 20. Then Enter. 8. Object selection: In this lesson video, we will discuss how to select objects and different modes and settings around object selection. In 3ds Max, to select an object, you need to be in one of these modes. The select object mode, move mode, rotate mode, or scale mode. If you are in one of these modes, simply click on an object and that object will become selected. To deselect all objects you can click on an empty space in the viewport, or you can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + D. If you forget the shortcut you can always go to the "edit" menu and look at this area. Notice you can find the "select none" option in here with Ctrl + D as the shortcut. And from this menu, you can also see that we can select all objects in the scene by using Ctrl + A. And we can invert the selection by using Ctrl + I shortcut. All of these shortcuts will be useful for us later, especially when we’re in the modeling process. If we have an object selected and we want to select more objects we can use the Ctrl key. So for example we can click this object to select it. Then to select this object also, hold Ctrl and click on it. Now we have these two objects selected. You can keep holding the Ctrl button and keep clicking to select more objects. If you want to deselect a certain object, out from the selection, you can use the Alt key. So for example hold Alt and then click on this object. Notice how this object now is not selected anymore. So, again, use the Ctrl modifier key to add more selection and use the Alt modifier key to reduce the selection. Okay. To select multiple objects at once, you can use the click-drag method like this. Notice how it creates a rectangular selection region. Every object within the region will be selected when we release the mouse. You can use this technique with the combination of the Ctrl and Alt modifier keys. For example, if you want to add these objects to the selection, you can hold Ctrl and then click-drag like so. Now they are all become selected. If you want to deselect them. Hold Alt and then click-drag like so. Now we can see these objects are no longer selected. When doing region selection there is one important setting that you need to know. In the main toolbar, you can see this button. This button is useful for toggling between "window mode" and "crossing mode". So what is the difference between the two? Well, in crossing mode, when we click-drag to create a region selection, every object inside the region plus the objects that are touched by the region border will get selected. But in "window" mode, only objects that are truly inside the region will be selected. Objects that are crossed or just partly inside the selection region will not get selected. The shortcut for this toggle button is Shift + O. Until now, you might be wondering, is 3ds Max only support the rectangular selection region? Well, the answer is no. To change the selection region behavior you can click and hold on this button here. We can see there are also circle selection, polygonal selection, lasso, and paint selection mode. If you want to cycle through these selection modes using the keyboard shortcut you can use the Q letter key. Now, if you set this to the circular mode, when we click-drag to select multiple objects, we can see the region is now a circle rather than a rectangular like before. Next is the polygonal mode or officially named the "fence" region mode in 3ds Max. This one behaves like the polygonal lasso tool in Photoshop. To use this mode, you need to click and drag first, and then do a series of click-releases. To finish up a selection, you need to double-click the mouse. The next one is the lasso region mode. If this is active, to create a selection region, you simply click and drag to draw the region. When you release the mouse, the selection will be created. Finally, the last one is the paint selection mode. This selection mode works like a paintbrush. So if you click and drag to move the cursor around across the viewport like this, notice that every object that is touched by the cursor will get selected. Now, before I end this lesson. You need to understand that all of these different selection modes can be combined with the Ctrl and Alt modifier keys. Just for example. If I have the paint selection mode active. And I hold the Alt key while performing the selection, I’m actually deselecting the objects. If I hold the Ctrl key, I’m adding more objects into the selection. I believe you already understand the concept by now and should be able to apply this to the other selection modes. 9. Transformation: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss transformation. So what is transformation? Well, transformation is a generic term exist in computer graphics. Basically, transformation is anything that relates to the position, rotation, and scale. But before we start learning about transformation. There is one important thing that we need to discuss first. And that will be the "orientation convention". When working in 3D, it is strongly recommended that you first understand the convention of the orientation relative to the world axes. This is because different 3D software or game engines may have different orientation convention. For example, what is considered to be up direction in 3ds Max is different than the up direction in the Unity game engine. In 3ds Max the up direction is the Z-axis, while in Unity the up direction is the Y-axis. If you are working with multiple 3D software this can be a bit daunting. But there is at least one thing that is common and uniform across all 3D software in the world, and that is the colors of the axes. No matter what 3D software you’re using, the Z-axis is always blue, the Y-axis is always green, and the X-axis is always red. Okay. For now, let's focus only on the "orientation convention" inside 3ds Max. In 3ds Max the up direction is the positive Z-axis and the down direction is the negative Z-axis. You can see this clearly by looking at the small axes at the bottom left corner of each viewport. The front direction is the negative Y-axis and the back direction is the positive Y-axis. Lastly, the right direction is the positive X-axis and the left direction is the negative X-axis. Now, whenever I mention left or right directions in this course, it means it is based on our viewing angle, not based on the object’s local direction. Unless I stated specifically that it is based on the object. Okay. Now you always need to remember this convention all the time when working inside 3ds Max. Especially the front direction which is the negative Y-axis. When you are modeling, you always want the model to face the negative Y-axis. You will understand later why this is important. Now, let’s move on to discussing transformation. First, let’s start with the position or movement. To move an object we need to be in the "move mode" which is this button up here. Besides clicking on it you can also access it via the keyboard shortcut which is "W". Or another way to access it is by right-clicking. This will open up a special pop-up menu called the "quad menu". From this menu, you can choose "move" here. Okay. Now, if you have the move mode active and you have an object selected. You will see these colorful arrows appear on the object. These arrows are called the "transform gizmo" and it is there to help us to move the object around. The blue arrow indicates the Z-axis direction. The red one is the X-axis. And the green one is the Y-axis. If for example, you want to move the object along the X-axis. Simply click and drag on the red arrow. As you can see the object is moving but it is constrained only to the X-axis direction. The same principle applies to the green arrow where you can only move the object on the Y direction. And this also applies to the blue arrow which constrains the object’s movement to the Z-axis. Now, sometimes we need to move an object on a plane, instead of just a single axis. For example, we want this object to move along the XY plane. To do this you can click and drag the elbow that connects the X arrow and the Y arrow. This will make both the X and Y axes active at the same time, therefore we can move the object around along the XY plane. And it will not move in the Z-axis direction. The same concept applies to XZ plane, and also the YZ plane. Now, before we move on. Notice that there is a small rectangle in the center of the gizmo. We can use this rectangle to constrain the movement to the viewing plane. Essentially the "viewing" plane or also known as the "screen plane" is a virtual plane based on our current viewing angle. It uses our eyes or rather the orientation of the viewport to constrain the object’s movement. Next is the rotation. To activate the rotation mode we need to click this button up here. Or you can also use the keyboard shortcut which is "E". Or you can right-click to open the quad menu, and simply click this "rotate" button here. After we’re in the rotate mode, notice how the transform gizmo changes to the "rotation transform gizmo" which looks like a bunch of colorful circles. Until now you probably already noticed it, that the transform gizmo can be used to indicate in which transformation mode we are in. These circles tell us right away that we’re in the rotation mode. Basically, these circles work almost the same as the arrows we saw in the move mode. The blue one, for example, will constrain the rotation so that the object uses the Z-axis as the rotational axis. The same thing also applies to the Y-axis which is this green one. And the X-axis which is this red one. Now besides the colored circles, you might notice that we also have this big white circle. This white circle is used to constrain the rotation to be perpendicular to the screen space. Sometimes you just need to rotate an object randomly without any constraints. Well, we can do that by moving the mouse to the center of the gizmo without touching any of the circles. And then just click and drag the mouse around. We can see the object rotates freely. The last one is scaling. To access the scale mode, we can click this button up here. You can also use the "R" letter key as the keyboard shortcut. Or you can also use the quad menu by right-clicking and then choose "scale" here. So until now, just to recap. The upper left area of the keyboard is very important as you may access it a lot. Q is for selection mode. W is for movement mode. E is for rotation. And finally, R is for scaling. To scale an object uniformly, without any stretching, you need to click and drag on this inner triangle. You can see the object become bigger or smaller as we move the mouse back and forth. If you want to scale the object only on a certain axis, for example the X-axis, you can grab the red one and then drag it like so. The scaling now only happens in the X-axis direction. The same concept also applies to the Z-axis and also to the Y-axis. We can also scale only on the XY plane by grabbing the elbow which connects the X and Y-axes. The same concept also applies to other plane constraints. Okay. Now let’s draw our attention to this area down here where we can find an X, Y and Z values. And let's activate the move mode for now. If we have the move mode active, these values actually display the coordinate or the position of the object in the 3D space. Notice if I move the object around, these values change accordingly. Now if we are in the rotate mode, what you will see in this area is actually the rotation value for each of the axes in degrees. Notice when I rotate around in the Z-axis for example. The Z value changes accordingly. If we are in the scale mode, these values you see down here are actually percentages. So 100 value for each of the axes is the normal or the default value for the scale. 100 percent is equal to 1, which means there is no scaling happens on the object. Notice if I scale-out this object on the X-axis, we can see the X scale value now becomes larger than 100%. Sometimes you need to show or hide the transform gizmo. You can do this by going to the "view" menu and click this "show transform gizmo" button. Besides showing and hiding, you can also make the transform gizmo bigger or smaller by pressing the "minus" key and the "equal" key on the keyboard, which are located on top of the "P" letter key and the "brackets" key. Press "minus" to make it smaller, and press the "equal" key to make it bigger. 10. Pivot point: In this lesson video, we’ll discuss about the pivot point. In 3ds Max every object has a center point. These center points are called the "pivot point". If you use any of the transformation tools such as move, rotate or scale, the location of the transform gizmo is actually located at the object’s pivot point. The pivot point is very important because 3ds Max uses it as the basis of any transformation operations. In terms of movement, the pivot point is used to define the object’s coordinate. In terms of rotation, the pivot point is used as the center of the rotation. In terms of scale, it is also used as the center of the scaling process. If you need to change the location of the pivot point, first make sure the object you want to edit is selected. Then go to the "hierarchy" panel, which is this panel besides the "modify" panel. Then choose "pivot" here, and then turn on this "affect pivot only" button. The button now becomes active. And while this button is active, any transformation that we do to the object will not change the object's geometry. Instead, it will affect only the pivot point. For example, if I move it like so, notice the object is not moving, only the pivot point moves. After we are finished editing the pivot point, don’t forget to click this button again to turn off the pivot point editing mode. In this case, you can not use the right-click method to exit the mode. You need to click the button again manually. And now we’re back to the normal mode. So when we move the object, the geometry and the pivot point will move along together just like before. Let’s see an example of how editing the pivot point becomes very important. Let’s say we want to create an animation of a simple door opening. Let's create a box object for this purpose. I’m trying to make it looks like a normal door. Okay. Now if we try to open the door using the rotation gizmo. Notice how the door opens up using its center as the rotational axis rather than the side area. To fix this issue, we need to reposition the pivot point from the center to the side. To do that, just like before, make sure the object is selected. And then go to the "hierarchy" panel, "pivot", and then turn on the "affect pivot only" mode. Now, activate the move mode. And just slide this pivot point to the side. After you’re done, don’t forget to deactivate this button again, so we can go back to the normal mode. Now, if we go to the rotate mode and try to rotate this object again. As you can see it behaves much like a normal or common door. 11. Transformation settings: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss more in-depth about different aspects of transformation. First, let’s discuss about the reference coordinate system. If we look at the main toolbar. There is a pull-down list here that says "view". This is the option for the "reference coordinate system". By default, it is set to "view" which means that when we perform a transformation, the transform gizmo axes will be aligned to the currently active viewport. To show you this more clearly, let’s create a teapot. If we are in the perspective viewport and we have the move mode active. You can see that the X, Y and Z axes of the transform gizmo are aligned with the world axis down here. So basically, the "view" coordinate system is exactly like the "world" coordinate system if you are in the perspective viewport. You can only see the difference if you are in one of the orthographic viewports. For example, if you go to the front viewport. You can see the transform gizmo’s Y-axis is pointing up which is actually the direction of the world Z-axis. If we go to the left viewport, we have something like this. The Y arrow is pointing up and the X arrow is pointing to the right along with the world Y-axis. So, basically by using the "view" coordinate system, if you are in one of the orthographic viewports. The vertical direction is always the Y-axis and the horizontal direction is always the X-axis. Besides the "view" mode, there are many other modes in the reference coordinate system. We’re not going to cover all of them in this lesson. We'll cover only the 2 most important ones which are the "world" and the "local" reference coordinate. If you change the reference coordinate system to the "world". Things will become more consistent. In this mode, no matter which viewport you are currently in, the transform gizmo’s axes are always aligned with the world axes. Next is the "local" mode. Essentially in the local mode, the transform gizmo will align to the object’s pivot point instead of the world axes. To understand this more clearly, imagine that this teapot is a car. This is the head and this is the tail. If you need to animate the car moving back and forth, at this stage, you can do this easily using the X-axis. But what if the car turns like this. At this condition, if you have the reference coordinate system set to the "world". You will have a hard time to move the car back and forth because there is no axis that aligned to the current object’s orientation. But if we set this to "local". We can see that the object’s local X-axis is aligned to where the object is currently facing. This way we can move the object back and forth based on where it is facing. So you understand by now how important the "local" reference coordinate is. The next thing we’re going to discuss more in-depth is this type-in coordinate down here. Make sure you have the move tool active now, and you have the reference coordinate set to the "world". Let's pay attention to this small toggle button here. If this button is off, it means we’re in the "absolute" mode, which is the default. Basically in this mode, these X, Y and Z values are showing the exact location of the object in 3D space. If for example, we change the Z value here. This will alter the height position of the selected object. Okay. Now, if this button is on, we're now in the offset mode. Notice how these values only show zero. When we type in the Z input field, 10, for example. The object just moved for 10 units up from its previous position. And right after that, the Z value is back to zero again. So from this example, you can already tell how this offset mode can be useful for us. In conclusion. If you need to see the exact coordinate of an object, then you use the "absolute" mode. But if you need to move an object at a certain amount of distance, then you should use the "offset" mode. Transforming a single object is pretty simple. Mostly you just use the object’s pivot point as the center of the transformation. But if you have multiple objects selected, there can be several scenarios on how you want to transform them. In 3ds Max, we can use this button here to set the center of the transformation. There are 3 modes that we can use here. To see what each of these modes can do, let’s activate the rotate mode first. And make sure you have multiple objects selected. The top one is the individual pivot point mode. In this mode, each object will rotate on its own pivot point. The second mode is the "selection center" mode. In this mode, the whole selected objects will rotate together as if they are a single object. 3ds Max will calculate the median point and use that point as the center of the transformation. The last one is the reference coordinate center. This will use the center of the world as the center of the rotation. You can see that even if we have the objects located here, off from the center. The transform gizmo appears at the center of the world. Now, this mode is actually not using the center of the world, but rather it uses the center of the reference coordinate that we specify here. If you have the "view" or "world" active, then the transform gizmo will be located at the center of the world. But, if for example, you have the "local" mode active here. Then the center of the transformation now behaves like the individual pivot point mode. 12. Modifier: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss about modifier. So what is exactly a modifier? In 3ds Max, modifiers are like special functions or properties that can be attached to an object. A modifier can deform the shape of an object, alter its texture, make the object follow another object, and many other things. To access the modifiers you need to go the modify panel. In this panel, you can see a pull-down list here. But again, you won’t see anything here unless you have an object selected. We've talked about this before. So make sure you have an object selected first. This pull-down list is called the "modifier list". This is where we add new modifiers to the selected object. After you add one or more modifiers. Then those modifiers will be placed and stacked on top of each other in this list here. This list is called the "modifier stack". So again, I repeat. If you need to add a new modifier, then you need to go to the "modifier list". But if you need to access the existing modifiers, then you can access them in the "modifier stack" here. Okay. Let's just see an example. In here, I have 3 teapots. If I pick this one and then go to the modifier list. Right now, I want to look for a modifier called "melt". If you already know the name, you can type in the letters. So press M then E. This will make the list jump to find the modifier with the corresponding name. And so we can see the "melt" modifier here. Now just click it. And we just applied the "melt" modifier to the object. Notice in the modifier stack, we can see the melt modifier located on top of the teapot base object. With the melt modifier applied, you can increase this melt amount value to make the teapot looks like melting. If we pick the other teapots, we don’t see the "melt" modifier on them. Only when we select this teapot object that we can see the melt modifier. This concludes that a modifier is unique to a certain object that is being applied to. Because we selected only this teapot when adding the melt modifier, therefore only this teapot has the melt modifier. We can add more than one modifier on an object if we want to. For example, let’s add a lattice modifier on the second teapot. Lattice modifier will convert any edges to cylinders and any vertices to spheres. To see the effect better, let’s set the joints radius to 1. And set the struts radius to 0.2. So we have something like this. Next, after the lattice modifier, let’s add another modifier. This time we want to add the twist modifier. As the name implies, this modifier will twist the object's geometry. We need to increase the angle value here to really see the twist effect on the object. So basically what you see here is the product of two modifiers, which are lattice and twist, attached to an object. Now, pay attention to the modifier stack. We now have the teapot base object at the bottom, followed by "lattice" and then "twist" on top of it. You need to understand that 3ds Max processes the modifiers from the bottom to top. Not top to bottom. So from this base object. The "lattice" modifier will be processed first, and then after that the "twist" modifier. You can change the sorting order by clicking and dragging the modifier. If I drag the twist modifier down like this for example. Although the result looks similar, but the way 3ds Max process them is different. Now the twist is processed first, and then after that the lattice. We can undo this by pressing Ctrl + Z. In many other cases, depending on what modifiers you are using, changing the order of the modifier stack can drastically impact the look of the object. Sometimes can even break the object. So this is something you need to be aware of. The next thing I want to point out is that modifiers are non-destructive. Meaning, you can always go back to change things around. For example, if we want to change the basic parameters of the teapot object, we can click this teapot entry in the modifier stack. Notice how the parameters down here change according to the entry you select in the modifier stack. You can change the radius. You can change the segment amount. Or you may want to hide the spout or the lid, etc. If you click on the lattice modifier, then you can access it’s parameters down here. If you click the twist modifier, then you can access the twist modifier parameters here. I’m pretty sure you get the idea. Now, sometimes when we are working on the parameters of the base object, or on a certain modifier that exists below another modifier, we want to see only the actual look of the object at that current stage. Not the final result of the top modifier stack. We can actually do this by clicking on this "show end result" toggle button. For example, I’m currently at the base level now. If I turn this button off. We can see the original teapot object without any modifiers that exist afterward. I can reduce the segments like this, for example, without any distraction. If I turn on this toggle button again. We can see the final result of the modifier stack in real-time as I change the segment value. There are so many modifiers available in 3ds Max, and there will be even more modifiers added if you start installing third-party plugins into 3ds Max. I encourage you to explore these modifiers yourself because the more modifiers you know the more workflow options you have when working with 3ds Max. 13. Object duplication: In this lesson video, we’re going to cover object duplication. In 3ds Max we can clone or duplicate objects using several methods. The first one is by using the clone command. Second is by holding Shift while doing a transformation. And third, is by using the array tool. Now, there are actually more methods that we can use to duplicate objects in 3ds Max. But I consider them to be more advanced techniques, so we’re not going to discuss them in this lesson. Let’s just focus on these 3 methods for now. The first method is the "clone" command. To use this method, first, you need to select the object. Then go to the "edit" menu, and then choose "clone" here. A pop-up window called the "clone options" will appear. Here we need to choose between "copy", "instance" or "reference" options. We’ll discuss the difference later in this lesson video. For now, just choose "copy" and then click "ok". We just duplicated the object. But it is hard to tell because currently the new object is located exactly at the location of the original object. If press W to activate to move tool and then just move it like this. We can see we actually have 2 objects. Another way to access the clone command is by using the quad menu. So again, make sure the object we want to duplicate is selected. Then right-click to open the quad menu. You can find the "clone" command down here. If you click it, it will open the "clone options" window like before. Another method is to use the keyboard shortcut which is Ctrl + V. Remember you don’t need to press Ctrl + C. Just select the object and then press Ctrl + V. The "clone options" window will appear again like before. And if we press "Ok", 3ds Max will duplicate the object at the same location as the original object. I mentioned before that you shouldn't press Ctrl + C. Why? Well, this is because if you do press Ctrl + C, in 3ds Max, that shortcut by default is used to create a camera object exactly at the position on where you are looking at the viewport. So if you press Ctrl + C, suddenly your viewport becomes very hard to navigate. This is because you are not in the perspective view anymore. You are in the camera view. To fix this just change the view back to the perspective view by clicking here and choose "perspective". Or by pressing P for the shortcut. Then rotate the viewport. We can see the camera object that we just created here. Just select it and then press Delete. We’ll discuss about camera later in another section of this course series. Another way to duplicate objects which you will often see me doing in this course, is by holding the Shift modifier key while doing any type of transformation. For example, let’s select this object. Make sure we are in the move mode now. Then hold Shift, and then move the object like so. Just like before, the "clone options" window will open. Let’s choose copy again for now. But let’s change the "number of copies" value here to 5 for example. Then hit "Ok". You can see we just duplicated the object while moving it. And repeat the process 4 times based on the distance of the first copy. Now, besides moving, you can also combine the Shift key modifier with rotate and scale to duplicate an object. But for this, I will let you try it on your own. Now, we can see that with the "number of copies" value, we can create multiple duplications at once. But what if we need more controls over these multiple duplications? Well, this is where the next method which is "Array" comes in handy. To duplicate an object using the array command, first, make sure the object is selected. Then go to the "tools" menu, then choose "array" here. In the upper area, there are two column groups. The left one is used if we want to specify the incremental value from one duplicate to another duplicate. The right one if we want to set the total value of all of the duplicates. The first row is for movement, the second row is for rotation, and the last one is for scaling. For now, just select the left one and set the x value here to 15 for example. Next, at the bottom part, you can see the "array dimensions" section. 1D means that the duplication will happen one way. We can activate this "preview" button to see how the final result will be if we later click the "Ok" button. You can turn on the "display as box" button here. This is useful in the scenario where you have a very complex object and you don’t want to burden the GPU too much. The count value here determines the number of duplicates. Now, if we set this to 2D array. We can set the count value for the second dimension to 5 for example. Then set the Y offset value to 15. Now we have something like this. So, this direction is the first dimension. And this direction is the second dimension. And you probably already guess it. If we set the array to 3D. And change the count value to 3. Then set the Z offset value to 3 also for example. We get something like this. If you are happy with the preview, to really apply the array tool, you need to click the "ok" button here. From this example, you can see how powerful the array tool is for quickly filling up spaces with duplicate objects. There are still many array variations that you can create with the array tool. But I believe with this basic example you’ll be able to explore the tool yourself. Every time you create a duplicate in 3ds Max, regardless of the methods, you are always prompted to choose between "copy", "instance" and "reference". For example, if I drag this object while holding "Shift", you will see the option again. So what is exactly the difference between them? Well, first, "copy" means that the duplicate result will be independent of the original object. Notice how I tweak the object parameters here. The changes only happen to the selected object. Now if I duplicate this object again, but use the "instance" option. These two objects share the same geometry data with one another. Or in other words, we can say that they are actually the same object but displayed twice by 3ds max. So if I select one of them and change the parameters in the modify panel. Notice the changes also happen on the other instance of the object. Now instancing is a very important technique. Because it can help us to save memory when we’re working with a massive amount of objects in the scene. For example, if you need to create a forest scene with thousands of trees, or perhaps a city scene with hundreds of buildings and cars. Because although instantiated objects have their own transformation values, 3ds max store the geometry in single memory space. At a glance, you can tell that an object is an instant of other objects by looking at the bold text on their modifier stack name. Notice this one is not bold because it is independent. You can also spot that there is a special button here that becomes active. This is the "make unique" button. If you want to make an instant object become independent or unique then you can click this button for that. Or you can also right-click here, and then choose "make unique". Okay, so now what about reference? Well, the "reference" option is used to create an instant object, but only to a certain level in the modifier stack. After that current stack, the object is pretty much independent. Let’s see a real example of this reference option. Let’s create a new teapot. Then apply a "bend" modifier on it. Increase the "angle" value so we can see the bending effect on the object. Then hold Shift and move this here to duplicate it. For the clone option, remember to choose "reference". Okay. Now notice when I change the bend "angle" value again on any of these objects, they both still share the value. But if we select the clone referenced object. You can see there is a separator here at the modifier stack. Every modifier you put on top of this separator will be independent and affect only this object. And every modifier that exists below this separator will be shared. So, if I add a melt modifier. And increase the melt amount value to make the object melt. Only this one is melting. This one is not. But notice if I drag the melt modifier down across the separator. Now the melt modifier is being shared also with this object. And so if we select this object, you can see and control the melt parameters in here also. So that is the difference between "copy", "instance" and "reference" when cloning objects. 14. Managing objects: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss several methods of managing objects inside 3ds Max. When your scene starts to get crowded with a lot of objects, you will soon realize that you need ways to manage the objects, so you can work effectively. Good scene management can lead to faster development time and better collaboration with your team. There are many methods that we can use to manage objects and we’re going to discuss some of them in this video. Probably the most important but often neglected scene management practice is the naming convention. Every time you create an object, you should always name them appropriately in the modify panel. You can see the name of the object here. And this is also where you can change it. For example, naming all of the tree objects in the scene with "tree" as the prefix, can help a lot when later you need to select all of the tree objects in the scene. For naming your objects, there is no specific rule you need to follow. You can use any naming conventions as you see fit, based on your need and or your workflow. Just make sure it is consistent so that you and your team can understand them, now and later. If you already have a good naming convention, you can easily select objects by their names using the "search by name" feature in 3ds Max. To access this feature, you can open the "edit" menu, "select by", and then "name". Or you can always use "H" for the shortcut. This will open up a special scene explorer window, in which you can immediately type in the words that you want to search. Notice the text cursor already at the search input field up here when this window first opened. For example, if I type in "tree". You can see that immediately the object list gets filtered, so that it only shows the objects that have "tree" as the first word in their names. Click the "Ok’ button, and now they are selected. Now, what if the names of your objects have two or more words, and the word you are targeting is not in the first order. Let’s say you have objects with naming convention like "blue-car", "green-car", "red-car", etc. How can we select them using the "select by name feature" then? Well, we can use the wild-card which is an asterisk symbol. This asterisk symbol represents "any words" in the search term. So when we type "*car" it means "any words" followed by the word "car". We can see the objects are filtered accordingly so we can select them all by pressing the "Ok" button here. Sometimes we need to hide or unhide 3D objects so we can see certain areas in our scene much better. To hide an object, first, you need select it. Then go to the "display" command panel, and click this "hide selected" button. You can hide multiple objects at once if you want to. To unhide objects that are currently hidden, you can either click the "unhide all" button here to unhide everything. Or you can also use the "unhide by name" button to select and unhide certain objects by their names. Besides the "display’ command panel, you can also access the hide-unhide features through the quad menu by right-clicking with your mouse button. Notice we have some options here, although not as complete as the "display" command panel. Another useful technique that almost identical to the hide-unhide feature is the "isolation mode". I use this technique a lot in my works. So what is isolation mode exactly? Basically, when we activate the "isolation mode", everything will be hidden except the objects that are currently selected. When we exit the isolation mode, everything will be back to where it was, including the viewport angle. So for example, I can select this object. Then to activate the isolation mode, there are actually many ways to do this. First, you can go to the "tools" menu, then "isolate selection". Or you can also use the "Alt+Q" keyboard shortcut. Or you can click this small button down here. And for the last method, you can access it via the quad menu by right-clicking. You can see the "isolate selection" command here. If you do any of these methods, you will be in the "isolation" mode. We can tell that we’re indeed in the isolation mode because all other objects are hidden. Also by looking at this button. The button is currently active. To exit the isolation mode you can click this button again, or use the quad menu by right-clicking and then choose "end isolate". Now we can see that the other objects are all back. And the view angle is also back to the previous state. 15. Scene explorer: In this lesson video, we’re going to cover the basics of using the scene explorer. To open the scene explorer you can either click this button here. Or you can also go to the "tools" menu and then choose "scene explorer" here. You can have the scene explorer floating like this. Or if you want to dock it to the left you can do that by dragging this area to the left, or simply right-click in this area and then choose "dock", then "left". It’s really up to you. There are many things that you can do with the scene explorer. For example, you can select objects quickly by clicking on the object’s name in this list. You can also hide and unhide objects by clicking these eye symbols. And many other features that you can use to manage the objects in your scene. Let’s cover the essentials first. The first thing that you need to know about the scene explorer is that it is very customizable. You can tweak the UI elements of the scene explorer to really suit your needs. Down here you can find the presets of the UI layout. We can see "container explorer", "MassFX explorer", and there is even a very specific explorer tailored for 3ds Max users that use data from Revit. Let’s use the "default" for now so we have the same starting point. The second most important thing that you need to pay attention to is these 2 buttons here. The left one is used when we want to view the objects in the scene as layers. While the right one is the "hierarchy" mode. You can see the UI up here changes when we switch between these 2 modes. We’ll discuss the difference between these two more in-depth later. For now let’s focus on the UI in general, and just set this to the hierarchy mode. Up here you can find the menu. The names of the menus are very obvious. This is where we can access selection commands. This is where we can control how objects are displayed. This is for node editing. And finally, this is where we can customize the UI. Below it, we can see the search bar or the "find" bar in 3ds Max term. We’ve used this before actually in the previous lesson. These are the hierarchy tools, which only show up if you have the hierarchy mode active down here. The left side is the object-type display filter area. Here you can specify what types of objects you want to show or hide. For example, turning off the "geometry" type here will hide all of the objects from the list. Because currently, all I have in the scene are 3d geometrical objects. If you have some light objects for example. Turning off this light option will hide all of the light objects from the list. I’m pretty sure you get the idea. Next, we know this one and this one already. Now, the last one is interesting. This is the "selection set", which is also a feature that you can use in 3ds Max to manage the objects in the scene. We’ll discuss more about this later in the future lesson. Now, all of these UI elements can be shown or hidden by going to the "customize" menu, then "toolbar". For example, if I click this "find" option. The search bar is now gone. If I choose this "display" option here, now the object-type display filter is gone. To bring them back, we can simply click the options again. Okay. Now let’s focus on this option here called the "configure column". If you click it, it will open up a floating window. This is what actually makes the scene explorer very powerful and customizable. You can put any of these data columns to the object list. For example, you can drag this "color" and then find the spot you want to use, then release the mouse. Now we have a column for the object color. By default, you can change an object's color by selecting it first. Then go the modify panel, and click this color box here. But now, since it is available in the scene explorer. You can access it much faster. Of course, this is just an example of what you can do with the columns in the scene explorer. Now, if you change your mind and want to remove the "color" column. Simply drag the column header out of the scene explorer window like this. And now it is gone. You can see the color column option is now back in the column floating window. The "hierarchy" mode is where we can see and edit objects in terms of their parent-child relationship. If you are doing character animation or rigging in general. This mode is probably the one that you often need to open. But if you are doing architectural visualization or game environment type of project, you probably don’t need to use hierarchy that much and prefer to use the layer mode more often. Okay. So what is exactly a parent-child relationship in this hierarchy mode? To make things simple. If you make an object a child of another object. Any transformation that happens on the parent object will affect the child object. Let’s see an example of this. To parent an object to another object. You can use this link button here. And then click-drag the object you want it to become the child and release the mouse on the object you want it to be the parent. Now, as you can see, the "blue car" object is indented and located below the "green car". We can collapse and expand the hierarchy using this caret button. Now, notice if I move, rotate, or even scale the green car object. The blue one follows. Another way to parent an object is to just drag the objects right inside the scene explorer. For example, I can drag the "green car" object, and then release it on top of the "red car" object. Now the red car is the parent of the green car, and it is the grandparent of the blue car. If you have multiple levels of parent-child relationships like this. Any transformation that happens to an object will affect all of its descendants. So if I rotate the red car, for example. Not only the green one moves but also the blue one. This feature is very useful in character animation. For example, if you rotate an upper arm, you want the forearm, the hand, and all the way to the fingers to follow. Another way to parent objects is by using the tools provided here. For example, if you want to parent the blue car to the ground object, instead of the green car. You can click the blue car object, then click this button. Then click the ground object. Now the blue car is the child of the ground object. Let me undo this. Next, is this button. This is used for selecting all of the descendants of an object. So if I select the red car and then click this button. All of these 3 objects get selected. The last thing I want to discuss is how to unparent an object. To do that, select the object you want to unparent. Then click this "unlink" button located in the main toolbar. Or you can also just drag the object to an empty area in the scene-explorer like so. 16. Layer management: In this lesson video, we will continue our discussion on the scene explorer. Previously we covered the hierarchy mode, now we will focus on the layer mode. If you want to open the scene explorer and activate the layer mode immediately. Instead of clicking this button, you can click this button. Or you can go to the "tools" menu, and then choose "layer explorer" here. You can see we have the scene-explorer like before, but the "layer explorer" preset here and the layer mode here are active. For those of you already understand 2D graphics software like Photoshop, or Gimp, or Krita, you might be thinking that the layers in 3ds max are similar to the layers in Photoshop. Well, they are not. In 2D graphics software, the ordering of the layers is very important as it will define how the image composition looks at the end. In 3ds Max, the layer is just a way of grouping objects so we can organize them better. For example, we can put all of the tree objects in one layer called "tree". We put all of the car objects in a layer called "car", etc. Later if we want to hide all of the trees, for example, it will be very easy. Just hide the "tree" layer and everything in that tree layer, which are tree objects, will be hidden. To create a new layer you can simply click this button up here. Then you can rename it to any name you want. Now, when creating a new layer you need to make sure that you don’t have any layer selected before. Just click on an empty space like this before you click the "create new layer" button. The reason for this is because if you do have a layer selected, like this for example. Clicking the new layer button will create a new layer nested inside that selected layer. So yes, layers can be nested or placed inside another layer. They can even go multiple levels deep. Just like the folder structure in our hard-drive. Now, if you don’t want this nested structure. You want to move this layer to the top level, simply click-drag the layer to an empty space in the scene explorer like this. This will move that layer to the root or the top level. Or you can select the layer by clicking on it, then right-click, and then choose "unnest" here. On the other hand, if you do want to move a layer inside another layer, you can just drag it and then release it on top of the layer you want to make as the parent layer. Okay. One of the most important concepts in layer management in 3ds Max is the active layer. So what is the active layer exactly? Now, the term "active layer" is different from the selected or highlighted layer. When you click a layer like this. This does not make the layer active. This simply selects or highlights the layer. To make a layer as the active layer, you need to click on this icon here. You can see there can only be one active layer. This active layer is very important because whenever we create a new object in 3ds Max, it will be automatically placed inside the active layer. So for example, if I create a new teapot like so. Notice how the new teapot automatically become a member of this layer. Next, let’s discuss about deleting layers. To delete a layer you can highlight a layer first by clicking on it, then right-click, and then choose "delete" here. But there are 3 things that you need to know about deleting layers. First, In 3ds Max you can only delete empty layers. You can not delete layers that already contain objects inside them. If you really want to delete a non-empty layer, then you need to move the objects out first form that layer, to make it empty. Only then you will be able to delete it. The second thing that you need to know about deleting layer is that you can never delete the "0 (default)" layer, as this is the base layer in 3ds Max. Third, you can not delete the active layer. So if you do want to delete a layer that is active. You need to deactivate it first by making another layer as the active layer. Only then you can delete that layer. Now, let’s discuss a simple example of how we can manage objects with layers. Let’s say we want to create a layer called "tree" for the tree objects. Then a layer called "car" for the car objects. And finally, a layer called ‘terrain" for the ground object. Click on the empty area to make sure that none of the layers are selected. Click this button, and rename the new layer to "tree". Click here again to deselect the layer. And create a new layer and rename it to "car". Finally, create another layer and name it "terrain". If somehow you mistype the name. You can rename the layer by first selecting it, then right-click on it, and then choose "rename" here. Or you can also highlight the layer, wait for a second and then click again. To move objects from one layer to another layer, is actually very simple. Just select the objects and then click and drag, and release them on top of the target layer. For example, we can click here to select the first tree object. Hold Shift and then click here on the last tree object. So now we have all of these tree objects selected. Then just click and drag like so and release them on top of the "tree" layer. We can do this also with the car objects. Select them all. And just drag them like so to the "car" layer. And finally the ground object. Just drag this to the "terrain" layer. Okay, now if we already manage our scene with layers like this. There are a lot of things that you can do with them. You can quickly hide and unhide the layer including every object inside it, by clicking the eye icon here in the layer level. Second, you can also freeze them all at once. Now, I know we haven’t discussed about freezing objects yet. But it is quite simple actually. Freezing is just a term in 3ds Max for objects that can not be changed. You can not even select them in the viewport. It is a way of protecting objects from any accidental editing. Now, normally you can freeze an object by first selecting it in the viewport. Then go to the display command panel. And choose "freeze selected" here. Or you can right-click and then choose "freeze selection" here. But by using the scene explorer, you can freeze objects more quickly, either one-by-one, by clicking the icons in the freeze column. Or because we have all them in a layer, we can just freeze them all at once by clicking this icon at the layer level. You can see that frozen objects are colored in grey in the viewport. At this stage, you can not select or edit them. To unfreeze them back, simply click the icon again. You can combine the layer management features with the custom column method that we discussed in the previous lesson to really customize the control on these layers based on your own needs. 17. Selection set and Group: In this lesson video, we will discuss the selection set and object grouping. Selection set and grouping are 2 other methods that you can use inside 3ds Max to manage objects. Let’s see each of these methods one by one. First, let’s discuss the selection set. Selection set, as the name implies, is a way to make 3ds Max remember our object selections. Basically, you select a bunch of objects then you create a selection set out of them. Whenever you need to select those objects again in the future you can just call the selection set again. To access the selection set feature you can do that through this button here and this pull-down list here. If you click this button, a window will show up. Here we can manage the selection sets. For example, let's create a selection set for the trees. Select all of the tree objects. Then click this plus button here. And name this to "trees". Notice if I click this caret button, we can see that all of the trees are already inside this selection set. If you want to delete a selection set you can click this X button here. Now, you might be wondering. So what is the difference between the selection set and layer then? Well, first, the selection set works more like tagging, instead of a folder structure. What I mean by that, you can have one object to be a member of multiple different selection sets. Also, the selection set can not be nested. To give you an example, if I deselect everything. And create an empty selection set. Rename this to "trees-right". Then create another empty selection set. And name this one to "trees-left". Notice I can not drag this selection set to be inside another selection set. So, again you can not put a selection set inside another selection set. Now, I want to make these trees on the right side to be the members of the "trees-right" selection set. To do that we need to select them first. And then, while the selection set is highlighted, click this plus button here. We can do this also for the left trees. Select all of them. Click the selection set you want to use. Then hit the plus button here. Notice how this "tree 04", for example, exists both in the "trees" selection set and in the "trees-right" selection set. So, again, one object can be a member of multiple selection sets. If you want to take out an object from a selection set, then you can click this minus button. The second difference between the selection set and the layer is that we can not hide or freeze objects directly within the selection set window. The selection set only serves as a way to select objects. Not controlling their display properties. However, after you have them selected, you can then hide, show or freeze them as you wish. Now, after you have the objects organized in selection sets. You can then select them by using this button. For example, I can select the "trees" set and then click this button. We can see all of the tree objects are selected. I can select the "trees-right" and then click this button again. Now, only the right side trees are selected. The faster way to select using the selection set is not through this window, but through this pull-down list here. We can select the "trees-left" for example. Or the "trees" selection set again, etc. So that is how you can use the selection set feature in 3ds Max. The next method of managing objects inside 3ds Max is through grouping. So what is exactly grouping in 3ds Max? Essentially, grouping lets you combine two or more objects into one as if it is a single object. We can name the group, we can move, rotate, and scale it, much like any other object in 3ds Max. Grouping can reduce the complexity of an entity that has multipart objects so they are easier to control. For example, if you have a table with the tabletop and each of the legs as different objects. You can just group them into one. So it is easier to select the whole table and to move the table around when needed. Let's just see an example of this grouping feature in action. For example, let’s say we want to group these 3 cars together. First you need to select them. Then go to the "group" menu, then choose "group" here. We can then name this group object to "cars" for example. Now, if we select this car, the whole "cars" group will get selected. If we activate the move tool. We can move the group together. We can do this also for rotation. And also for scaling. If you open the scene explorer. You can see that a group object has a unique icon. And it also has a caret button that we can use to expand and collapse to see the objects inside it. But you can not access the group member directly via the scene explorer like this. If you do want to access a group member you need to open the group first. To do that, first, make sure the group object is selected. Then go to the "group" menu, then choose "open" here. Now we can select the individual car object. We can do whatever we need to do with each of these objects such as move, rotate, scale, etc. You can also access it’s parameters in the modifier stack if you need to. Now, while in the open state like this, you will see these bounding brackets. If you click on it, you are actually selecting the group object. So if you move it, for example, you move all of these 3 objects along with it. If you are done making the changes, then you should close the group object again by going to the "group" menu. Then choose "close" here. Now we can not access the group members again. If you want to ungroup a group object. Simply select the group object and then go to the "group" menu and choose "ungroup" here. So those are the basics of object grouping in 3ds Max. But object grouping still has a lot more features to offer. Let’s just discuss each of them real quick. Groups can be nested. So essentially you can create a group inside another group, which is inside another group, etc. For example, while I have the "cars" group selected, I can select these trees also. Then go to the "group" menu and create another group. Let's just name this one "my group". You can see in the scene explorer, we have the "cars" group inside the "my group" group. If you have multiple nested groups, like this. And you want to access the blue car for example. Opening a group inside another group can be tedious. You have to do the "open" group command twice. For this kind of scenario, we can use this command instead in the "group" menu called "open recursively". This will open each of the groups inside multiple nested groups at once. So you can now select each of the objects individually. If you need to ungroup multiple level groups like this. It will be tedious also to use the "ungroup" command. For this scenario, it is better to use this "explode" command here. This will ungroup all of the groups at once inside a multiple level nested groups. The last grouping features we need to discuss are attaching and detaching. Let’s say I select these 3 cars again and create a group named "cars" just like before. And then I decided to take out the red car from this group. To do that, first, we need to open the group so we can select the red car object. Then go back to the "group" menu, and then choose "detach" here. Now, if I close the group. As you can see, the red car is not part of the group anymore. We can move it independently from the group object. If you want to put the red car back to the "cars" group, then you can use the "attach" command. To do that, first select the red car object. Then go to the "group" menu, choose "attach" here. Then click on any of the "cars" group members. Now the red car is part of the "cars" group again. 18. Primitive vs Editable: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss the difference between the primitive versus editable objects. When you first create an object in 3ds Max, you actually create a primitive object. The term primitives in 3ds Max are objects that still contain the original parameters of how they were created inside the modify panel. For example, if I create a sphere, like so. Then while the sphere object is selected, in the modify panel, we can still see the sphere parameters. We can change the radius, the segments, the hemisphere value, and the other stuffs down here. Again this is called the primitive object. So now, what is an editable object then? Editable objects are objects that already lost all of the parameters when it was created. But in return, we can access its sub-objects and use many different modeling features that are not available before in the primitive mode. Basically, if you need to model a custom object beyond just simple geometry, then you need an editable object. Okay. So how can we convert a primitive object to an editable object then? Well, it is very easy. Simply right-click, and in the quad menu you will find this "convert to" options. We can choose between these editable objects, mesh, poly, patch, and NURBS. A quick explanation of these different types of editable objects. "Mesh" and "Poly" are almost similar. "Poly" is basically the advanced version of "mesh". In 3ds Max, the main difference between "mesh" and "poly" is the ability to handle N-Gon. N-Gon is a multi-sided face plane. "Mesh" only supports triangle faces, while "poly" supports N-Gon faces or also known as "polygons". In the old days, you could only use "mesh". But since "poly" was introduced, people stop using "mesh" anymore. The reason why "mesh" still exists in 3ds Max is for compatibility reasons. This is so 3ds Max is still able to open or import old 3d models. Now, you need to understand that these "mesh" and "poly" terms are just a way of 3ds Max calling the different underlying technologies behind them. In other 3D software, the term mesh actually refers to the "poly" type object. Okay. In conclusion, if you want to create an editable object then you should choose the "editable poly" type object. Now, what about "patch" and "NURBS" here? Well, they are both surface-based modeling. Let's discuss "patch" first. Unlike "mesh" or "poly", "patch" offers the ability to have curved lines between vertices. The way you control the surface curvature is through the use of Bezier handles. Much like the handles you see in 2D vector graphics such as Adobe Illustrator, or Inkscape, etc. When "patch" was first introduced, many 3D artists used it to model complex shapes. But soon they realized that a "patch" object can quickly become overly complicated. And so the CG industry abandoned the "patch" technology just like they abandoned the "mesh" technology. Nowadays almost nobody uses "patch" anymore. Next is NURBS. NURBS stands for "non-uniform relational B-Spline". Just like "patch", NURBS also offers the ability to have curved lines or curved surfaces between vertices. But unlike "patch", NURBS does not use Bezier handles to control the curvature. It uses fewer control points so it is easier to work with. Until to date, NURBS is used extensively in the product design and manufacturing industry. But sadly not so much in the media and entertainment industry. This is because NURBS requires more work and is technically more complicated compared to the next smooth-surface technology which is NURMS or also known as subdivision surface. So again, rarely you will find 3D artists use "patch" or "NURBS" in 3ds Max nowadays. This is because the CG industry is moving towards using editable Poly along with NURMS for 3D modeling. We’ll discuss NURMS later in the future lesson. For now, let’s focus on the basics of editable poly sub-objects. Let’s create a teapot object. If we go to the modify panel, we can see all of the teapot parameters are still available. So this teapot is still a primitive object. Now to change this into an editable object we need to convert it by right-clicking, then "convert to", then choose "editable poly" here. Notice in the modify panel. Once converted into an editable poly object, we can not access the old teapot parameters anymore. But we can access the sub-objects which are the vertex or vertices, edges, borders, polygons, and elements. And we also have all of these tools that we can use for 3D modeling. We’ll cover more in-depth about these different sub-objects in later lessons and also all of these 3d modeling tools. For now, let’s focus on how sub-object mode works and how you can transform sub-objects. Let me duplicate this teapot for now. So now we have 2 editable poly objects. Now, if I select this teapot. And then click on any of these icons here. For example the vertex icon. We are now in the vertex sub-object mode of this teapot. While in this mode, you can only select vertex or vertices of this object. You can not select or change other objects outside of this object. If you need to see the edges you can press F4. Or click here and choose "edged faces". We can select this vertex for example. Hold Ctrl and then select more vertices. After we have some vertices selected, we can use any of the transformation tools such as move, rotate or scale to edit the selected vertices. After we are done, we can go back to the object mode or to the top-level mode by clicking on this vertex icon again. Now we can select objects just like before. So, in conclusion, when you are in the sub-object mode, you can not select objects outside the currently selected object. You can only select the sub-objects of that object. To be able to select objects like you normally do, then you need to exit from the sub-object mode. Now, to go in and out of the sub-object mode, you can actually do this in several ways. First is by using these icons as we discussed earlier. Second, is by pressing this caret button here. Notice we can select the sub-object from this list. If for example, we click the "edge" item here. We are now in the edge sub-object mode. To go back to the top-level mode, we can either click this "edge" list again or click the "editable poly" text up here. Okay. The next method is through the quad menu. If we have an editable object selected. If we right-click, we can see in the top left menu we have all of the sub-object names and the top-level option. If we click on the "polygon" option for example. We are now in the polygon sub-object mode. To go back to the top-level mode, you can right-click again and then choose "top-level" here. The last method of accessing the sub-object mode is via the keyboard shortcuts. To access the sub-object modes you can use the number keys 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. These are the number keys on the left side, above the Q and W letter keys. Not the number keys on the Numpad. 1 is for vertex mode, 2 is for edge mode, 3 is for border mode, and so on. So for example, if you want to activate the "element" mode, you can press 5. Now you are in the "element" sub-object mode. If you need to go back to the top-level mode, you can press the same key again, which is 5. Now, you are back in the top-level mode. So those are the methods that you can use to access the sub-object modes and the top-level mode back and forth. Again, remember, you can only do this if you already have an editable poly object. You can not use this method on primitive objects. Finally, just to give you an idea of what editable poly can do to your object. I’m going to turn this teapot into something else. Let’s say I want to add a mouth here. To do that I can go to the vertex sub-object mode. I’m selecting these vertices. And then move them like so. Next, I want to add 2 eye sockets to this teapot. Select these vertices, and move them up, like so. Then, select these polygons and then move them back a bit. And lastly, I can go to the element sub-object mode. This is so I can select the whole spout part easily. Then rotate this spout and reposition it so it looks more like a nose or a trunk. So, as you can see in this simple example. By converting to an editable object, you have more freedom to customize your 3D model. And this is just the beginning. We will cover more and more 3d modeling features inside the editable poly object gradually. 19. Editable poly basic operations: In this lesson video, we are going to cover the basics of polygon-based operations. We’ve discussed how to activate the sub-object modes in the previous lesson. But we haven’t discussed in-depth what each of these sub-objects do. So essentially the term sub-objects are the components that make up an object. If you remember mathematics lessons back in elementary school. A cube, for example, can be broken down into its components. They are points. The lines connecting those points. And when the lines create a closed loop they will form a plane. Now, in 3ds max, the editable poly object provides similar object’s components. We have points, lines, and planes also. Vertex here is actually point. In 3D computer graphics, we call point as "vertex". They are basically the same. "Vertex" is the singular form. In plural form, or in other words, if we have two or more, we call them "vertices". If you have the vertex sub-object mode active. You can only select vertex of vertices of that object. Next, we have lines. In 3D computer graphics, we call lines that connect vertices as "edges". If you have the edge sub-object mode active. You can only select the edges of that object. You can not select vertices in this mode directly. Next, we have planes also. But in 3D computer graphics, we call planes as either "faces" or "polygons". In 3ds Max, the term "faces" are used for planes that have 3 sides only. Basically, they are triangles in 3d space. And the term "polygons" are used for planes component that has 4 or more sides. In other 3d software though, the terms "face" and "polygon" are usually used for any type of plane element regardless of their sides amount. And again, if you have the polygon sub-object mode active. You can only select polygons of the selected object. You cannot select vertices or edges in this mode directly. Now besides these 3 modes. 3Ds Max also offers 2 other unique sub-object modes. They are the "border" mode and the "element" mode. First is the border mode. Essentially "border" is an edge selection mode. The reason why it is differentiated is to make our life easier. With the border mode active, we can easily select the edges that exist on the border area. For example the edges around this teapot lid here. If you click on any of the edges at the border. The whole edges at that border get selected. You can imagine if we need to select each of these edges manually one by one. That will be just too time-consuming. Next is the "element" mode. The element mode is basically the polygon mode, but it will help us to select polygons that are part of a connected structure. What I mean by that, inside a single 3D object, it is possible to have multiple loose structures. In this teapot object for example. The body, the lid, the handle and the spout are actually not connected. There are no vertices or edges that connect them. So if we are in the element mode. And we click the body part for example. Only the polygons at the body get selected. Notice if we use the move tool by pressing W and then move the body element like this. We can see that they are loose structures. So again, we can use this element mode to quickly select multiple polygons that are part of an independent loose structure inside a single object. So those are the differences between each of these sub-object modes. Now, being aware of which sub-object is currently active is very important in the modeling process. Why? Well, besides it dictates which type of sub-object you can select. It also dictates which modeling tools are active. You see if you are in the polygon mode for example. You can access these modeling commands like extrude, bevel, and inset, etc. But if we activate the "element" mode. We don’t see those extrude, bevel and inset commands like before. So if you want to perform a certain modeling command in 3ds Max you need to know first in which sub-object that command exists. This becomes more important due to the fact that in many cases the modeling commands have similar names across different sub-object types, although they are different. For example, if we go to the edge mode. We also have "extrude" here. And if we go the "vertex" mode, we also have the "extrude" command here. You need to know that even if they have similar names they work differently and so produce different results. The extrude command in the polygon mode is different from the extrude command in the edge mode, and it is also different from the extrude command in the vertex mode. We can see that this section is called "edit vertices". If we are in the polygon mode this section is now called "edit polygons". We’ll discuss the details later. For now, you just need to be aware of these differences. The last lesson we’re going to cover in this video is attaching and detaching objects. Previously when we discussed grouping, we have learned how to detach and attach. Now, what we are going to discuss is a completely different thing. What we’re going to discuss now is attaching and detaching polygons to and from an object, not a group. Let me create a new teapot here. Let’s say we want to combine these 2 teapots so they become a single object. To do that we need at least one of them to be an editable poly object. You can not attach objects if they are all primitive objects. Since we already have this one as an editable poly object. We can select it. Then in the "edit geometry" section, you can see the "attach" command here. This "edit geometry" section is different from the upper section, because the commands in this area are general commands that work uniformly across different sub-object modes. To attach another object so it becomes part of this object, we can click this "attach" button. Notice how the button is now active. We are now in the attach mode, and so every time we click on an object that object will be gone from the scene but the 3D geometry data will become part of this object. After you are done, remember to turn off the button again by clicking on it or simply right-click to exit the attach mode. So that is how you attach objects in 3ds Max. To detach polygons from an object, you need to select the polygons first. So in order to do this, you need to be at least in the polygon mode or in the element mode. Select the polygons you want to detach. Then press this "detach button here. Unlike attaching objects, when detaching, you actually create a new object. That is why 3ds Max prompts you to give it a name. Let’s name this one "lid" for example. Then click this "okay" button. Now, if we go back to the top-level mode. We can select this new object independent from the teapot object. This is the "teapot 001" object. And this one is the "lid" object. 20. Sub-object basic selection: In this lesson video, we will discuss basic selection methods inside the sub-object modes. First let’s discuss selecting all, deselect all, and inverting the selection. Essentially we can use the same keyboard shortcuts that exist in the object mode. So if we press Ctrl + A, all of the sub-objects will get selected. To clear all of the selection, we can use Ctrl + D for the shortcut. If you want to invert the selection you can use Ctrl + I. For example if I select these polygons here. To invert the selection, just press Ctrl + I. Now the previously selected polygons are deselected, while the rest become selected. So, again, to recap. Ctrl + A to select all. And Ctrl + D to deselect all. And lastly Ctrl + I to invert the selection. Just like in the top-level mode, in the sub-object mode, we can also use the Ctrl key to add more selection and the Alt key to reduce the selection. For example, if we are in the polygon mode, after selecting this one polygon, we can hold Ctrl and select other polygons by clicking on them one by one. Or you can also hold Ctrl and drag like so to create a rectangular selection. This will add more to the existing selection. The opposite method is by holding the Alt key. If we hold Alt and click on any of the selected polygons. That polygon will be deselected. If we hold Alt and drag like so. The rectangular area will reduce the existing selection. Besides the polygon mode, you can also use this method on the other sub-object modes such as vertex, edges and so on. I’m using polygon for the examples because it is just easier to see in the video. When we discussed object selection we already covered these different types of selection-regions. Well, in the sub-object mode you can also use these selection region tools. For example, the circle selection. And also the paint-selection. I’m sure you get the idea here. You can also combine the Ctrl key and the Alt key with these different selection region modes. For example, while I have the paint-selection region active. If I hold Ctrl and paint the selection like this. It will add more selection to the current selection. But if I hold the Alt key while doing it, it will reduce the selection. Feel free to try each of these selection-region modes and experiment with them by combining them with the Ctrl and the Alt keys. By default, when we create region selection in 3ds Max. All of the sub-objects inside that region will get selected even though they are not visible directly to us. For example, when we create a selection using the rectangular selection mode like this. Notice if we turn the object around and see it from the other side. We can see that these polygons get selected also. Sometimes this is not what we want. Sometimes we only need to select the sub-objects that are facing our eyes directly and just ignore the part that is not visible. We can do that by turning on this "ignore backfacing" option here. Now that this is turned on if we use any of the selection region modes again to create a selection. And then turn the object around. We can see that none of the polygons in this back area get selected. So that is what this "ignore back facing" option does to the selection process. The next selection technique we’re going to discuss is using the "by-angle" threshold. When this option is turned on, we can specify the angle threshold that will be used to grow or spread the selection automatically. When we have 45 degrees here for example, which is the default. Then we select this polygon here at the lower part of the lid. We get this selection. Essentially, 3ds Max will select the polygon we clicked, then after that, it checks the neighboring polygons. If a neighboring polygon formed an angle lower then the angle threshold, then that polygon will get selected. After that, the neighbor of that neighbor polygon will be tested, and so on. Essentially lowering this angle threshold will contract the selection result as fewer polygons will fall under the degree threshold. So for example, if I change this to 5 degrees. And then click again here. We get less selection than before. So that is how we use the "by angle" selection method. We can use this method to quickly select large flat surfaces. The next method of creating selection inside the sub-object mode is shrinking and growing the selection. We can do that by using these 2 buttons here. For example, if I select a single polygon here. To grow the selection we can click this button. We can keep clicking on this button multiple times to grow the selection even more. To shrink the selection we can click this button. We can keep clicking this button to have fewer polygons selected. 21. Ring and Loop selection: In this lesson video, we will discuss the "Ring" and "Loop" selection techniques. These techniques are important in the 3D modeling process as they are needed to perform several modeling commands such as “connect” and “chamfer”. They are also important in the UV unwrapping process when we need to define peel seams. We'll discuss all of these in time. For now, we will focus on how to create the selection. We can create a ring or Loop selection using the Editable Poly UI buttons. Make sure you are in the edge sub-object mode. If you select an edge like this. And then press the "Loop" button here, notice that all of the edges that are connected serially with the initial edge will get selected also. This is what we call a "Loop" selection. If you select the same edge as before. But now you click on the ring button. The edges that are placed parallel to the initial edge will get selected. This is what we call a "Ring" selection. So again, a "Loop" is a connected serial selection. And a "Ring" is a parallel selection. Alright. Now, using these UI buttons is okay, but they are slow to perform. For faster ring and loop selection workflows, you can rely on the double-click methods. But, please note that most of these double-click methods only work in 3ds Max version 2020 or above. If you are using an older version of 3ds Max, then you can only use the UI button method. Okay. So, to select a loop, you can simply double-click on an edge. To select a ring, you need to select an initial edge first. Hold the Ctrl key, and then double-click on a parallel edge right next to the initial edge. So again, to recap. You can select a loop by double-clicking. And select a ring by selecting an edge first. Hold the Ctrl key, and then double-clicking on the edge right next to it. Originally, the Ring and Loop selections only exist in the edge sub-object mode. As you can see the ring and loop UI buttons are disabled when you are in the vertex on in the polygon sub-object modes. But we can still simulate the ring and loop selection using the double-click method. Let's say we want to select a loop here but in the polygon mode. We can select one polygon. Then hold Ctrl, and then double-click on the polygon right next to it. So basically, it is similar to how we select a ring in the edge mode. We can also do this in the vertical direction. Select this polygon. Then hold Ctrl, and double-click on this polygon. For the vertex mode, the method is basically the same. We can select this single vertex, for example. And then hold Ctrl and double-click here. We can see these vertices are now selected. Sometimes we want to select a loop, but not a full loop, just several sub-objects in a loop direction. Well, we can do that using the Ctrl double-click method. The difference here is we need to double-click a bit further away from the initial sub-object. Not the ones right next to it. For example, we want to select the vertices from this vertex until this vertex. Select one of the end vertices. Then hold Ctrl, and double-click on the other end vertex. Now, we get these vertices selected. You can also do this in the edge mode and the polygon mode. For example, you can select this edge. Hold Ctrl and double-click on this edge. As you can see, the edge selection does not form a full loop. But a limited loop. Let's see this also in the polygon mode. Select this polygon. Hold Ctrl and then double-click on this polygon. As we expected, we also get a limited loop selection. You can perform adding and subtracting on the loop selection with the help of the Ctrl key and the Alt key. Now, this is going to be a bit tricky as we also use the Ctrl key for creating the loop or ring selection. Let's start with the edge mode first. Let's say we want to select this loop, this loop, and this loop. To do this, we can double-click here. Hold Ctrl and then double-click here. And while still holding the Ctrl key, double-click here. Now we have these 3 edge loops selected. To remove an edge loop selection, we can hold Alt and then double-click on an edge that is part of a loop that we want to remove. Just remember to double-click first. Because if you just click on an edge. You will only get that one edge selected. In this condition. Holding Ctrl and double-clicking on this edge will get you a limited ring selection instead. Now, let's try this method on polygons. Let's say we want to select this loop, this loop, and this loop. First, click here. Hold Ctrl, and double-click here. Next, without releasing the Ctrl key, just do a series of clicking and double-clicking. So, click here, then double-click here. Click here, then double-click here. And so on. So this is what we get as a result. To remove a polygon loop selection. Hold the Alt key, and then click. And then double-click on the polygon next to it. Again, while holding Alt. Click a polygon, then double-click the polygon besides it. If you double-click on a polygon far from the initial polygon. You will get a limited loop but in subtraction mode. You can also perform all of these on vertices. But I'm sure you get the idea. The last technique we want to discuss is the "Point-to-point" selection. This is actually not part of the Ring and Loop selection techniques. But because the shortcuts are pretty similar, it makes sense that we discuss this technique now. Currently, I'm in the polygon mode. But you can do this technique also in edge and vertex modes. To perform the "Point-to-point" selection, you need to hold the Shift key and Ctrl key together. In the previous version of 3ds Max, you only needed to hold the Shift key without the Ctrl key. And this actually still works. But the official 3ds Max guide suggests that we use the Shift and Ctrl keys together. So let's just follow the guide. Hold Shift and Ctrl. Then click here. Now, when you move the mouse cursor around. Notice the selection preview. 3ds Max will help you select these polygons between the initial polygon to the polygon beneath the mouse cursor based on the shortest path calculation. Without releasing the Shift and the Ctrl keys, If we click here. And then click here, and so on. We can quickly create this custom path selection. So, this is what we call the "point-to-point" selection. The last technique we are going to discuss is the Ring and Loop spinners. This feature only works in the edge mode. If you select an edge or several edges, like so. And then click on the "Loop" spinners. The selection will move forward or backward based on the loop direction. You can even click-drag the spinner if you need faster selection movement. If you click on the "ring" spinners instead. The selection will move in the ring direction. Now, what is unique about these spinners is that you can combine them with the Ctrl key and Alt key. If you hold Ctrl, and then click on this loop spinner. We get more and more edges selected in the loop direction. If you hold Alt, and then click on the spinner. Fewer edges are selected. For the ring spinners, the concept is basically the same. Holding Ctrl and clicking on the spinners will add the selection in the ring direction. And holding Alt will subtract the selection in the ring direction. 22. Selection conversion and preferences: In this lesson video, we will discuss the advanced techniques of sub-object selection. We will cover "selection conversion", then "per-view" selection preferences, and finally "preview selection" modes. For this lesson, I already created several teapot objects off the record. First, let's discuss sub-object selection conversion. In 3ds Max, each of the sub-object modes has its own selection set that is independent of the others. To see this more clearly. If we are in vertex mode. And we select these vertices. Then we go to the edge mode and then select these edges. And then we go to the polygon mode, and then select these polygons. Notice if we go back to the vertex mode, we still have these vertices selected. If we go back to the edge mode we still have these edges selected. And if we go back to the polygon mode. As you may expect, we still have these polygons selected. Now, the question is, what if we already have a selection in a certain sub-object mode and we want to transfer that selection to the other mode? Well, we can do that by holding the Ctrl key and then clicking on the sub-object icons. Let’s say we want to convert these polygons selection to vertex selection. Just hold the Ctrl key and then click on the vertex sub-object icon. Notice the vertices that are now selected are the same as the selected polygons. If we go back to the polygon mode. Hold Ctrl and then click on the edge sub-object icon. We get something like this. We just converted the polygon selection to the edge selection. Two conversions that are not necessary are converting the element selection to the polygon or to the vertex mode. Why? Because in newer versions of 3ds Max, you can simply double-click to select the whole element. For example, you want to select all of the vertices in the lid part of this teapot object. You might be thinking of going to the element mode. Selecting the lid part. Then hold Ctrl and click on the vertex icon. You get this selection as the result. In the older versions of 3ds Max, this was the only way to do it. But, now, there is a faster method. If you double click on a vertex. The whole vertices that belong to the same element will get selected. This also applies in the polygon mode. If you double-click here, the handle part gets selected. If you double click here, the spout part gets selected. And so on. Of course, this method does not apply to edges as double-clicking on an edge will get you a loop selection instead. We discussed this already in the previous lesson. Besides pressing Ctrl, we can also use the Shift key, and or use both the Ctrl and Shift keys together. Let’s see the difference between these methods. If we go back to the polygon mode. And select several polygons, like this. Then hold the Shift key, and then click the edge icon. We can see that only the border of the polygon selection gets converted into the edge selection. Okay. Now, let’s go back to the polygon mode again. If we hold Ctrl and Shift keys together, and then click on the edge icon. We get something like this. This is basically the opposite of the previous method. We get all of the selection converted except the border. So, again, to recap. Holding Shift and clicking on the sub-object icon will give you only the border. But if you hold Shift and Ctrl together, you will get the inner selection without the border. Next, is the "Per-view selection preferences''. If you set the viewport to the solid mode and then turn off the "edge faces" option. Sometimes, you still want to see the edges but only on the selected object. Let's say we are now focusing only on modeling this teapot object. So we want to see the edges of this object, but hide the edges of the other objects. We can do this by going to the fourth label menu. And then choose this "per-view" preference menu item. The "per-view" preferences window will open. Here you will see a checkbox named "display selected with edge faces". If you turn this on. And try to select an object. Notice that only the selected object displays the edges. Other objects that are not selected do not display their edges. I know this option is not related to sub-object selection, but it is needed when we are doing modeling. And when we are modeling we are usually in the sub-object mode. The next option I want to discuss is this "shade selected faces". By default, this is on. This option is related to the polygon sub-object mode. Notice that the selected polygons are highlighted in solid red color. If you turn this off. 3ds Max will only display the edges and leave the center polygon area empty. So at a glance, it looks like an edge selection. But it is actually a polygon selection. This feature can be helpful in certain scenarios, especially in the texturing process. The shortcut for this option is F2. But, you need to close this window first to use the shortcut. Now, if we press F2, we can toggle the selected polygons shade mode. In the editable poly modifier panel, you can see a section called “preview selection”. If you set this option to “sub-object”. Notice as I hover the mouse over the object. 3ds Max will give us a preview of which polygon will get selected if we click the mouse. This also applies to the vertex and edge sub-object modes. The next option is the “multi" mode. Basically, while this mode is active, you can see all different types of sub-object selection and at the same time enable you to switch between sub-object modes quickly. The idea behind this feature is great. But in practice, it's hard to select the sub-object that you want as it keeps selecting the wrong sub-objects. At least that is the case in my current version of 3ds Max. That is why I prefer not to use this feature. But, if you still want to use this feature, 2 things can help you a bit. First, you should activate the "ignore backfacing" option. Second, you need to zoom in close enough to the object. Now, if you hover the mouse until you see a polygon highlight. Clicking on it will select the polygon and activate the polygon sub-object mode automatically. If you hover the mouse until you see an edge highlight. Clicking on it will select that edge and activate the edge sub-object mode. The same concept applies to the vertex mode. Again, I prefer not to use this feature. So, I'm turning this off for the rest of the course. 23. Normal direction and backface culling: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss surface normal direction, backface culling and how to fix 3d models that have flipped normal problems. There are many 3D-content-creation software that are aimed for the media and entertainment industry, such as 3ds Max, Maya, Blender, Modo, etc. In these software, the 3d models are not solid. Or in other words, they are basically hollow. They are like papercraft glued together. We can see this if we create a box object. Then convert it into an editable poly object. And then select the polygon on top of it, and just delete it. You can see that the surface of this box doesn’t have any thickness. Another example, if we create a plane object. This plane object doesn't have any thickness also. In 3D computer graphics, every polygon has a default direction called the “normal direction”. This plane object, for example, has a normal direction facing up towards the Z-axis. If we turn on the edges, we can see that this plane object actually has 16 polygons. Each of them has a normal direction pointing in the same direction. For this box, however. Since it has 6 different sides that are facing different directions. It has 6 different normal directions. The top polygon, which we already deleted, has the normal direction pointing up towards the positive Z-axis, just like this plane object. This polygon here has a normal direction pointing that way, towards the negative X-axis. While this polygon here has the normal direction pointing that way towards the positive X-axis. This polygon’s normal direction is pointing towards the negative Y-axis. And so on. You’ll get the idea. Now, if you imagine a polygon as a sheet of paper which has 2 sides. We can consider a polygon to have 2 sides also. The side that is facing the normal direction is called the frontface. While the side that is facing the opposite direction is called the backface. So, for the plane object, the top area is where we see the frontfaces. While the bottom area is where the backfaces are. For the box object, all of the sides that are facing outside are the frontfaces, and the sides that are facing inward are the backfaces. So from this example, you should already realize that in the ideal situation, every 3d model should only show the frontfaces and hide the backfaces. Or in other words, viewers should never see the backfaces of our 3D models. Now, you might be asking, why? Well, there are many good reasons for this. First of all, if you plan to export your 3d models to external applications such as game engines like Unity, or Unreal, or Godot for example. These game engines do not render the backfaces by default to gain performance. Essentially the backfaces will simply not be visible, like they do not exist at all. This technique of not rendering the backfaces is called “backface culling”. If you want to see the “backface culling” effect in 3ds Max, you can do this via the layer properties or via the object properties. Let’s just see how we can use the object properties method for this. Select the object first, for example, the box here. Then right-click. You can see in the quad menu, there is an option here called “object properties”. If you click it, the object properties window will open. In this area, you can see the “backface cull” option. Now all of these display settings are now controlled individually per-object basis. If you want all these to be controlled via the layer properties, you can click this button. Again, for now, let’s just use the “by object” option. If we have this “backface cull” turned on, and we click the okay button. We can see the polygons seem to disappear if we look at the cube from the interior side. Having the backface cull option turned on is an important step before you export your 3d models to game engines. This is so you can check whether you have backface problems in your model or not. Let me turn the backface cull off again. Another way to check your 3D models for any backface mistakes is through the use of the viewport "Xview". To do that you can click this plus button at the top left of the viewport. Then choose "Xview" here. And then turn on the “face orientation” option here. Notice if I select the box object. 3Ds Max will display a bright green color on the backfaces. This way you can spot backfaces without having to turn on the “backface cull” option inside the object properties. But something you need to be aware though. This Xview method does not work on primitive objects. So, if we select this plane object, which is currently still a primitive object. 3Ds Max will just display an error message telling us that the object is not supported. We can see the bottom area is not colored in bright green. This is actually not a big deal since objects that have flipped normal problems are all editable objects. You won’t find primitive objects with that problem. But just to prove it, if we convert this plane object into an editable poly object. Now, the error message is gone. And if we rotate the viewport, we can see a bright green color on the bottom side. Now, if we do find polygons that are facing the wrong way, or in other words have flipped normal problems. How can we fix them then? Well, we can fix them by flipping them to the correct side. Just for example, let’s create a teapot. Convert it into an editable poly object. If we go to the polygon mode and then select several polygons like so. To flip these polygons normal directions, we can click this “flip” button here. Now, these polygons are facing the wrong way. What we see on the outside are actually the backfaces. From this example, you can see another big reason why you don't want to expose the backfaces. It is because backfaces can create weird rendering errors. If you render a scene and you see weird dark blotches or shadow artifacts on the rendering result. You might want to check for flipped normal problems in your models. Okay. So one way to fix flipped normal problems is to select the polygons and then click this “flip” button. Now, flipping one or two polygons can be done quickly. But what if our 3d models consist of hundreds of random polygons that have flipped normal. Usually, this happens when you import 3d models from other applications such as from SketchUp, for example. You can fix this problem using a modifier called “normal”. But, honestly, this is what I don’t like about 3ds Max. You see, the normal modifier is a legacy modifier that has not been updated for years. Perhaps a decade or so. It is funny that the modifier only works on editable mesh objects, it does not work on editable poly objects. So yeah, you need to convert the object first into an editable mesh. Then apply the “normal” modifier. You will see 2 options here. “Unify normals” and “flip normals”. Using the “flip” option will only flip the existing normal directions. The real magic happens when you turn on the “unify” option here. With this option, the normal directions will be generalized and so we can either make all of them facing outside or make all of them facing inside. After you are done. You can then convert the object back to an editable poly by simply right-click, "convert to" and choose editable poly. So now we can continue using the editable poly features again. 24. Edge modeling techniques: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss some of the editable poly modeling features inside the edge sub-object mode. The first technique we’re going to discuss is “connect”. Remember, currently, we are discussing the modeling features inside the edge mode. So make sure that you have an editable poly object. And you also have the edge mode currently active. In the modify panel, in the “edit edges” section. You will find the “connect” command here. This “connect” command is used to create new edges at the center of the selected edges. For example, if I select this edge. Let me turn on the “ignore backfacing” option here first, just to be safe. And then hold Ctrl and then click on more edges to select them. Like so. You can see I’m creating an L shaped ring selection here. After we have the selection, we can click the “connect” button here. As you can see, new edges are created at the centers of the edges that we selected previously. Let me undo this. Another method of accessing the connect command is via the quad menu. So, after you have selected the edges. You can right-click and then click this “connect” command here. Okay. Now in 3ds Max, almost all commands provide the settings mode. You need to access this mode if you want more control over the modeling command. Let’s say, for example, you want to have 2 or 3 edges created when performing the connect operation. Let me undo this again. To access the setting mode, you can either click this small button on the right side of the connect button. Or if you prefer the quad menu. After you right-click, you can click this button on the left side of the connect command here. As you can see, instead of creating the connected edges instantly, 3ds Max displays this floating UI where we can adjust the parameters of the connect command. Here we can specify the number of edge loops. We can type in the value. We can also click on this small up and down arrows. Or we can just click and drag like so on the arrow buttons. Let’s set this to 3 for example. Here we can tweak the pinch value. The bigger the value, the wider the gaps between the edge loops. And smaller values will make them more closely together. The last one is the slide value which makes the edge loops off-center and lean more towards the sides. At the bottom area, you can find 3 buttons. We can use the X button here to cancel the whole connect command. We can use the okay button at the left side to apply the connect command and close this panel. And at center, the plus button here is useful only for the type of commands that can be applied multiple times. Which is not the case with the connect command. So let’s just click the okay button here. As I mentioned earlier, the “connect” command is often used with the ring selection method. For example, if I want to make a new edge loop around this part. I can click this edge once and then hit the ring button here. Or we can also use the Shift method to create the ring selection. We can click this edge here, for example, hold Shift and then click on this edge. And then we can click connect. Now we have 3 edge loops in this part. Notice how the previous custom settings we used before are now used as the default. This is the reason why we have 3 edge loops now as the result instead of one edge loop. The next edge modeling command we are going to discuss is the “create” command. Essentially the “create” command will create a new edge by manually clicking on the vertices. To use the “create” command, first, you need to click the “create” button here in the “edit geometry” section. Or you can also do this from the quad menu here. If you do that, notice how the “create” button is now active. Basically, we’re now in the edge creation mode. While this mode is active, if we click on a vertex. And then click again on a neighboring vertex. A new edge will be created. We can keep doing this as long as we are still in the edge creation mode. After you are done, don’t forget to exit from the edge creation mode by right-clicking. The next modeling technique we are going to discuss is “chamfer”. Essentially the “chamfer” command will splice the selected edges. If we do chamfer on corner edges, the corner will become blunt. To use chamfer, first, you need to select the edges. You can chamfer a single edge, although ideally, or in the most common situation, you want to chamfer a whole edge loop. So let’s select an edge loop by clicking on this edge, hold Shift and then click here. To apply the chamfer you can use the chamfer button here, or the chamfer settings button here. Or via the quad menu by right-clicking and then choose chamfer here, or the settings button here. If we click on the “chamfer” button in the modify panel. You can see the button becomes active. Basically, we are now in the chamfer mode. While in this mode, we can move the mouse on top of the selected edges, then click-drag like so. We can see how the edges have spliced from 1 edge loop to 3 edge loops. After you chamfered the edges you need to left-click to confirm or if you want to cancel you can right-click. After you are done, always remember to exit the chamfer mode by right-clicking. There are many options in the chamfer settings mode. We’re not going to discuss all of them, only the most important ones for now. To see the settings in action, let’s select these 3 edges at the corner. And then hit the loop button. Click the chamfer settings button. You can see that chamfer offers a lot of parameters that we can tweak. These are similar to the chamfer modifier that we are going to cover later. The most important parameters are these 4 parameters at the top, the mitering, amount, segment, and depth. First is the segment value, which basically controls the number of edge loops created by the chamfer command. The mitering type here defines the topology on intersection areas. This is quad, this is “tri”, and this is "uniform", and so on. The "amount" value determines how wide the chamfer area will be. And the depth here determines whether it creates convex, or concave, or flat surfaces. Now if you only need to splice the edge loop into 2 edge loops. Then you can use the “tri” option here and set the segment to only 1. This is the minimum number of edge loops you can get from the chamfer command. Feel free to experiment with the other parameters yourself. When working with complex objects, sometimes, we need to optimize the topology by reducing the edges from that object. One way to reduce the edges is by selecting them and then hit the delete button. But, the problem with this technique is that the polygons attached to the selected edges will be deleted also. Basically pressing delete will create holes in the geometry. If you only want to remove the edges without creating holes on the object then you should use the “remove” command instead. You can access it by clicking on this "remove" button. Notice the edges are gone but the geometry is still intact. There is no hole created in the process. Now, at a glance, the "remove" command result is perfect. But if we go to the vertex mode. We can see that there are vertices left behind at the location where we removed the edges. Ideally, you don’t want to have vertices that only have 2 edges connected to it in your 3d model. To avoid this situation you can use the Ctrl remove method instead. To show you what I mean, let me undo this. So after we have the edges selected. Instead of clicking the remove button here. First, hold the Ctrl key and then click this remove button. Now, if we go to the vertex mode. As you can see, the "remove" command result is cleaner as there are no vertices left behind. 25. Cut and slice techniques: In this lesson video, we’re going to cover 4 techniques that we can use to add more edges to our 3D models. These techniques are the cut tool, the slice plane tool, the quick slice tool, and finally, the paint-connect tool. Again, as a reminder, you need to have an editable poly object to be able to use these techniques. First is the cut tool. "Cut" is a cross-sub-objects tool that can create new edges from the existing vertices, edges, and polygons. What cross-sub-objects means is that this tool is available anywhere whether you are in the vertex, edge, and other sub-object modes. It is even available when you are in object mode. To use the cut tool, simply click this “cut” button, or you can right-click to open the quad menu and click “cut” here. We’re now inside the “cut” mode. In the cut mode, if we move the mouse around while hovering on the 3d model, the cursor changes. When we hover on top of a vertex the cursor changed to the vertex cut mode, when we hover over an edge it will change to this edge cut mode, and when we are on top of a polygon the cursor changed to something like this. So basically it automatically detects anything beneath the mouse cursor. If we click on a vertex, then on this edge, notice how it created this line. Now, at this point, we can continue doing the cut. For example, I can click again on this edge, then on this vertex, then on this polygon, and so on. I can even go beyond several sub-objects and it will handle the rest. To finish one cut operation simply right-click. A single cut operation is finished but we are still in the cut mode. So if we click again, it will start another cut operation. After right-clicking to finish a cut operation. To really exit the cut mode you need to right-click once again. To be honest, I rarely use the cut tool anymore since 3ds-max introduced a more stable cutting tool called the “paint connect” which we are going to discuss later in this video. In my experience, the cut tool can be a bit buggy. Often it creates double vertices and cuts on the area that it shouldn’t. So if you want to use this tool, use it with caution and always check for geometry integrity after using it. You can imagine the “slice plane” tool as a gigantic knife that we can use to slice objects. Basically, it creates new edges based on the intersection of the object with a large virtual plane object. Unlike the cut tool, the "slice plane" tool is not available in the object mode. You need to be in the sub-object mode to use it. But, you can be in any of sub-object types, whether be the polygon, edge, or vertex. In the “edit geometry” section you will see the “slice plane” button here. If you click on it, You will see this yellow plane in the viewport. These 2 buttons here below the “slice plane" button become active. Now, if you are in the slice plane mode like this. Whenever you do a transformation, you are transforming the slice plane instead of the object. So moving, for example, will move the slice plane. If we activate the rotation tool, we can rotate the slice plane. And we can also do scaling, although scaling will not affect anything to the slicing process. If you want to reset the slice plane transformation, you can click this reset button. If you want to have a straight vertical slicing-plane, after you reset the plane. Use the rotate tool. And let’s say you want to rotate it this way using the Y-axis as the rotational axis. To do that just type in 90 in the Y rotation input field. And you have a vertical plane. You can use this method for different directions that you like. After you rotate or move the slicing plane as needed. To actually slice the object you need to click this “slice” button. After that, you can continue to transform the slice plane again and do another slice if needed. When you are done, to exit the slice plane mode, you can click on this button again. Sometimes we need to slice only on just part of the object. We can do that by first selecting the polygons that you want to slice. So in order for this to work, you need to be at least in the polygon mode or in the element mode. For example, we can activate the element mode. Select only the handle part of this teapot object. Then click the “slice plane” button again. You can see the slice preview only exist in the handle area, and not on the body or the spout areas. Now before we click the “slice” button here, I want to explain the last feature of the slice plane, and that is the “split” option here. If this is on. And then we click the “slice” button. It looks like we’ve done ordinary slice like before. But notice if we select this part while in the element mode. This part becomes an independent element. We can move this to another location without affecting this lower part. So that is the function of this “split” option here. The third method of slicing is by using the “quick-slice” tool. This method is almost identical to the “slice plane” method. But the plane itself is always projected based on our viewing direction. Just imagine that we have a very long lightsaber that can slice anything in front of us. Just like the cut tool, the quick-slice tool can be accessed from all of the sub-object modes and it is also available in the top-level mode. To use the quick-slice tool, first, click the quick-slice button here. We are now in the quick-slice mode. Then to slice the object we need to define 2 points in space. We can click here for example to specify the first cutting point. And then click again here to define the second cutting point. Now the object is sliced all the way as it was being cut by a very long sword or lightsaber. Okay. Now, just like the slice-plane tool, the quick-slice tool can also split the object if you have the “split” option here turned on. And you can also limit the slicing process to a certain area by first selecting the polygons or the elements. Just for example, we have the split option here turned on. And we are in the element mode. If we select the lid part. Then click the “quick-slice” button. Click here then here. Right-click to turn off the “quick-slice” mode. Now, notice that only the selected polygons, which is the lid part, get sliced. And because we have the split option turned on, if we select this part, we can move it independently from the other part. The last method that we’re going to discuss in this video is the “paint-connect” tool. This tool was originally available as a third party plugin called “Polyboost”. After Autodesk acquires Polyboost, the tool now becomes part of 3ds Max by default. To access the “paint-connect” tool you need to open the “ribbon” interface. So click this button. Then open the "modeling" tab. And then open the “edit” sub-menu. You can find the “Paint Connect” tool here. Just click on it to activate the “paint-connect” mode. While this is active. We can click-drag like this on the object to create connecting edges. By default, the paint-connect tool will cut from edge to edge. If you need to cut to a vertex, you can do so by holding the Ctrl key. For example, I can drag the mouse from here to here. Now when I want to target a vertex, simply hold the Ctrl key, and without releasing the mouse just move it to the vertex location you want to target. The new edge created will snap to that vertex. To exit from the “paint-connect” mode we can simply right-click. Okay. As I mentioned before, I usually prefer this method over the “cut” method due to its stability. 26. Surface smooth shading: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss 2 methods that we can use to control the surface smooth shading of a 3D model inside 3ds Max. First is by using the smoothing group method which exists in the polygon sub-object mode. And second is by using the edge hardness properties. But, before we go covering each of these methods, let’s discuss the surface shading in general. To make things simple, let’s just see an example of it. If you create a sphere, like so. This sphere looks nice if you need a rubber ball or a bubble in your scene. But what if you want to create a disco mirror ball or a hard-edge ruby for example. If you open the modify panel. You can see an option here called “smooth”. If you turn it off, now the sphere looks like a disco ball. This type of surface shading is also known as “faceted” or “flat shading”. If you recreate this sphere in the real world. I mean, exactly with the same amount of polygonal surfaces like this. Well, this is what you will actually get. So the smooth version of the sphere is the fake one. Essentially, in 3D computer graphics, to create smooth surfaces like this, we don’t necessarily need to create millions of polygons to achieve it. We just need to tell the renderer to smooth out the shadow that falls on that surface when rendering it. So with only a small number of polygons, we can achieve a smooth surface look. But in many cases, we don't want the surface to look all smooth like this, or look all faceted like this. A lot of times, we need some parts of the model to be smooth and the other parts to look faceted. Well, this is what the lesson is all about. Let’s make this sphere smooth for now. And then let's convert it into an editable poly. The first method of controlling the surface smooth shading is by using the smoothing groups. The smoothing group is a polygon property, so you can find the smoothing group parameters in the polygon sub-object mode or in the element sub-object mode. If you scroll all the way down, you can see a table with numbers that look like a calendar. This is where we control the smoothing groups. And using it is actually very simple. Just remember this rule: “Polygons that have the same smoothing group numbers will look smooth. And polygons that have different smoothing group numbers will not look smooth”. For example, if I select this single polygon here. This polygon belongs to the smoothing group number 1. If we select this one. This one also has the smoothing group number 1 turned on. In fact, if we select all of the polygons in this sphere, they all have number 1 turned on. This is the reason why the whole sphere's surface looks smooth. It is because all of them have the same smoothing group number. Now, if you select all polygons and hit this button “clear all”. Notice our sphere now looks like the previous sphere before when the smooth option turned off. This is due to the fact that none of the polygons is part of any smoothing groups. Let’s turn on the smooth shading again by assigning number 1 like before. Now, if you select a polygon loop, like so. And then hit number 1 in the smoothing groups. The number 1 button becomes inactive. So these number buttons are basically toggle-buttons. If we turn on the number 2 instead. You can see that the polygons in this loop area are smooth but they are not smooth against the rest of the polygons outside the loop area. They only look smooth against each other. Again, this is because these polygons are assigned to smoothing group number 2. While the rest are assigned to smoothing group number 1. Now, it is important to know that a single polygon can be a member of multiple smoothing groups. For example, if I select these 2 polygons. Then click on the number 1. Now, these 2 polygons belong to smoothing groups number 1 and number 2. Because of this, we can see they are now playing nice with everyone. They look smooth against this area and this area. And they look smooth also against this loop area. Okay guys. So that is the smoothing group feature in 3ds Max. Smoothing group is very important especially if you are working on low polygon objects, usually for exporting them to game engines. Because with the smoothing group you can simulate the look of complex geometry with only a small number of polygons. But the smoothing group is not the only way that you can use to control surface smoothing. The next method of controlling surface smoothing is through the edge-hardness properties. In order to use this feature, you need to be in the edge mode. The way this works is even simpler than the smoothing group. Basically, you need to select an edge and then you decide whether it will look hard or smooth. For example, let’s select this edge loop. Then in here, you can see 2 buttons, “hard’ and “smooth”. If you click the “hard” button. As you can see the smoothing area breaks at this edge loop. So that is what this "hard" button does. Now, if you only select these 2 edges here. And then hit the “smooth” button. We can see these 2 edges become smooth. You might be wondering now. So, what happens with the polygon smoothing group then, when we control the surface shading with this edge hardness method? Well, if we go to the polygon mode and then select one of these 2 polygons, for example. We can see that behind the scene, 3ds Max actually takes care of the polygon smoothing groups for us automatically. Okay. Let’s go back to the edge mode. The last feature that I want to mention is this “display hard edges” button. This button is useful if you want to check which edges are set to “hard” in the viewport. You can turn this on or off. You can also choose a different color here if you want to. 27. Capping holes and edge extrusion: In this lesson video, we’re going to cover 2 modeling techniques inside the border sub-object mode. We’re going to discuss the “Cap” command and how to clean up the model afterward. And then second, we’re going to discuss how to extrude edges using the “Shift + move” method. The first one is the “cap” command. Basically, we can use it to close holes in our 3d models. For example, if we select this polygon and then press delete to create a hole. We can patch this hole using the cap command. The “cap” command only exists in the border mode, so make sure you are in the border mode now. You can press number 3 on the keyboard to access the border sub-object mode quickly. Then select the border surrounding the hole you want to close by clicking on any of the edges in the hole area. After that to close the hole you can click “cap” here in the modify panel. Or you can also right-click and then choose “cap” here. Now, if the hole has more than 4 sides. After the cap command, you may need to fix the topology manually. For example, if I select these 4 polygons here. And then hit delete. We can close the hole using the same method as we did before. Select the border and then choose “cap”. You can see the hole is now closed. If the hole is on a flat surface, you will get a clean result. But because the hole we have here is located on a round surface. We still have 2 problems that need to be fixed. First, we have a non-quad polygon. And second, the surface smooth shading is broken. Let’s fix the first problem. In 3D computer graphics, the most ideal polygon is quad. Meaning it has 4 edges around it. While this polygon generated by the cap command is not quad. We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 edges around this polygon. We can also see that without any smooth shading, N-Gon polygons are actually formed by many invisible triangles like these. Okay. To fix this topology we can use many different approaches. For now, let’s just use the cut tool. Right-click and then choose cut. Make sure you hover on the vertex here and not on the edge. Click on it and then move the mouse to this vertex location, and then click again. Right-click to finish this session. Currently, we are still in the cut mode. So click again here, and then here. Right-click twice to exit the cut tool mode. Next, we need to fix the depth of this center vertex. As you can see, it is slightly sunk into the surface. We can fix this by first activating the vertex mode. And then use the “local” transformation here instead of the “view” or the “world” modes. Notice in the “local” mode, if we select this vertex. The Z-axis is actually pointing towards the normal direction of this vertex. So yes, a vertex can also have a normal direction just like the polygons. A vertex normal directions are calculated by interpolating the surrounding polygons’ normal directions. We can drag the Z handle here to pull out the vertex so it is roughly aligned with the general curvature of the surface. After you are finished, don’t forget to change this back to the “view” or “world” reference coordinate, just to be safe. Next, to fix the smooth shading. We can go to the polygon sub-object mode. If we select the surrounding polygons, we can see they are using smoothing group number 2. So let’s select these 4 polygons and set their smoothing group to 2 also. And now we have a smooth surface just like before. The last method that we are going to discuss is the edge extrusion. We can use this method in the border sub-object mode or in the edge mode as long as the edges are located in the border area. Basically, to use this method, you need to select the edges or the border and then hold Shift and then move it to any direction we like. For example, let’s create a hole again at this side. Go to the border sub-object mode and select this border. Hold Shift and then move it away in the X-axis direction. As we can see new polygons created automatically from the selected border to where it moves. We can do this again and again. Now if you go to the edge mode. And then select his edge only, hold Shift and then move, we also get new polygons created. We can move this to the up direction if we want to. Or to any direction that we like. Okay. Now, if you try to do this method on this edge instead, for example. Which is an edge that is not at the border area. Holding Shift and moving this edge will not produce anything. So again, edge extrusion only works on edges that exist in the border area, or in other words edges that only have 1 face attached to it. 28. Bridge: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss the “bridge” command. Essentially the Bridge command will connect 2 borders or 2 holes by creating new geometry between them. So to use the bridge command you need at least 2 borders selected first. Now, besides the border mode, you can actually use the bridge command in the polygon mode and also in the edge mode. To test the bridge command let’s create a new box, like so. You can press F4 to show the edges in the viewport. And let’s make all of the values of the segments to 4. You can click-drag here and type 4, then hit Tab. Type 4 again, press Tab again, and then type 4 again. Then press Enter. Okay. Convert this object into an editable poly object. And go inside the element sub-object mode. Select these whole polygons. Hold Shift and then drag this like so in the X-axis direction, to duplicate them. Choose the “clone to element” option here. Remember, to use the bridge command, you need to have both structures exist in a single object. You can not perform the bridge command if each of the surfaces belongs to a different object. For example, we want to bridge these 4 polygons with these 4 polygons. So just select these 4 polygons. Then select these 4 polygons also. You can perform the bridge command in the polygon mode. So if you click this bridge button here. You will have something like this as a result. So this is one way to do it, which is basically using the polygon sub-object mode. Now if we delete all of these resulting polygons. We have 2 holes like these. If we go to the border mode. Select this border. Hold Ctrl and then click on an edge in this border. Now we have 2 borders selected. If you click "bridge", we’ll get a similar result just like the bridge operation in the polygon mode. The only difference is that we are using holes now instead of polygons. So this all depends on your model or your modeling process. If you already have holes then using the bridge command on the border sub-object mode is quicker to perform. But if you have polygons, then performing "bridge" in the polygon sub-object mode would be quicker. Let me undo this. Now, if you need more control over the bridge command, V as with any other commands in 3ds Max, you can click this bridge settings button. We can move this floating UI to the side, so we can see the result preview much better. This segment value can be used to determine the number of loop-cuts in the resulting geometry. If you have a lot of this loop-cuts, for example, let’s type in 20 here, you can use the next parameter which is “taper”. Essentially, the taper value will make the center bridge geometry to be thinner or thicker. Again you can only see the taper "result" if you have enough segments value. You can not use "taper" if you only have 1 segment. Now, when dragging the taper value you may feel that the value changes too fast. If you want this to change at a slower pace, or increase and decrease using smaller values, you can do that by holding the Alt key while dragging the spinners. As you can see, you can create interesting organic structures using this bridge feature. The next value is “bias”. Basically, it will slide the center of the taper to be closer to one or the other side. To quickly reset this value back to the default which is zero. You can right-click on one of the spinner buttons. The “smooth” value here will auto smooth the polygon-loops along the bridge geometry based on the angle threshold. Basically, polygons that form angles below the value you specify here will have the same smoothing group number. But in the current 3ds Max version that I’m using, there is a bug in this parameter. Sometimes even with a higher value, it will not produce smooth shading. The next two parameters here are the twist parameters. We have 2 of these because each is used for the different sides. Basically, these will twist the bridge geometry like so. You can use positive value, or a negative value if you want the twist to go in the other direction. Okay. Next is the option to either use the current selection to perform the "bridge" command or use other borders that exist in the model. Now, this option is only needed if you haven’t selected any polygons or borders before you click the bridge button. Let me just show you what I mean. Let’s click the X button here to cancel. Press Ctrl + D to deselect everything. Then click the bridge settings button again. Notice nothing happened as 3ds Max has no idea of which borders you want to bridge. So, to tell which borders we want to use we need to change this option to “use specific borders”. If we have this option on, then these 2 buttons here become enabled. Click here and then choose this border. Then click here and then choose this border. Now we can see the bridge geometry created. Okay. As I mentioned earlier, besides the border and the polygon mode, you can also perform the bridge command on edges. Just to prove this. If you select this edge here, and then hold Ctrl and select this edge also. Then click “bridge” here. We get something like this. We can see that we have a lot of segments here as the result. This is because 3ds Max will try to use the last settings that we used before as the default for the new bridge operations. It is important to know that you can only perform "bridge" on edges if those edges are on the border area. If you select an edge here for example. And another one here. Which basically are not border edges. If you click the "bridge button", then nothing will happen. Okay. One last thing that I need to mention is that "bridge" works best if you have the same amount of edges in the border or in the selected polygon groups. You can have different numbers of edges, I mean bridge will work also like that, but the resulting geometry will not be all quads. You will get triangles as the result in some of the areas. Just to give you an example. If I go to the polygon mode. And then select this polygon and then delete it. And then go back to the border mode. Select this border, and then this border. We have 2 borders selected now, but each with a different number of edges. If we do a bridge command again. We can see that in this area we have some triangles. So this is something you need to be aware of when performing the bridge operation. 29. Polygon modeling techniques: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss several techniques commonly used in polygon sub-object mode. They are "extrude", "inset" and "bevel". The first one is the "extrude" command. Basically, the extrude command will extend the polygons out of the surface or into the surface. To see how extrude works. First, make sure you are in the polygon mode, and then select these two polygons. Then you can click the ”extrude” button here or you can also use the extrude button in the quad menu here. Then move the mouse over of the selected polygons and just click and drag up or down. If you drag the mouse upward the polygons will be extruded out of the surface, and if you drag the mouse downward the extruded polygons will sink into the surface. Just like with the other modeling tools inside 3ds max, the extrude tool also has additional settings. To access it, you can click this button here. Or if you prefer the quad menu, you can right-click and then click this small button. In the extrude settings floating panel you can specify the amount of extrusion with more precision. Positive value will make it come out of the surface, while negative value will make it go inside the surface. Now, notice on top of the settings UI, there is an option here for the grouping mode. To better explain this option, let's select this polygon first, hold Shift then click on this polygon. This will select the whole polygon loop. Okay, now let's open the extrude settings UI again. Notice if we set this option to "group" mode, the whole selected polygons will be extruded together in a single direction. 3ds Max will try to find the direction by averaging the selected polygons normal direction. But, as you can see, in this case where the selection creates a loop, the group option does not make any sense. The next option is the “local normal” mode. Essentially in this mode, each of the polygons will move based on its own normal direction. But they are still extruded together as one piece. The last option is the “by polygon” mode. Basically, this option is almost like the “local normal” mode, but each polygon will be extruded separately. So this option produces the most amount of polygons compared to the other options. The second modeling command is “inset”. “Inset” is almost like the “extrude” command in terms of the amount of polygons generated. But inset will not add any height to the process. Instead it will push the resulting polygons thinner in the same surface plane. Visually it is like adding a frame to the selected polygons. To be more clear, let’s just select these polygons here. And then right-click, then click "inset" here. We’re now in the inset mode. If we click and drag the mouse on top of these polygons, they will shrink and form a frame like this. So this is “inset”. Now, if you open the settings panel. You can find the amount value and also the grouping methods just like the “extrude” command. But you won’t find the “local normal” option here as the “inset’ command does not produce height like the extrude does. The last one is the “bevel” command. The bevel command is like the “extrude” and the “inset” commands combined together in a single operation. To use the bevel command you can either click here in the modify panel, or right-click to open the quad menu and then click here. After you have the “bevel” mode active. To use the bevel command you need to perform 2 clicking and dragging processes. The first clicking and dragging will define the height. This is like the extrude process. So dragging up will extrude the polygons out of the surface, while dragging down will make them sink into the surface. After we release the mouse, we are now in the second phase of the bevel operation. We can move the mouse up and down to define how much the outline value is. Basically this is like the “inset” command, but with the ability to make the resulting polygons grow as well as shrink. If we move the mouse up it will grow, and if we move the mouse down it will shrink. After you are satisfied with the outline value, to finish up the bevel operation you need to left-click once. The “bevel” command also has settings parameters just like the extrude and the inset commands. But there is really nothing new to discuss and I believe you already know how to use them by now. 30. Measurement unit: In this lesson video, we’re going to learn how to use real measurement units inside 3ds Max. Every time we create an object, for example, a box. In the modify panel we can see several parameters for controlling the size. We can see it has length, width and height values. Let’s input some numbers here, just for example. Double click here. Type in 100. Press Tab. Then type in 50. Press Tab again. Then type in 30. And then press "Esc". As you can see, as these values change the box's dimension changes also. But what are these values represent actually? Is it centimeters? Or is it inches? or what? The most important setting when defining the measurement unit in 3ds max is the "system unit setup". To access it we can open the "customize" menu, "units setup", and then click this button "system unit setup". You don’t need to change all of these settings down here. You only need to pick the unit type that you want to use in this pull-down list. I use centimeters here because the metric system is the default measurement system used in my country and also the rest of the world. If you live in the US and you are more familiar with the imperial measurement system, then you might want to use the "inches" unit here. Just be aware that I’ll be using the metric system for the rest of this course. Okay. Now, even if I stick with the metric system, besides centimeters, there are also "meters" and other metric units here. I have a simple rule for this. Essentially, you should choose these units based on the scale of the project. For example, if you are working on an interior scene, or modeling furniture, or small objects, then you should use centimeters. If you are working on a large scale scene such as buildings or an aerial view, then you should use "meters" instead. After you are done, just click the "OK" button here. And click this "OK" button also. Now, 3ds Max will consider every unit in the scene as centimeters. But, as you can see, the dimension values of this box are still not showing any unit symbols behind them. Well, this is actually not a problem, as 3ds Max will still consider all of these values as centimeters. If you really need to see the unit symbols behind these values, then you can go back to the "customize" menu, then go to the "units setup" again. In this window, we can set how 3ds Max displays the measurement unit. I strongly recommend you to use the same display unit as the unit setting we set before in the "system unit". So click metric here and then choose "centimeters". If you click the "OK" button. Now you see the centimeters symbols behind these values. Again, this is the ideal setup. Although you are using cm now, 3ds max still understands other unit types and will convert them for you automatically. So for example, you can type in 2 then "m", then press "Enter" or "Esc". You will get 200 cm as a result. You can even input in imperial units. For example, if you type in 20 then double quote symbol. Which basically means 20 inches. 3ds Max converted the value to cm automatically. So you don't really need to use an external scientific calculator app just for doing unit conversions. Let's change this back to 100 cm. Now, you might be wondering, what will happen if we set the display unit different from the system unit. If we open the "units setup" window again. And change this to "meters" instead, and click "OK". As you can see nothing has changed in terms of the object’s dimension. But now the numbers are displayed in meters, not in centimeters. So instead of 100 cm, it displays 1 m. We also have 0.5 m and 0.3 m here. Basically, the object’s dimension never changed. Only the values are presented in a different unit. But, notice if we open the "units setup" window again and then go to the "system unit setup". Then change this to inches. Click "OK". Then change the display unit to "US standard", and choose "Decimal inches" here. Click "OK". As you can see the box is now 100 by 50 by 30 size but in inches. So, from this example, we can conclude that the dimensions of the objects will not change if we only change the "display unit". But if we convert the "system unit", this will cause fundamental changes in our file. Because the size of the objects in our scene will actually change. This is a very important concept to remember. Usually, you should always set up the "system unit" first, before doing any modeling process in 3ds Max. If you have your 3ds Max system unit set to cm for example. And then you open a 3ds Max file that uses other system units such as meters or inches. 3Ds Max will show you this pop-up window. It will ask you whether you want to rescale the objects, or adopt the file’s system unit. So which of these options that you should choose then? Well, first, you need to know that none of these options will break the object’s dimensions. So you don’t need to worry too much. If you select the first option. The system unit will still be in cm. And all the objects in the file will be automatically converted to the correct size in cm units. But if you select the second option, the system unit will be converted to inches. This is like opening the file just like how the author of the file created the file in the first place. Personally, because I always like to work in the metric system, I always choose the first option if the incoming file is in inches. But if the file is in meters. I will assume that the scene is large, so in this case, I will adopt the file unit and continue working in meters from that point forward. The next question is, what if we already have a scene, and we need to import only specific objects from another file that has a different system unit? Well, you don’t need to worry about a thing, because 3ds Max will take care of the conversion for us automatically. The objects will be imported in the correct size. In 3ds Max, importing objects from another 3ds Max file is called "merging" not "importing". So to merge objects, you can go to the "file" menu, "import", and then choose "merge" here. Select the 3ds Max file you want to use. Then click "open" here. The merge window will open displaying the list of objects contained in that file. Pick the object you want to merge, then click "OK" here. Now the object is imported to our scene, and the size of it will be converted automatically without you having to do anything about it. Which is nice. 31. Scale modes: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss more in-depth about the scale modes. If you press R, you activate the scale mode. But notice in the scale input fields. Only the X input field is active. The Y and the Z axes input fields are all disabled. Why is that? Well, this is because, unlike the move mode and or the rotation mode, the scale mode actually consists of several sub-modes. The uniform scale mode, the non-uniform scale mode and finally the squash mode. And when you switch to the scale mode from the other modes, the "uniform" scale mode will become the active mode by default. And in this mode, only the X-axis is enabled. If you change the X-axis scale value like this. The Y-axis and the Z-axis follow automatically. Now, if you want all of these scale input fields to become active or enabled, you need to be either in the "Non-uniform" scale mode or in the "Squash" mode. You can choose these modes using this pull-down button here. Or you can also press R several times. As you can see, pressing R multiple times will cycle the scale sub-modes. Now, if you are in the "Non-uniform" scale mode, all of these scale input fields become enabled. So we can adjust the X, the Y, and the Z scale values independently. That is the difference between the "Non-uniform" scale mode compared to the "Uniform" scale mode. Now, what about the "Squash" mode here? Well, essentially the squash mode allows us to scale the object on one axis, and automatically alter the other axes in reverse. Just imagine if you push a balloon down on the Z-axis. The balloon will expand on the X-axis and on the Y-axis as it tries to maintain its volume. Well, that is exactly how the squash mode works. We can see in this example. This is a non-uniform scale mode. And this is what happens if we use the squash mode to scale the object on the Z-axis. You can see how the X and the Y axes expand and contract automatically. You can use the scale tool to resize objects. But you need to be aware of the difference between scaling in the object mode versus in the sub-object mode. If you create a box like this. And then resize the object using the scale tool on the X-axis. For example like this. Notice down here, the object now has non-default scale values. The Y and the Z axes still have the default value of 100%. But the X-axis is not. Now, this condition is bad. Especially if you’re still in the process of modeling the object or creating a rig for animation. Just to give you an example of why this is a bad thing. If we convert this to an editable poly object. Go to the polygon mode. Select this polygon and then you try to do inset on this polygon. Let’s input 1 cm, then click the "OK" button. As you can see the inset width results are not uniform. The upper and the lower inset widths are 1 cm. But the left and the right sides are not. Another example, if we select the upper polygon. Then extrude. Type in 2 cm for the amount of it. We get a 2 cm height extrusion. But, if we do this on the side polygon. Extrude again and then input 2 cm just like the top polygon. We get longer than 2 cm extrusion as a result. So essentially, from this example, we can conclude that scaling on the object level will distort the whole measurement when we perform modeling operations on that object. Now you might be asking. So how can we resize an object if scaling is forbidden? Well, scaling is not forbidden in 2 conditions. First, you don’t have any plan on performing any modeling operations on the object. And you also are not going to use the object in a rigging process. Second, it is okay to scale the geometry in the sub-object mode, as this will not alter the object’s scale values. To show you what I mean. Let’s create another box again. And convert this into an editable poly object. Now go to a sub-object mode. Any sub-object will do, for example, vertex mode. Select all of the vertices by pressing Ctrl + A. And then scale them like so. As you can see the effect of the scaling looks similar to the previous method. But, notice if we go back to the top-level mode. All of the scale values are in the default value which is 100%. This is the ideal scenario for doing any modeling. Because none of the measurements will get distorted when you perform the modeling operations. Just to prove it. If we go to the polygon mode. Select this polygon and then try to inset it. Let’s input 1 cm, just like before. As you can see the inset widths are uniform and they are all exactly at 1 cm. If we do extrude at the top polygon for 2 cm. We get something like this. If we perform the same extrude on the side polygon. We get something like this. We can see the extrusion heights of this side and this side are the same which is at 2 cm. Now, what if we already have a non-uniform scaled object and we want to perform modeling on that object without changing the size of it. Well, we can do that by first resetting the transformation. We're going to discuss this in the next lesson. 32. Resetting transformation: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss how to reset the transformation. Previously we’ve discussed that we should avoid having scale values other than the default if we are doing modeling on the object. But, what if we already have a scaled object, and we want to do modeling on that object without resizing it? So, for example, we have this box here. And then we scale this like so in the top-level mode. Before we do any modeling operation, we want to make sure that all of the scale values defaulted to 100%. In order to achieve this. You cannot just type in 100 in this input field. Because if you do that, the object will just revert back to its previous size. Basically, now, we just want the scale values to reset back to 100% without changing the current size. In 3ds Max, this kind of operation is called transformation reset. To do this "transformation reset", you can go to the "utilities" panel. Then click this "Reset XForm" button here. The word "XForm" here actually stands for "transform". If you click this button, the "reset selected" button will appear at the bottom. You can click this button to reset the transformation of the selected object. As you can see the object’s size does not change. But all of the scale values are reset back to 100%. This is great. But you still cannot start modeling on this object yet. You see when you click this reset button. What actually happens is that 3ds max will add a new modifier called the "transform" modifier to the object to compensate for the current transformation. So you need to collapse the modifier first before you can start modeling again. To do that, you can right-click here and then choose "collapse to" or "collapse all". In this case, both will produce the same result. Then click "yes" here. But notice the collapsed result is not an editable poly, instead it is an editable mesh. So you need to convert this back to an editable poly afterward. Let me undo this again. Personally, I prefer just to use the convert method to collapse the modifier stack. So, just right-click and then choose "convert to" and then "convert to editable poly". If you do this, the modifier stack will collapse just like before, but we have an editable poly object right away as a result. Now, the next question is. What if we already have some complex modifier stack but we want to reset the transformation. For example, let’s create a teapot. And let’s reduce the segments to 4. Then add some modifiers. For example a lattice modifier. Then a melt modifier. Now we do a non-uniform scale like this. Okay. Let's say at this point, we want to reset the transformation so we have all of the scale values back to 100% without changing the current size and without collapsing these modifiers. So how can we do this? Well, first, we can open the "utilities" panel. Choose "Reset transform" here. Then click the "reset selected" button. Now the scale values are all set to 100%. If we go back to the modifier panel, we can see the "transform" modifier at the top of the modifier stack. In this scenario, you don't want to use the "collapse all" command or convert the object to an editable poly directly. Because that will cause the existing modifiers to get collapsed. If you want to preserve the modifiers, then you need to move the transform modifier down so it is located just above the base object. But if you right-click on the transform modifier and then choose "collapse to". Click yes here. The resulting base object will be an editable mesh object. Let me undo this. So the way to solve this is by adding a new modifier called the "edit poly" modifier. Then drag this modifier so it is located just above the transform modifier. Then we can right-click on it. Choose "collapse to" and then click yes again here. Now we have an editable poly object as the base object. We still have all of the modifiers. And we also have all of the scale values reset back to 100%. 33. Resizing objects precisely: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss how to precisely change the size of an object to a certain value. If you create a primitive object. For example a box. You can easily change its dimension in the modify panel. You can change the length, width and the height of it using the provided parameters. But what if we convert it into an editable poly object. Now, it doesn't have the size parameters that previously existed when it was a primitive object. So how can we adjust the size then? For example, we want this box to be exactly 50 cm length in the X-axis. Well, to do this, first you need to make sure that the object is selected. Then go to the edit menu. Then choose "transform toolbox" here. For changing the size of an object. First, you need to specify the axis that you want to target. For example the X-axis here. Then you need to type in the size for that current axis. So let’s type in 50 cm. Then, to execute the change, you need to click this "set size" button here. And it is done. Now, the next question is. How can we really tell that the length of this object, in the X-axis is 50 cm? Well, there are several ways that we can do this. The first method is by going to the "utilities" panel. And then click on this "measure" button here. When this is active, we can see the measure user interface at the bottom. Here, the selected object's dimension will be displayed. And, it indeed has 50 cm length in the X-axis. The second method of measuring the object’s dimension is by using the "transform toolbox" window. So, if you still have this window open. To get the object’s size, you can simply click this "get size" button here. A new window will open displaying the size of the selected object. The cool thing about changing the size using the "transform toolbox" is that it immediately reset the transformation. So as you can see the scale values are always at 100%, which is great. But you need to know that this thing only happens if you resize editable objects. If you try to resize primitive objects, the scale values will not be reset back to 100%. For example, if we create a teapot object here. While the object is still a primitive object. Open the "transform toolbox". Set the X-axis size to 50 cm. Click the "set size" button. Notice the scale values are not reset back to the default. So you may want to reset the transformation after setting the size of primitive objects. Besides using the reset transform feature in the "utilities" panel as we discussed earlier. You can actually reset the transformation using this "R" button here. But just be aware that pressing this R button will add a transform modifier to the object and then right away collapse the modifier stack. That is why if you click it, 3ds Max will give you a warning message like this. Just click yes here and the scale values are now reset back to the default. But, because it collapses the modifiers, now the object is not a primitive object anymore. It is now an editable mesh object. So this is something you need to be aware of when resetting the transformation using this R button. 34. Snapping: In this lesson video, we’ll discuss snapping. In 3ds Max there are several types of snapping modes. For now, we are going to focus on positional snapping and rotational snapping. First, let’s talk about the positional snapping. If you see up here at the main toolbar, there are 3 types of positional snapping available in 3ds max. 2D snapping, 2.5D snapping, and 3D snapping. But, before we discuss the difference between these 3 options, let’s open the "grid and snap settings" window. To access it you can go to the "tools" menu, then "grids and snaps", then choose "grid and snap settings" here. Or the faster way to do this is just by right-clicking on the snap button here. Go to the "snap" tab here. This is where we decide the type of geometry elements we want to snap to. For now, to make things simple, turn off everything except the "vertex" checkbox. At this condition, the snapping feature will only taking account the vertices as the target. Now let’s open the "options" tab here. Make sure this option that says "Enable axis constraint", is off. If this is on, snapping will use the axis constraints. For now, we don’t need them so make sure it is unchecked. Now let’s talk about the difference between 2D, 2.5D and 3D snapping. 2D snapping will let you snap objects that are exactly placed on the same plane. And you usually want to use this mode in 2D views such as top viewport, front viewport, left, etc. Not the perspective viewport. For example, I have these 3 plane objects. 2 of them are placed on the same plane which is at 0 Z-axis coordinate. But one of them is floating above the others. You can go to the top viewport by pressing T. Then if you want to see in the solid mode you can press F3. Then press F4 if you want to see the edges. Currently, we are discussing positional snapping so make sure you have the move tool active. And finally, you need to make sure that the 2D snapping button up here is turned on. To snap this plane object to this plane object, using this vertex and this vertex as the reference. First, you need to move the mouse cursor as close as possible to this vertex. Then click drag and move it, so it is close to this vertex. As you can see, this plane object just moved based on these vertices' location. Now we can do this because both of these plane objects are located at the same Z-axis coordinate. Notice if we try to this again but targeting this plane object instead. The snapping won’t work. Again, this is because this plane object is not at the same level as this plane object and currently we have the 2D snapping mode active. Now, if we turn on the 2.5D snapping. This snapping mode will snap objects in space as if they are on the same level although they are not. So for example, if I drag this one to this one again, look how this object now is able to snap as if they are at the same level. If you press P to go to the perspective viewport. You can see that this plane object is still on the ground plane. It doesn’t really move to level up with this plane object. So this is what 2.5D snapping feature is all about. Generally, you want to use this snapping mode in 2D viewports also, not in the perspective viewport. The last one is the 3D snapping mode. For this mode, you can do this both in 2D viewports and in the perspective viewport. In 3D snapping mode, objects can freely snap to other objects in 3D space. For example, if I drag this plane object to this plane object on top. It will move up and precisely snap based on the target vertices. You can select multiple objects by holding the Ctrl key. And move them together while snapping to this plane object for example. Personally, I only use 2.5D snapping and 3D snapping modes all the time, and almost never use the 2D snapping mode. I use the 2.5D snapping mode when in 2D viewports such as the top viewport, front viewport, or left viewport, etc. And use 3D snapping mode when in the perspective viewport. Now, if you prefer to use keyboard shortcuts, you can use the S letter key to toggle the positional snapping on or off. Another snapping we are going to discuss in this lesson is the rotational snapping or also known as the angle snap in 3ds Max. If we select an object and then press E to activate the rotate tool, and then rotate it like so. Notice down here, the rotation produces many fractional numbers after the period. This is okay if you only need to do a free-form animation, for example. But if you are doing modeling, especially for architectures or furniture, you often need to rotate objects at exactly 90 degrees, or 45 degrees, or 30 degrees, etc. This is where you need rotational snapping. To activate the angle snapping you can click this button up here, or you can also press A for the keyboard shortcut. As you can see, if we rotate an object, now the angle result is a whole number with a 5 degrees increment. This 5 degrees value is the default. If you need a different value you can open the "grid and snap settings" window again by right-clicking on any of the snapping buttons up here. In the "options" tab you can find the angle value. Just change this to any number you like. For the rest of the lessons in this course, I will use the default value which is 5 degrees. 35. Smart Extrude: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss the "Smart Extrude" feature. This feature available in 3ds Max since version 2021. You won't find this feature in the older versions of 3ds Max. So what is exactly "Smart Extrude"? Well, it is a polygon extrude operation that can automatically clean up the geometry. It will try to fix the topology so there are no double vertices nor thin polygons in the model. Basically, if you used SketchUp before, it works like the push-pull tool inside SketchUp. To use the "Smart extrude", you simply move a polygon or several polygons while holding the Shift key. Let's just see how we can do that. Here I have a box with multiple segments on each side. Convert the box into an editable poly object. You need to do this, because, "Smart extrude" only works on an editable poly object. Next, make sure you are in polygon sub-object mode. You cannot use "Smart extrude" on vertices or edges. Then you need to be in the move mode. After you have all these in place. Select a polygon or polygons that you want to extrude. Hold the Shift key and then move them. Congratulations. You just perform a "Smart extrude". Until this point, it seems that "Smart extrude" is no different than the regular extrude. Well, yes in this case. But you will see the difference in the following examples. If you select polygons on an outer edge area. And perform a regular extrude command downward. You will get something like this. You can see these thin polygons. It is a bad 3d modeling practice to have this kind of polygons. Yes you can fix this manually after performing the extrude. But in this case, using the "Smart extrude" is much more convenient. So, if you hold Shift and drag these polygons downward. You will get something like this. It is a much cleaner result out of the box. If you select this polygon. Hold Shift and drag it until it passes the polygon behind it. You will get something like this. If you select this polygon. Then Shift and drag it all the way to the other side. You just created a tunnel through the object. And the movement direction doesn’t have to be straight. As long as you hold the Shift key while moving it, it will work. For example, if I select this top polygon. And then hold Shift, and then drag it on an angle, like this. We just created a tunnel but in a tilted direction. Feel free to play around and experiment with this feature. One last technique I want to mention is using the snapping mode together with the "Smart extrude" feature. Snapping becomes important when you want to level a certain surface with another surface. For example, you want to bring this polygon up to this level. "Smart extrude" will not merge the vertices unless you place them exactly at the same level. Which is almost impossible to do without the help of the 3D snapping feature. For this purpose, it is better to only snap to vertices. So, right-click on this button. Turn off everything by pressing the "clear all" button. And turn on only the "vertex" option. And just close the window. You can also set the snapping mode via the quad menu. You can hold Shift and then right-click. The snapping quad menu will open. Make sure everything is turned off, except the vertex option. After that, whenever you need to turn on the snapping mode, you can just press S on the keyboard. Alright. Let's select this polygon. Make sure the 3D snapping mode is on. Hold Shift and then drag this up. Move the mouse cursor so it snaps to this vertex. And let's do the same on this polygon. Now, if we turn off the snapping mode. And then try to move these 3 polygons or just one of them. As you can see, they are already connected to one another. Again, this is possible because we use the snap mode while performing "Smart Extrude". 36. Aligning objects: In this lesson video, we’re going to cover 4 different techniques that we can use to align an object against another object. We are going to cover the align tool, normal align tool, auto-grid feature and finally the "select and place" tool. First, let’s discuss the align tool. In this scene, I have a tall box object and a teapot object. Let’s say we want to put this teapot object exactly on top of this box object. To do this with the align tool. First, you need to select the teapot object. Remember we need to select the object that is going to move, not the object that serves as the target. Okay. Next, you need to click this “align” button. And while this button is active, click the target object. If you do that correctly you will see the “align selection” window opened. The X, Y, and Z position checkboxes here will determine whether the align process will change the X, Y and Z coordinate of the object or not. For now, make sure you turn on all of these checkboxes. Next are the “current object” and the “target object” columns. What this “current object” means is the object we select the first time, which is in our case the teapot object. And the “target object” here is the object we click the last one. Or in our case is the box object. These radio buttons down here determine what part of the object will be aligned. If you set both of these to "pivot point". It means that the pivot point of the teapot object will be aligned with the pivot point of the box object. If you click the “OK” button here. Now we can see the teapot object moved to the bottom of the box object. Again, this is because that is the location of the box’s pivot point. Next, we want to move the teapot object so that the bottom part of it is exactly aligned with the upper part of the box object. Just like before, make sure the teapot object is selected. Then click align here, and then click the target object. We only want to focus on the Z-axis now. So turn off the X and Y checkboxes. And then in the current object column, set this to "minimum". And for the target object column, set it to "maximum". Click the “OK” button. And now we have the teapot object perfectly placed on top of the box object. Next is the “normal align” tool. This tool enables us to place an object to another object based on their surfaces. For example, I have this box that looks like a wall. And I have another smaller object that looks like a picture frame. What we need to do now is to put the picture frame perfectly on the wall. Essentially we want to move this picture frame using its back surface as the reference and then stick that surface to this surface on the wall. To do this using the normal align tool. First, select the object that will move, in our case the picture frame object. Then click and hold the align tool. You will see the “normal” align tool here. While this tool is active, you need to do 2 things in the correct order. First, you need to pick a surface in the current object. You can do this by clicking and dragging the mouse around. A blue arrow will appear indicating the active surface that you pick. After you release the mouse. The second step is to click and drag again but on the target object. After you find the spot that you like, release the mouse. As you can see the picture frame moved to that location on the wall. Next is the auto grid feature. This feature is available whenever we create a new object in 3ds Max. For example, I have this scene consisting of multiple boxes. Just assume that this is a building. And now we want to add a concrete canopy at this location. Basically, we want to create a new box directly on this surface. To do that just go to create panel, geometry, and then click the box button. Notice there is an option here called “AutoGrid”. Make sure it is on. Now as we hover the mouse on different surfaces. You can see a transform gizmo that detects the surface automatically. If we click-drag at this location. We are creating the box directly on that surface. Now, you can do this with other objects. For example, I can create a teapot while the auto-grid option is turned on. With this, I can put the new teapot directly on any surface that I want. I can even put it on the surface of the previous teapot object. The last method of object alignment is by using the “select and place” tool. In this scene, I have a box, a teapot, and a sphere. To use the “select and place” tool. First, you need to activate the tool by clicking this button here. While this is active, every time you click and drag on an object, that object will follow your mouse cursor around. If you move the mouse cursor on top of a surface, the object will be aligned automatically to that surface. Now you might be thinking that this tool is similar to the "normal align" tool. But they are not. Because this tool does not let you pick a certain surface on the object. Instead, it will use the object’s pivot point. So this sphere for example. Because it has a pivot point located at the center of it. If you try to align this sphere to the box object using the "select and place" tool. The sphere will be half sink into the surface. Basically, if you want to use the "select and place" tool, you need to make sure that the object’s pivot point is placed at the right location. Which is the location where you want it to stick to the target surface. 37. Project: The picture frame: In this project lesson video, we will start modeling the interior scene. We will start with the easiest part, and that is the picture frame model. But before we do that, if you want to follow along. Make sure that you use a centimeter for the system unit. For the display unit, I will just be using the generic unit. Just realize that the numbers that we will be using later in the input fields are all in centimeters. Next, this is not something that you must do. But I always do this to make the 3d modeling process more enjoyable at least in the eyes. If you create a new object, for example, a box object for the picture frame. As usual, 3ds Max will add a random object color to the object. Which is totally fine. But, what I want now is to have black color for the lines or edges, and lite grey color for the polygons or the surfaces. To do that you can go to the modify panel and change the object color to black. This black object color will make the edges displayed in black color, that is when the object is not selected. Next, to make the surface color lite grey. There are several steps that we need to take. First, click on this button to open the "render setup" window. To make the display less demanding on the system, on the "production rendering mode", change the renderer to the "scanline renderer". Don't worry, we will discuss these settings later more in-depth. Just bear with me for now. Next, here you can access the material editor. There are 2 types of material editors. We will use this later. But for now, we use the simple one. Make sure the top left slot is active. For the roughness value, increase this all the way to one. This is so we won't see any highlights or speculars in the viewport which can distract the modeling process. You can change the surface color here. But I already like the color. And then just drag and drop the material from the material slot to the object to assign the material. Now, as you can see. We have a grey color for the surface. And black color for the lines. I'm going to use the same method for the rest of the 3D models in this course. You can refer back to this lesson if you ever forget how to do this. Alright. Let's start modeling the picture frame. For the length, let's set this to 70 cm. Press Tab. For the width, let's set this to 50 cm. I use these values because I already prepared the textures for these frames with that size ratio. Press Tab. And for the height value let's input 2 cm. So this is the base object. The length is 70 cm. The width is 50 cm. And the height of it is 2 cm. After you are done, convert the object into an editable poly object. Go to the polygon mode. And select the top polygon. We want to inset this polygon as far as 3 cm. Right-click and choose inset, but use this one with the parameters. Type here 3, then hit Enter. Then click on the confirm button. Next, we want to extrude this downward. I'm just going to eyeball it for now. Next, let's inset again for 4 cm. Confirm again. Then do another extrude inward. And just like before, I don’t use any precise measurement. You can if you want to. Finally, do another inset for 3 cm. Later this center polygon will be used for the picture texture. And the outer area will just be filled with a white canvas. Alright. For the final touch. And we're going to do this later on all of our 3d models. Notice how sharp the corners are. In the real world, rarely do we see objects with sharp corners like these unless they are intentionally made sharp. To fix this we can use the chamfer command. Press 2 to activate the edge mode. For the bottom part, because we cannot select them using the loop method. We will use the selection conversion technique. But for now, let's focus on the edges that we can select using the loop method. So, double-click here. Hold Ctrl and double-click here. And just select all the loops that you want to chamfer. For me, I think these 3 edge loops are enough. Right-click and then choose the chamfer window. Now, if you just drag this value up and down. The changes happen very fast. But if you hold the Alt key while dragging the spinner. The changes happen much slower. I think this is enough. And let's reduce the number of edges on the chamfered area. So we are using 1.4 mm now for the chamfer value. Feel free to use other values if you want to. Click ok or confirm. Next, for the edges at the bottom part. To quickly select them all. We can go to the polygon mode. Select the bottom polygon. Then hold the Ctrl key and then click on the edge icon. Now that we select all the edges we can apply chamfer again. You can see that 3ds max remembers our last input values. For the bottom part, I want to make it a bit wider. I think 2 mm should do it. Click OK. And we are done modeling the picture frame object. Let's rename the object to "picture frame 01". Don't forget to save the file as later we are going to use this picture frame model in our interior scene. 38. Project: The coffee table: In this project lesson video, we will be modeling the coffee table for our interior scene. This is the coffee table that we are going to create. The product name is "Otto", manufactured by a Portuguese furniture company called "A Brito". This is the real dimension of the product. But we are going to create the table using our own custom dimension. For the length, we will use 75 cm. For the width, we will use 150 cm. And for the height, we will use 30 cm. Just as in the previous project, I'm using a centimeter for the system unit. I already set the renderer to "scanline renderer". And if I open the material editor. Or just press M for the shortcut. Here I already set the material off the record, which is basically just setting the roughness value to 1. Again, I'll be using this same setup for the rest of the modeling projects, that is until we discuss Corona materials. Next, if we want a black object color every time we create a new object. We can do that by clicking on this button. Click on the black color so that the active color is now black. Then you need to turn off this "assign random colors" checkbox. Then click OK. Now, if we create a box, for example. The color will be black. Press M to open the material editor. And then drag this material to the object. Alright. Let's input the dimension. For the length, type in 75. Press Tab. Then type in 150. Tab again. Then 30. Then press Escape. To place the object exactly at the center of the world. Make sure the move mode is now active. Then you can just right-click on the coordinate spinners, so that the values are all zero. Now, the object is exactly at the center of the world. Next, the height of the tabletop is 16 cm. We can set this by converting the object first into an editable poly. Then select the bottom polygon. While the polygon is selected, we can input the Z-axis coordinate directly here. Type in 14, then press Enter or Escape. Because the total height is 30 cm. If we place the bottom part at 14 cm. It means the tabletop thickness is now 16 cm. And that's it. We will add the chamfer effects on the corners later. For now, let's model the feet. Go back to the top-level mode. Then go to the create panel. Create a plane object roughly in this location. Right-click. Then press M. Assign our grey material. Now, if you don’t see the edges in the viewport, just as a reminder, you can press F4 on the keyboard to toggle the visibility of the edges. You can see that the plane object has 4 by 4 segments. We only need just 1 segment. For the foot width, we can set this to 5 cm. Press tab and input 25. Next, we want to position the plane object so this corner vertex snaps to this corner vertex at the tabletop object. We need to set the snapping mode first by right-clicking on the snap icon. Turn off everything by clicking on the "clear all" button. Then turn on only the vertex option. Again, as we discussed before. You can press S to toggle the snapping mode. While the X and Y arrows are active, drag this vertex to snap to this vertex. Now activate the Z arrow and just drag this up until it snaps to the target vertex. So this is what we have so far. Next, convert the object into an editable poly object. Go to the edge mode. Select this edge. Press S to turn off the snapping mode. Hold Shift and drag this downward. So again, holding Shift and dragging a border edge will create a new surface. Now, we want the height of this edge to be 5 cm above the ground. So type here 5. Hold Shift and drag this down again. Enter zero for the z-axis coordinate. Alright. Select this edge at the side. Hold Shift and drag it to the Y-axis direction. Now, to create the rest of the 3 legs or feet. We can just rely on a modifier called "symmetry". The thing is with the symmetry modifier is that, by default, it works based on the object's pivot point. If we go back to the top-level mode. The pivot point is currently located here. And so the "symmetry" modifier will perform around this point and not the center of the world. To move the pivot point to the center of the world, we can go to the hierarchy panel. Activate this button "affect pivot only". While this is active, if we try to move the object. Only the pivot point moves. The object or the geometry stays still. Just zero out all of the coordinate values by right-clicking on the spinners. If you are done, don't forget to turn off this button again. After we have the pivot point in the correct place, in the modifier list, type "S Y" quickly to access the "symmetry" modifier. Then just press Enter. As you can see, the symmetry modifier is already mirroring the object. But we don’t need the Z-axis. What we need is the X-axis, which is that way. And also the Y-axis which goes that way. But it is currently flipped. So just turn on this "flip" checkbox to fix it. Let's collapse the modifier for now. We can do that by right-clicking on the modifier and then choose these collapse commands. Or simply right-click to open the quad menu and then convert the object again to an editable poly object. Next, to add thickness to the feet object, we can use a modifier called "shell". So just click here. Type "S H". Then press Enter. Or click on the "shell" modifier. By default it is going outward, not inward. Let's zero out this outer amount value. And increase the inner amount value. But, notice how this corner is tilted. To make all the corners straight, we can scroll down all the way. And turn on this checkbox "straighten corners". And then, for the thickness, we just need 1 cm. And we are done. We can now add the chamfer effect to these objects. But first, let me collapse the modifier by converting it again to an editable poly object. Alright. Previously, we blunted the corners using the chamfer modeling command. Now, we are going to try a different method. And that is by using the chamfer modifier. The chamfer amount between the tabletop and the feet object will be different. Therefore, we need to apply a different chamfer modifier for each. Make sure the tabletop object is selected. Click here and then type "C H". Then Enter. Alright. For the tabletop object, we want to set the chamfer amount to 5 mm. Now we need to fix the smoothing group. If we press F4 to hide the edges. Notice how this dark shadow looks unnatural. We can fix this by adding more edges. But we can also do this using the smoothing group option in the chamfer modifier. Scroll down until you see the smoothing option. We do want the smoothing but not on the entire object. So change this to "smooth chamfers only". Now we have something like this. We can go further to smooth out the border areas by turning on the "smooth to adjacent" option. Now, we don't see the weird shadow anymore even though we have a minimum number of polygons on our model. Now, let's try collapsing the modifier using the collapse command. Right-click on the modifier. And then choose any of these commands. Currently, both work the same as we only have 1 modifier. 3ds Max will give us this warning message. If you don't want to see this message again in the future. You can click on this option. Then click yes. And the tabletop part is finished. For the feet part. Let's add a chamfer modifier also. But now, for the amount value, we use 2 mm. Let's zoom in more and press F4 to see the edges. We don't need any additional segment in the chamfered region. And, I think 2 mm is too big. Let's try 1.5 mm. Okay, I think this is better. Next, let's fix the smoothing group. Set this also to "chamfers only". And that's it. I think we are done now. To wrap up the model. We can select the tabletop object. Right-click and then choose "attach". Then click on the feet object. Now, they are a single object. Rename the object to "coffee table". And don't forget to save the file as we will use this model later in our interior scene. 39. Project: The shelves: In this project lesson video, we are going to model the shelves below and above the TV. These are custom furniture so we don't need to follow a certain reference. Just as before, I'm using a centimeter for the system unit. I already changed the renderer to "scanline", and already prepared a grey-colored material off the record. Let's start by creating a box object. Press M and assign the material. Press F4 to see the edges. Open the modify panel. For the length, type in 50. Tab, 250. Tab again, 50. Then press Escape. Now we have the base object. To center the object, activate the move mode. And just zero out all of the coordinate values. Now, the object is at the center of the world. Next, let's convert the object into an editable poly. Press 4 to go to the polygon mode. We want to select the polygons in this loop direction. We can do that by selecting this one first. Hold Ctrl and then double-click on this polygon. If we press F3 to turn on the wireframe mode. We can see these polygons are now selected. Hold Alt and then click on this polygon. Now we only have this U-shaped polygon selection. Press F3 again. We want to detach these polygons from the current object. To do that we can scroll down and find the "detach" command. And just click the "OK" button. Now, these polygons are not part of this object anymore. Let's select this polygon and then the polygon behind it. And just delete them. We need to do this so we can focus on modeling the right part without any distraction. Go back to the top-level mode. And then select this object. Activate the edge mode. Select these 2 edges. And move them so they are almost at the center. For the bottom edge, I think it should be longer to make the cabinet look sturdier. Then select these 3 edges. And then move them back a bit, to about this line in the grid. Next, to add thickness to this object we can exit to the top-level mode and then add the "shell" modifier. One of the common beginner's mistakes is applying a modifier while in the sub-object mode. If you want the modifier to affect the whole object, you should always add the modifier while in the top-level mode. Not the sub-object mode. Okay. We don't need the outer amount. We only need the inner amount. Make it 8 cm thick. As you can see, the corners are tilted. When using the "shell" modifier, I always turn on the "straighten corners" option. I don't know why this option is not turned on by default. After you are done, convert the object again to an editable poly to collapse the modifier. Next, let's focus on the cabinets. Press 2 to activate the edge mode. Select this edge. We want to bring this down but precisely snap to this vertex. We can press S to turn on the snapping mode. The snapping option is the same as the previous project which is basically only snap to vertices. Just drag using the Z-axis arrow and snap it to the target vertex. Do the same with the lower edge. Snap it to this vertex. Next, press 3 to activate the border mode. Ctrl + A to select all edges. Hold the Shift key and then drag the X-axis arrow until it snaps to this vertex. And to patch the hole, you can right-click and then choose "cap". Next, for the compartments, we don't need to create the holes as we won't be able to see them anyway in the final render. What we need to create are only the doors. We will model a minimalist-style cabinet without any handle. Let's first turn off the snapping mode. Then go to the polygon mode. To duplicate this polygon. Previously we can use the Shift and drag method. But since 3ds max version 2021. The shift and drag method is now used for the “smart extrude” operation. Now, to duplicate polygons, you need to hold The Ctrl key and the shift key together. Then drag the polygon. The clone dialog window will open. We do want to create a new object, so just click OK. Because it is now a different object, to access this polygon, we need to go to the top-level mode first. Then we can select this object. We want to divide this polygon into 3 parts. So, go to the edge mode. Select these 2 edges. And then open the connect dialog window. Change this to 2. And then click OK. Now open the chamfer dialog window. We want to splice this and create a hole. Let's set the amount value to 2 mm. We can delete this area later manually. But a faster way to do this is by turning on the "open chamfer" option down here. As you can see the chamfered area becomes void. But, I think we should increase the “amount” value. Let's try 3 mm. Now, this looks better. Okay. Go back to the top-level mode. And then add a shell modifier. Set the inner amount to 2 cm. Then convert this object to an editable poly again. Next, we need to move this backward. Press Alt + W, and choose the top view. Then Alt + W again. You can press G to hide the grid. Move this closer to the main cabinet object. But leave some gaps behind as this can help to add some soft shadows in the rendering result. After you are done. You can combine all of these into a single object. Select the main cabinet object. Right-click, choose "attach", then click on the accent part and then click on the doors. Right-click to exit from the attach mode. Now, they are a single object. Let's name this object "TV shelf bottom". To create the top shelf. We can duplicate this object by holding the Shift key and then drag it up. Choose "copy". And we can rename it directly here. Just change the "bottom" to "top". Okay. For the top object, we want the accent part to be on the left side. And we only want 2 cabinets. And the overall height should only be 40 cm. To mirror the model, we can use a modifier called "mirror". As you can see, the "mirror" modifier already uses the X-axis as the default. So we can just collapse the modifier by converting it again to an editable poly object. To change the overall height, we can press F3 to activate the wireframe view mode. Select the bottom vertices. To move these up for 10 cm, we need to use the offset mode. While in this mode, we can type in the transformation value in these input fields. So, in the Z-axis field, type in 10. Then Enter. The overall height is now 40 cm. Press F3 to go back to the solid view mode. Next, to remove the left cabinet, go to the element mode. Select this door and then delete it. Then go to the polygon mode. Select this polygon. We're going to move and snap to this vertex. So, turn on the snapping mode. And just drag this and snap it to the target vertex. Let's turn off the snapping mode again. I think this part should be longer. While this part is shorter. Just a personal preference. After you are done. The last step is adding the chamfer modifier. We've discussed how to use the chamfer modifier before in the previous project. So let's just do this really quick. For the amount value, I think 2 mm is enough. Set the segment to zero. And as usual, I prefer to use the "smooth chamfers only" mode. With the "smooth to adjacent" option turned on. Let's hide the edges for now just to check the chamfer effect. Alright. For the top cabinet, we can just copy the chamfer modifier from the bottom object. To do that, right-click on the chamfer modifier. Choose "copy". Select the top object. Right-click here. And then choose "paste". You can collapse the modifier on this top object. And also, on this bottom object. And we are done. As always, don't forget to save the file as we're going to need these objects later. 40. Project: The TV: In this project lesson video, we will model the TV. It is a fairly simple object so we should be able to do this really quick. I'm using the same initial setup as the previous projects. Let's start by creating a box object. Press M and assign our default material. Use the move mode and position the object to the center. Next, let's input the dimensions. For the TV thickness, use 2.5 cm. Press Tab. Use 145 cm for the width. And finally, for the height, use 80 cm. So now we have the base object. Press F4 to see the edges. And then convert the box into an editable poly object. Next, select the front polygon. And then inset it for 2 cm. After that, we can extrude this polygon backward. Type in minus 0.5. Then click the OK button. The frontside is done. For the backside, we can bevel the polygon, like so. And then do another bevel. Notice that I'm not using any measurement for this part as it will not be visible in the rendering. For the final step, we want to chamfer the corners, so they don't look too sharp. Press 2 to activate the edge mode. Double-click here. Hold Ctrl, then double-click on this edge. For these edge loops, we want to chamfer them for 2 mm. We don't need any additional edges. And just click OK. Next, select this edge loop. We want to chamfer this also but with a lower amount value. Let's just input 1 mm. Click OK. And we are done. We can name this object "TV" and then save the file. 41. Project: The room and ceiling: In this lesson video, we are going to model the room which is basically the floor, the wall, and the ceiling. And then we are also going to add simple diamond shape details on the ceiling. We can start with a box. Assign our default material. Display the edges. And then center out the object. We've done this several times already, so I don't need to explain everything again in detail. Next, for the dimension. The room-length should be 8 m. The width is 5 m. And the height of it is 3 m. So this is the base object for the room. Next, we want to see the inside of the room and make all the polygons facing inward. To do this, we need to use the backface culling and flip the normal direction. We've discussed normal direction and backface culling before. So be sure you watch that lesson first to get the basics. First, let's turn on this object's backface culling option. And then, to flip the normal direction, we can use a modifier called "normal". Make sure the "flip normals" option is turned on. Now, we have something like this. Let's convert the object into an editable poly. Before we move on. I need to warn you that not all rendering engines can work with this kind of geometry. Some of the renderers require you to add thickness to the floor, wall, and ceiling. Because if not, when the lights from the sun or from the environment shine in. You will get leaking shadows and highlights on the corner areas. Fortunately, because we will be using the Corona renderer, these problems never happen. At least, not in the current version when I recorded the video. So you can have thin or one-sided polygons and the Corona renderer just renders them out without any problem. Which makes our life a lot easier when modeling the architecture. Light leaks can still happen in 2 scenarios. First, if you are using an older version of Corona renderer such as version 1.5 or below. And second, if you place the models far away from the origin or the center of the world. Like hundreds of kilometers away. In these conditions, you may need to add thickness to the floor, wall, and ceiling objects. You can do that easily by adding the "shell" modifier. Alright. We want to divide the room into 3 objects. Select the top polygon. Besides scrolling, you can also drag this border to make the command panel bigger so it becomes 2 columns. With this, we can access the "detach" command right away. Name the new object "ceiling". Next, select all the side polygons. Make sure they are all selected. Detach, and name this one "wall". For the last one, we don't need to detach it. Just rename this to "floor". Let me return this panel back so we have more space for the viewport. Basically, the room is done. Now, let's focus on the ceiling. Go to the edge mode. Select these 2 edges. And then use "connect" to add 2 new edges. I think we should use the "isolate selection" mode. This is so the wall and the floor objects don't get in the way. Next, select this edge. Activate snapping. And then snap this edge to the vertex at the right border. Now, we want to move this back for 50 cm. To do this, make sure the "offset" mode is active. Then in the Y-axis field, type in minus 50. Then Escape. Let's drag and snap this edge to the previous edge. We want to move this back for 70 cm. So just type in here, minus 70. Go to the polygon mode. Oops sorry. Let me undo this. Okay. Select this polygon. Extrude it for 30 cm. We use this drop ceiling mainly to hide the curtain hanger. But, you can also plant downlights on it or add accent material if you want to. Next, we want to add a large hole in the center to create a suspended ceiling effect. For this, we can inset the polygon. Make it a 1 m inset. Then we can extrude it upward. Use minus 10 cm for the amount. Next, to make the surface wider without adding any extrusion, we can use the bevel command. Just make sure the height is set to zero. For the outline value, we can use 20 cm. So, this is what we have so far. Next, we need to extrude this upward again. So, choose "extrude". We can see that 3ds max is reusing the value we used before. I think 10 cm is okay. The ceiling model is almost done. The last thing that we want to do is adding diamond-shaped details to this area. For this, we can detach the polygon so it will be easier for us to work on it. Let's name this object "ceiling pattern". Go back to the top-level mode and then select the new object. Next, we want to add a square grid to this polygon. You can do this manually using the connect command. But a faster way to do this is using the "Quadify mesh" modifier. As you can see, 3ds Max created this nice grid for us automatically. But, I think the polygons are too small. Let's resize them so we only have around 7 to 8 polygons in the width direction. Just drag this value up. Okay, I think this is enough. We can collapse the modifier now. Next, to create diamond shapes from this grid, we can use a special operation called "Generate topology". To access this feature, you need to turn on the ribbon menu. Then in the "polygon modeling" menu, click on this button "Generate topology". The "topology" window will appear. Here you can generate different types of surface topologies. For now, we want to create this diamond shape pattern. Now we have something like this. Let's close this window. And also the ribbon menu. And let's turn off snapping. Next, to add some thickness to the pattern, we can select all of the polygons. And then open the bevel dialog window. We want the bevel to happen independently on each of the polygons. For the bevel height, I think 5 mm is enough. And set minus 5 mm also for the "outline" value. Let's do a final check of the model. We can press F4 to toggle the edges. Okay guys, I think this looks good. Let's exit the isolation mode. We can save the file now and move on to the next step. 42. Project: The door: In this project lesson video, we will model the door. This is what we have so far from the previous lesson. We are going to create the door at this location. For this, we can select the wall object. Go to polygon mode. And then select this polygon. Detach it and then give it a name "wall door". Go back to top-level mode and select the object. Activate the isolation mode. Select these 2 edges. And then use connect to add 2 vertical edges. Then use the move mode. Make sure the snapping is active. Move and snap this edge to the right border. We want to position this edge 70 cm from the border. Activate the offset mode. And then in the Y-axis field, type in minus 70. For this edge. We can snap this to the previous edge. And then move it minus 1 m in the Y-axis. To create the horizontal edge. We can click on the ring selection. Use "connect". We only need 1 edge for now. Activate the absolute mode, and set the position of the edge to be 220 cm from the ground. If you are done, you can activate the polygon mode. And then select the polygon at the door. Extrude the polygon inward for 20 cm. We don't need this bottom polygon. So just delete it. We will fix the hole on the floor later. Now, to create the door frame, we can select these polygons. And then detach them. But we want to detach them as a clone. Name this new object "door frame". Now, if we go back to top-level mode, and select the new object. We can see that the pivot point location is still based on the original object. Let's center the pivot point by going to the "hierarchy" panel. And then turn on the "affect pivot only" mode. Then click on this "center to object" button. We can see that this is a separate object and the original polygons are still intact as we used the detach clone method before. Turn off snapping for now. And then select the 3 edges at the front. Move this inward just a tiny bit. Then we can add a "shell" modifier to give it a thickness. Set the outer amount to 8. Then turn on the "straighten corners" as always. Convert it again to an editable poly object. Next, we want to chamfer these edges but using an inverted direction. Go to the edge mode. The edges are already selected from the previous edit. So we can apply the chamfer right away. Let's move this UI aside. For the amount, I think 2 cm is enough. To invert the chamfer direction, we need to make this depth value to minus 0.5. And then click OK. Let's create the door panel. We can select the top polygon. And then detach it. Make sure the clone option is active. And just name this "door". Then Enter. Now, select the new object. Activate the edge mode. And then move the front edge backward. And the back edge forward. Press 3 to activate the border mode. Hold Shift and then drag the border down. Right-click and choose “cap” to close the hole. Currently, the polygons are facing inward. We can fix this easily by going to the polygon mode, or even the element mode. Select all of the polygons. You can see this "flip" button. Just click this to flip the normals. Then select the bottom polygon. And just enter zero for the z-axis coordinate. Next, we want to create the door handle. For this, we can start fresh with a new box object. Make sure the "auto grid" mode is active. And just create the box at roughly this location. For the Z coordinate, let's position this at 1 m above the ground. Let's open the modify panel. The box object is currently rotated. So the length here is actually the height. Let's input 60 cm. For the width. I think 2.5 cm should do it. For the height, this is actually the depth. Let's input 7 cm. Convert this into an editable poly. And then move it slightly to the right. Let's assign the default material. Next, we can select the 3 polygons at the top, bottom, and front. Press Ctrl + I to invert the selection. Then press Delete. Add a shell modifier. Use 3.5 cm for the inner amount. Make sure the "straighten corners" option is on. Select the main door object. Activate the attach mode and then click on the handle object. Now they are a single object. As usual, we can add a chamfer modifier to make the object look more realistic. Use 2 mm for the amount. Set the segment to zero. And for the smoothing option, choose "smooth chamfers only". And turn on the "smooth to adjacent" option. Finally, you can copy and paste the chamfer modifier to the door frame object. You can leave them as they are, or you can also collapse the modifiers. I believe you already know how to do that by now. 43. Project: The window: In this project lesson video, we are going to model the window. Press 4 to go to the polygon mode and then Select this polygon. Make sure no other polygons are selected. Click Detach. Make sure the clone option is off. Let's name this "wall window". Go back to the top and then select the new object. I think we should center the pivot point first, so it will be easier to grab the object later. Isolate selection. Go to the edge mode. Select these 2 edges. And then connect them. Input 2 for the segments. Activate the move tool. And then turn on the 3D snapping. Snap the edge to this vertex. Use the offset mode. And then move this back for 50 cm. We need to do the same with the left part. Move this 50 cm to the right. Next, click the ring button. And then connect. And just click OK. For the horizontal edges, we can simply type in the Z-axis coordinate values. Double-click here. And then go to absolute mode. Let's make these edges 270 cm above the ground. Then double-click here. For these edges, let's make them 50 cm high. Alright. Next, select the center polygon. And then extrude it for minus 20 cm. Detach the polygon and name the new object "window frame". Then press Enter. Select the new object. We want to duplicate this object into 2 copies. To do that, hold Shift and then drag it this way. Make sure this is set to "copy". And change this to 2. So now we have 3 of these objects. Let's select them all and perform “isolate selection” again. This way, only these 3 objects are visible. Select the first object. This will be the outer frame of the window. Go to polygon mode and select the polygon. Inset it for 8 cm. Okay. Delete the center polygon. And then add a shell modifier. Change this outer amount value to 20 cm. And make sure the "straighten corners" option is active. Alright. We can collapse the modifier now. Next, select the second object. This will be for the rail or the mullions. Select these 2 edges. Connect them with 2 segments. Use ring selection. And connect again, but now we use only 1 segment. For the rail height, I think 120 cm is good. Next, select all of the inner edges. And then do a chamfer on them. Input 3 cm. We don't need the center edges. Click OK. And then go to polygon mode by pressing 4. Just to be safe, we can activate the selection mode by pressing Q on the keyboard. And then select all of these polygons. Then press Delete. Go to top-level mode and then add a shell modifier. For the thickness, let's reduce it to only 10 cm. Make sure the "straighten corners" option is on. Move this to about this location. If you are done, you can select the main frame object and then use the attach command to combine the rails object. Add a chamfer modifier. Use 2 mm for the amount. Zero this out. And fix the smoothing options. Alright, the window frame looks good. Next, select the last object. This will be the window glass. So let's rename it to just that. Add a shell modifier. Set it to only have 1 cm thickness. Collapse the modifier. And we can center out the pivot point. Bring this closer to about this position. Okay. We can now exit the isolation mode. And this is what we have so far. 44. Introduction to spline: Starting from this video, we’re going to discuss the modeling techniques that use mainly spline as the base object. So what is spline? Well, if you used Adobe Illustrator before, or Inkscape, or used the path feature inside Photoshop, you actually have used spline before. Essentially splines are a bunch of vertices or points interconnected with curves. These curves can be a straight line or they can also be a bending curve. Each of the vertices inside a spline can have handles. We can control the curvature of the lines connected to the vertex using these handles. The difference between vector shapes you see in graphic design applications compared to splines inside 3ds max is the dimension. Vector shapes are 2D objects. While splines, because they exist in 3D space, each of the vertices inside a spline have X, Y and Z coordinate values. Just like geometry objects, spline objects can exist as primitive objects or as editable objects. For example, we can create a circle by going to the "create panel". Then choose "shape", and then choose "spline", then choose "circle" here. Click-drag on the viewport to create a circle. If we have a circle object selected like this, and then go to the modify panel. We can still see the basic circle parameter which is basically just this radius value here. This circle object is still a primitive object. If we really want to unlock all of the spline editing features, then we need to convert this object into an editable spline object. To do that, just as with the geometry objects, we can simply right-click, and then choose "convert to", and choose "editable spline". Now, as we can see, we can access the vertices, the segments, and the whole spline structures. And what is more important, we can now access these abundant spline editing features. The same concept also applies to other spline shapes. For example, we can create a rectangle here. If we go to the modify panel, we can still control the length, the width, and also the corner radius here. But if you need to access the sub-objects such as vertices or the segments or more advanced spline editing features then you need to convert this primitive spline object into an editable spline object. You can try and experiment with different spline shapes here such as the ellipse, donut, arc, etc. Now, out of these different spline shapes, there is one unique spline that is not a primitive type. And that is the "line" spline object. If you create a line, it immediately becomes an "editable spline". So, if you click "line" here. Then do a series of click releases on the viewport. Then right-click to finish up. If you go to the modify panel. You can see that although it says "line" up here, these are basically the parameters you see in an editable spline object. You can access the vertex, segment, or a whole spline sub-objects. Unlike geometry objects, by default, spline objects will not be visible when you render them. For example this circle here. I know we haven't discussed rendering yet, but we need to cover how to render just a tiny bit, just to see how spline objects behave when rendered. First, click this button that says "render setup". You can also press F10 to open this window. And then in the "renderer" list, make sure it is set to "scanline renderer". To render a scene we can press this button here that says "render production". As you can see we only see black color. The spline is not visible when rendered by default. If you need to make a spline visible when rendered, you need to tell 3ds Max to create geometry around the spline. To do that you can open the rendering tab in the "modify panel". If you click this, the object will be visible when rendered. And if you click this, it will be visible in the viewport. If you choose "radial", 3ds Max will create a cylinder along the spline. You can control the radius by changing this "thickness" value. You can also control the number of side segments by changing this "sides value". Now, if you choose the "rectangular" option here. You will get a box flowing along the spline. Then you can control the length, the width, etc. If you click the render button again. Now you can see the spline object in the rendering result. The next spline setting we’re going to discuss is "interpolation". In spline objects, the segments that connect the vertices are basically mathematical formulas. Because of that, we can define the number of segmentation dynamically. So if we lower the interpolation value, we get less and less smooth curves. Until it is at zero then we basically only have straight lines. If we increase this value, we get more and more segmentation and so create a smoother curve as a result. Now, we mostly need interpolation value for segments that are curved. It doesn't really affect the segments that are straight. For example, if we select this rounded rectangle again. And make sure the "enable in viewport" option is turned on so we can see the interpolation better. Notice as I change the interpolation value, only the segmentation on the round corners changes. If we set this to 5 for example. Then we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 edges on the corner area. The segmentation on the straight segments does not affected. Now, what if we actually want to have segmentation also on the straight line segments? Well, we can turn off this "optimize" option here. As you can see, now this segment is also divided by 5 edges. The last setting we want to discuss is the "adaptive" checkbox. When this is on, then the other 2 settings do not matter. In this mode, 3ds Max will interpolate the spline automatically. It will add and reduce segmentation on the spline as needed. 45. Line creation and Spline vertex types: In this lesson video, we’re going to cover the line object and then discuss different types of vertex inside spline objects. As we discussed earlier, the line object is a special object that will become an editable spline directly when created. For now, I’m going to use the top viewport. Click on the line button here. And before you do anything. Notice in the "creation method" section you can see the initial type is set to "corner". And the drag type is set to "Bezier". The "initial" type means the type of vertex you create when you do click and release. The drag type means the type of vertex you create when you click and drag. We’re going to talk about the differences between corner, smooth and Bezier later on in this lesson video. For now, just make sure that you have this default setting. With this setting, you will get the same behavior as the pen tool inside Adobe Illustrator, or Photoshop, or the vector tools exist in other graphic design software. Now, watch when I do a series of clicks and releases. The vertices created from this process are corner type thus making the lines between them straight. But when I click and drag like this. The vertices created are rounded, or they are called Bezier type. Due to this, the lines between these vertices become curved. To finish the spline creation you can simply right-click. But notice we are still in the line creation mode, so you need to right-click once again. Let’s say we want to create a heart shape. We’re going to use the snap to grid feature to help us create the heart shape. So turn on snap here. Then right-click. Turn off all of the checkboxes, but turn on the "grid points" checkbox here. Alright. Now, activate the line creation mode again. Click-drag here. Move the mouse up in 2 grids then release the mouse. Move the mouse to the left side of the initial vertex in 3 grids. Then click and drag. Move it down in 2 grids. Then release the mouse. Then find a grid point beneath the initial vertex as far as 4 grids. Then click and release at this location. Move the mouse to this point, 3 grids to the right of the initial vertex. And then click-drag up in 2 grids. And then release the mouse. Then move the mouse to the initial vertex. Click-drag and move it down in 2 grids. Then release the mouse. 3Ds Max will detect that we are clicking on the initial vertex, therefore prompt us whether we want to close the spline or not. Click "yes" to make the spline closed. And we have a heart shape. Please try this exercise before moving on, as this will build a good foundation before creating more complex shapes in the upcoming lessons. If you failed at the first try, just take your time and try again. One tip that may help you when creating shapes using the line object is pressing the "Backspace" key when you need to undo a vertex creation. So for example, if you click and click again to create several vertices. At this state, if you press Backspace, you are undoing the last vertex creation. You can press Backspace multiple times to undo more vertices. Next, we’re going to learn how to create non-symmetrical sharp curves or also known as "Bezier corners". To do this we can use the Alt key. Let me turn off the snapping mode for now. For example, I can create a random shape here using the line object. Now, look closely. If I click-drag like so. Then without releasing the mouse, hold the Alt key and then move the mouse to another location. Release the mouse here. We just created a sharp vertex yet with bending curves around that vertex. We can just continue clicking to create more vertices and then right-click to finish up. This Alt and drag method might seem to be a bit hard to perform at first. But trust me, you should spend time practicing this technique as this will be useful not only in 3ds Max but also in other graphic applications in general. Because almost all graphic applications in the world require you to use this technique for creating complex shapes. Now, you might be wondering, so what is the difference between these vertex types, corner, smooth, Bezier, and the "Bezier-corner" that we created using the Alt key method? If we select the heart shape that we created before. And then press 1 in the keyboard to directly go to the vertex sub-object mode. We can see the "modify panel" is now open. Notice the vertex down here that we created using the click and release method. This is the corner type. Basically, the corner type does not have any handles. While this one, because we created this vertex using the click-drag method. This vertex becomes a Bezier type. You can see 2 handles coming out of this vertex. By moving these handles you can control the curvature of the segments connected to this vertex. Now, the word Bezier actually comes from a person’s name, "Pierre Bezier". He is a French engineer who founded the mathematical formula for these Bezier curves and handles. Because the original word is in French, therefore, we use French pronunciation. Now, if we select this spline. And then select this vertex we created before using the Alt key method. This vertex has handles but the handles are not symmetrical. This is what we call Bezier corner. You can change the type of vertex by first selecting the vertex. Then right-click. Notice at the left top area we can find the vertex types list, Bezier corner, Bezier, corner, and smooth. So in total, there are 4 types of Spline vertex in 3ds Max. We click Bezier here for example. Now the vertex becomes a Bezier type. If we right-click and choose "corner". Then we have a corner type. Alright. We’ve discussed these 3 types, but we haven't discussed the last one which is "smooth". Basically smooth is like Bezier but it doesn't have any handles. The smoothing happens automatically and so we cannot control it directly. So to recap, both Bezier and "Bezier-corner" have handles. So we can associate the word "Bezier" with handles. In the Bezier type, the handles are always symmetrical so the vertex always looks smooth. While the handles in the Bezier corner type, each can be moved independently. This allows us to create sharp vertices. Next, are the corner and the smooth types. Both of these types don’t have any handles. The corner type is sharp as it forms straight lines. While the "smooth" type will generate a smooth profile vertex by forming curves around the vertex automatically. 46. Spline creation exercise: In this lesson video, we’re going to practice creating different shapes using the line object with the combination of Shift and Alt modifier keys. The main goal of this exercise is to understand more in-depth how our actions when creating a line object affect the placement of the Bezier handles. For this exercise, I already provided an image here that you can trace using the line object. I already imported the image on this plane object. Currently, I’m on the top view and set the viewport shading mode to "default shading". It is important that you do this exercise correctly in the right order from top to bottom. So do this one first, then the second one, the third, and finally the last one. Alright. Let’s begin. Activate the line creation mode and zoom in a bit. Click and release at this location. Then to create a straight vertical or horizontal line you can hold the Shift key. Then click here. And just keep clicking following the reference image. Now, if you reach the end of the viewport but you're not finished yet. You can actually hold the middle mouse button and then just drag the viewport. The line creation mode will still be active, and so you can continue working from where you left off. You need to do this until the end. I will skip this and move on to the next exercise. For this one, we can start clicking and dragging at this location. Move the mouse until at this handle location and then release the mouse. Then click-drag at this location, until the next handle location. Then release the mouse. And just repeat the process. Just like before, you can pan the viewport while in this process. And so on. I will skip this again and continue with the next one. In this exercise, we’re going to start using the Alt key. Start from this point by simply clicking. Then hold Shift to make the line straight. Then click here. And then click and drag at this point so that the curve follows the reference image. And then without releasing the mouse, hold the Alt key and move the mouse cursor to this location. Release the mouse then release the Alt key. Move the mouse to this location and then click and release. Hold Shift and then click here. Click-drag again to follow the reference curvature. Hold Alt and move to the next handle location. And so on. You should do this until the end. Finally, this is the last one. Click and release here. Then click and release again here. Next, click and drag like so and release the mouse at this handle location. And just do the same method for this one. Then click-drag like so, so that the curve follows the reference image. Then hold Alt and move the mouse to this handle location. Release the mouse, and then release the Alt key. Next, just do the same Alt key method on the last point here. Click here and right-click to finish up. So from this simple exercise, we can conclude that when you do click and drag the final mouse position will be used as the handle’s location. This is also true for the Alt key method. Please take your time to do this exercise properly. Because you will need to create more complex shapes in the upcoming lessons. 47. Adding and Deleting: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss 4 techniques that we can use to add and delete vertices or segments. We’re going to cover "Refine", "Insert", "Delete", and "Connect". To start, let’s create a donut shape. I’m on the top viewport now. Make sure you are in the "create" panel. Go to the "shapes" tab and then "Spline" category. Click the donut button here. Then Click-drag to create the first circle. Release the mouse. And then move the mouse to define the second circle's radius. Then left-click to confirm. Next, we need to convert this donut object into an editable-spline. Now, I believe you already know the difference between these spline sub-objects. But let’s review these again, real quick, just to make sure that we are on the same page. This is the vertex mode. Just like the vertex mode in the editable poly object, you can press 1 on the keyboard to access it. In this mode, we can only select and manipulate vertices. Such as performing moves, rotate and scale. Next is the segment mode. To access it you can click on the icon here, or here in the modifier list. Or by pressing number 2 on the keyboard. Or you can also right-click and then choose "segment" here. Segments are basically the lines that connect the vertices inside a spline. This is like the edge mode in the editable poly object. While in this mode we can select and manipulate segments. The last one is the "spline" sub-object mode. This is like the element mode in the editable poly object. Inside a spline object, you can have multiple splines. This donut-shaped object, for example, consists of 2 splines. This one and this one. To access this sub-object mode, we can basically use the same methods as the others or by pressing 3 on the keyboard. Alright. The first technique is the "Refine" command. To use this command you should be in the vertex mode or the segment mode. Essentially we use this command to add more vertices into the shape. To use the "Refine" command you can go to the "geometry" section in the modify panel. And then click "Refine" here. Or you can also right-click to open the quad menu and then choose "refine" here. While the refine mode is active if we click on any location on the spline, a new vertex will be created. After you are done, remember to right-click once to exit the "Refine" mode. So that is the "Refine" command. Next is the insert command. Basically, the insert command is almost like the "Refine" command, but after adding a vertex we can freely reposition the new vertex to any location we like. After that, we can click again to create more vertices. To show you what I mean. Scroll down here until you see the "Insert" command. Click on it. And then find a spot where we want to add more vertices. Click on it, and notice we can move this around. If we click here and then here, and so on, we can create more vertices. Now, you might be wondering. Why can the insert command only create new vertices in the counterclockwise direction? Can we create new vertices in the opposite direction? Well, first, you need to understand that spline objects actually have direction. The "Insert" command creates new vertices based on the spline direction. If you go to the "selection" section. Down here in the "display" sub-section, you can see an option called "show vertex numbers". If you turn this on, you can see the number on each of the vertices. If you look closely, the numbers are increasing in a counter-clockwise direction. To reverse this direction we can go to the spline sub-object mode. And then select the spline you want to reverse. Then you can right-click and choose "reverse spline" here. Or you can also scroll down in the geometry section, and then click this "reverse" button. If you do that, you can see that the vertex numbering is reversed. Now if you perform another "Insert" command. The new vertices will be created in a clockwise direction. The last thing I want to mention is that after the initial vertex, you basically create new vertices using the same method as you would create the line object. So you can click-drag to create Bezier type vertices. You can also perform the Alt key method to create Bezier-corner type vertices. You can also use the "Backspace" key to cancel the vertex creation. The next technique that we’re going to discuss is Delete. To delete a vertex simply choose a vertex or multiple vertices and then hit the Delete button on the keyboard. This is the fastest way to delete vertices. If somehow you don’t have a Delete key in your keyboard. For example, if you emulate 3ds Max inside an Apple Mac machine. We know that the Delete key in a Mac machine is actually a Backspace key in Windows or Linux. So in this scenario, to delete, you can hold the "Function" button first and then press "Delete". If that doesn’t work, then you can go to the modify panel. Scroll all the way down. You will see the "delete" button. Or you can also go to the "edit" menu and then choose "Delete" here. Alright. Now, you might already notice that deleting a vertex will not cut off the Spline. The Spline will just reconnect automatically if you delete a vertex or vertices. Now, if you do want to cut off the Spline, then you should delete the segments instead, not the vertices. So for example, if I select this segment. Then hit "Delete". Now the Spline is cut off at this location. Basically, the connect command will create a new segment from 2 end-vertices. To do this, first, you need to be in the vertex mode. The connect command only available if you are in the vertex mode. You can find the "Connect" button here. Or you can also right-click and then choose "Connect" here. While the connect mode is active, you can click on one end-vertex and then drag it, and then release the mouse on top of another end-vertex. As you can see, a new segment was created to connect the 2 vertices. After you are done, as always, you can right-click to exit the connect mode. 48. Spline modification: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss 3 spline modification features. They are Fillet, Chamfer, and Outline. In my scene here, I have created a rectangle with a size of 2 m width by 2 m height. And I already converted it into an editable spline. First is the Fillet command. The Fillet command can be used to make corners become rounded. Basically, it will splice a vertex into 2 vertices and then create a curve segment between them. To use the Fillet command, first, you need to be in the vertex mode. "Fillet" is not available if you are in the segment mode or in the spline mode. Then click on this "Fillet" button here until it is active. While in this mode, if you click and drag up the mouse on a vertex, that vertex will be divided into 2 vertices and form a rounded corner. Right-click to exit the fillet mode. Another way to fillet is by using the keyboard input. To do this, first, select the vertex you want to fillet. Then just type in the value here. For example, 50, then press Enter or Escape. The value that you input will be used to define the length of the original vertex to one of the resulting vertices. We can see we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 50 cm from here to here. Alright. Another way to fillet is to drag on the spinner here. For example, first, we can select this vertex here. Then just drag up the spinner here to fillet it. If you want to fillet multiple vertices. First, you need to select them. Then you can either use the first method, which is clicking the button here. And then click and drag up the mouse on any of the vertices. Or, let me undo this. While we have these selected, we can type in here the value, or just click and drag up the spinner here. Alright. So that is the Fillet command. Next is the chamfer command. Basically, this is like the Fillet command, but the resulting segment that connects the 2 vertices form a straight line, not a rounded curve. To use Chamfer, we can use the same methods that we use for fillet. And just like Fillet, Chamfer is also only available in the vertex sub-object mode. So for example, you can activate chamfer here by clicking on this button. Then click and drag up on a vertex, like so. You can see the line here is straight, not curved. The last technique is the "Outline" command. Basically, "Outline" will double the segments along a spline whether be inside or outside of it. The methods of using "Outline" are similar to how we use Fillet or Chamfer. But for "Outline", you need to be in the spline sub-object mode. You cannot use it if you are in the vertex or segment mode. For example, you can click the "Outline" button here. Then while the outline mode is active, you can click and drag on this spline. Dragging up will make the outline go inside and dragging the mouse down will make it go outside. After you are done, don’t forget to right-click once to exit the outline mode. Again, for the keyboard input method, or the spinner dragging method, they are basically similar to the Fillet or Chamfer methods. But there is one option here called "Center", that is unique only to "Outline". If you turn this on, and do another outline. Notice, both the original spline and the new spline are moving away together off the center. In some cases, we do need this "center" option. But just be aware that with this option you will lose the original spline as it will also be modified during the process. 49. Spline Boolean: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss Boolean operations inside editable spline objects. So what is exactly "Boolean"? Well, the term "Boolean" is actually derived from the name "George Boole". He is an English mathematician who helped establish the foundations of the algebra of logic, which is now called Boolean algebra. Some of the most common "Boolean" operations are union, subtraction, and intersection. "Union" is more or less like an addition. For example, if we have A area and B area overlapping like this. A unified with B equal to this C area. Now for subtraction. A subtracted with B equals to something like this. But if B subtracted with A, it will equal to something like this. So for subtraction, the order of the operands will affect the final result. For intersection, if A intersected with B, we’ll get the overlapping area as the result. In 3ds Max, we can create complex shapes by combining two or more shapes using Boolean operations. Before we can use Boolean, it is important that you know how to attach and detach shapes first. If for example, you have a circle that overlaps a rectangle like this. You cannot perform Boolean operations on these two shapes if they are still independent of one another. We need to attach them so they belong to a single object. To do that, first, select one of them and then convert it into an editable spline object. Then find the "attach" button. Click on it and then click on the other object you want to attach. Now, these 2 splines belong to a single object and therefore we can perform Boolean operations on them. If you want to detach a spline. First, you need to be in the spline sub-object mode. Then select a spline, for example, this circle spline. Then choose "detach" here. Now, because "detach" will create a new object, 3ds max asks a name for that new object. I’m sure you get the idea here. For now, I’m just going to cancel it and move on to discussing the Boolean operation. To use Spline Boolean operations, you need to be in the spline sub-object mode. You cannot use Boolean if you are in the vertex or segment sub-object modes. Next, you need to select the spline for the A operand. Remember our diagram before. We need at least 2 operands, A and B. The order of the operands is important if you do subtraction. But if you do union and or intersection, the order of the operands does not matter. Okay. So after you select the A operand, the next step is to select the type of the operation or also known as the operator. Whether be union, subtraction, or intersection. Let’s select "subtraction" for now. Then after that, click on the "Boolean" button here. While this is active, click on the spline that will serve as the B operand. Now, we have something like this. You can right-click to exit the Boolean mode. Let me undo this. Alright. Now, you need to remember that Boolean only works on closed splines. Meaning the path goes into a loop to where the first vertex exists. If any of the splines, whether be the A operand or the B operand has a gap. Then Boolean won’t work. Just to give you a proof. If I select this segment, then press Delete. Now, you cannot perform any Boolean operation as 3ds Max refuses to select the spline. So, again, by knowing this. If you ever encounter a situation where you can not perform Boolean operations on a certain spline. The spline might not be a closed spline. Perhaps there is a tiny gap that you don’t see. You can close an open spline using the connect command as we discussed earlier. But there is also an automatic method to do this and that is by using this "close" command here. As you can see it did a very good job of patching the circle spline. Another thing you need to watch out when dealing with splines for Boolean operation is flipped curves. For example, if I go to the vertex mode. And then drag this handle like so. We now have segments belonging to a single spline that are crossing on each other. This is a bad spline for any circumstances. You can not perform Boolean operations on this type of spline. The last thing that we’re going to discuss is how 3D coordinate and local orientation affect the Boolean operation. Remember that Splines have 3 axes coordinate, X, Y, and Z. If you select this circle spline, for example. And then move it up on the Z-axis, so it is floating above the rectangle spline. Like so. If you have something like this, you can still perform Boolean operations. You need to know that 3Ds Max only cares about the local Z-axis of the object when performing a Boolean operation. So it is like looking at the splines from the top view. Notice, if we perform a subtraction like before on these splines. The result looks normal from the top viewport. But notice if we view this from the perspective viewport. We get something like this. We can see how it curves out nicely upward to the previous circle location. Depending on what you are creating, sometimes this behavior can be beneficial. Let me undo this again. Alright. Until now, we know that Boolean operation only cares about the local Z-axis direction. Remember it is the "local" Z-axis, not the "world" Z-axis. If we go the object mode. And have the move tool active. Then change the reference coordinate to local. We can see the object’s local Z-axis is currently aligned with the world Z-axis. But if we rotate the object, like so. The object’s local Z-axis is now pointing this way. Not up, like the world Z-axis. Now, in this condition. Although the object is rotated, the splines orientation is still perpendicular to the object’s local Z-axis direction. It is like nothing has changed. Therefore the Boolean operation will still work as expected. Okay. Let me undo this again. The problem will occur if you rotate the splines inside the sub-object mode. Because if you do this, they are not perpendicular to the local Z-axis anymore. Now, what if you try to Boolean rotated splines like these. Well, the result will be like looking at the object from the local Z-axis. It looks fine from this viewport. But from the perspective viewport, you can see that the resulting spline has more complex curvatures than how it seems before. Again, these are the things you need to be aware of, especially when working on complex spline objects. 50. Cross insert, Weld, and Trim: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss 3 methods that we can use to create complex shapes by combining multiple shapes. These methods are Cross-insert, Weld, and Trim. Previously we’ve discussed Boolean operations. We know that Boolean operations have some restrictions. For example, they won’t work on open splines and also on flipped splines. Well, if you do have this kind of splines and you need to combine them, then these 3 methods can help you. The first method is the Cross-insert command. In my scene, I have a circle and a line crossing on it. If for example, you want to slice this circle using this line. You cannot do that with the Boolean operations as the line is not a closed spline. Well, the circle is a closed spline. But the line is not. So we do this with "Cross-insert" instead. First, make sure both the splines belong to a single object. We can do that by selecting the line. Right-click and then "attach", and then click on the circle. To use the Cross-insert command you need to be in the vertex mode. Then scroll down until you see the cross-insert button. Now, before you do anything. Notice there is an input field on the right side of it. This is the distance threshold. Basically, if there are segments that overlap one another. And the distance between them is below this number, then cross-insert will work. But, if the distance is higher than the given value here. Then cross-insert won’t work. The default value is already good, so just leave it as is. Next, click the cross-insert button until it is active. Then, you need to find crossing segments such as this one here. Click on it. And this one also. Click on it. Then you can right-click to exit the cross-insert mode. What just happened is that we just created vertices at the segments' intersection locations. If you want to remove the segments that you don’t need. Press 2 to go to the segment sub-object mode. Select the segments you want to remove. Then press Delete. So now we are left with just the segments we want to use. At this stage, it seems that we’re done. But we’re not. You see, cross-insert will actually create 2 vertices on each of the intersecting segments. Basically, we have 2 vertices here. And 2 vertices here also. So, just remember that after doing a cross-insert you need to fix these double vertices problems. And we can easily do that by using the next technique that we’re going to discuss, which is "weld". Basically, "weld" will join vertices based on the provided distance threshold. To use the "weld" command you need to be in the vertex mode. You cannot access it if you are in the segment or the spline sub-object modes. You can see the "weld" button here. You can also access it via the quad menu. To use "weld", first, you can select only the vertices that you want to weld like so. Or if you are certain that the other vertices are located much further then this threshold value. If that is the case, then you can simply select all of the vertices by pressing Ctrl + A. Then click "weld" here. Now, if I try to move these vertices. We can see they are already joined together. Okay. The last technique that we’re going to discuss is "Trim". "Trim" is like cross-insert on steroids. Basically, it will remove unwanted segments but also add vertices at the intersection points automatically. But before I show you how to use "Trim". I think now is the perfect time to show you how to use this "create line" command. Basically, with this command, you can create a spline like you normally do create line objects from the create panel. So all of the techniques of creating the line objects also apply to this command. Like right-clicking to finish up a line creation, or click-dragging to create a Bezier vertex, or holding Alt and drag, etc. But the spline you are creating using this method will become part of this object right away. You don’t have to use the attach command afterward. Okay. So now we have something like this. To use the "Trim" command, you need to be in the spline sub-object mode. Then you can find the "Trim" button down here beneath the Boolean buttons. While this is on. You can hover your mouse on any intersecting segments and just click on it to remove it. This is a great tool to quickly clean up messy intersecting splines. After you are done, remember to right-click once to exit the "Trim" mode. Now, just like cross-insert. You will have double vertices as part of the result. We can tell this right away by looking at the vertices' color. The yellow-colored vertices are the starting vertices. They have vertex ID number one. A single spline can only have one vertex with yellow color. If you see a bunch of them like these. This is a strong indication that we are actually looking at multiple splines. Not one continuous spline. To join these double vertices, we can simply use the "Weld" command, like before. So make sure you are in the vertex mode now. Then Ctrl + A to select all. Then right-click and then choose "weld vertices" here. Now we have a single closed spline as the result. 51. Extrude modifier: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss the Extrude modifier. The main purpose of spline existence is to help us create 3D geometries. And one way to do that is by using the extrude modifier. Essentially the extrude modifier adds depth or thickness to the spline objects. To give you an example, let’s create a star shape. Reduce the points value to 5. And then increase the "fillet radius 1" value so the spikes become rounded. After we have something like this. We can add the extrude modifier. To add some thickness, just increase the amount value here. Now we have a nice looking 3D star geometry. Let’s discuss some of the parameters. The "segments" here determine the number of edges at the side area. To see the effect, first, you need to press F4 so the viewport displays the edges. The more you increase this value, the more edges we have on the side area. The "Cap start" option will define whether we have polygon closing the bottom part or not. While the "cap end" option defines the top part. Next is the "morph" or "grid" option. This is used to define the pattern of the invisible edges at the cap polygons. In most cases, you don’t really need to care about this option unless you want to edit the geometry further using an editable mesh modifier. If you want to see the difference, first, choose "morph" here. Then add a modifier called the "edit mesh" modifier. Make sure the "show end result" option is on. Then go to the edge sub-object mode. You can see the invisible structure of the cap polygon is like this when we use the "Morph" option. Now if we go back to the extrude modifier. Just choose "yes". Then choose "grid" now. Go back up and activate the edge sub-object mode again. We can see the grid-like structure on the cap polygons. Honestly, I never find a good reason to use this invisible grid, so I never use it. Let’s remove the "edit mesh" modifier. And just use the default option which is "morph". The output option determines the type of geometry produced by the modifier. Just set this to the default which is "mesh". We’ve discussed about this before. In summary, the CG industry mostly doesn’t use "patch" or "NURBS" anymore. And the rest is about texture mapping which we’re not going to discuss in this section. But we can discuss the "smooth" option here. If this is off. And we press F4 to hide the edges. You can see how the rounded spike areas become faceted. If we turn this on again. 3Ds Max will add an automatic smoothing group on the geometry. Alright. One important concept to understand when dealing with the Extrude modifier is the nested spline. What I mean about nested splines is when you have closed splines inside another closed spline. For example, you can create a donut shape, like so. The donut shape is unique because we have a closed spline inside another closed spline. If you add an extrude modifier to this object. As you can see, the inner closed spline will become a hole. Now, what if we have another closed spline inside the hole area? Well, it will become solid again. To show you the proof. Let’s first convert this object into an editable spline object. But, notice when you right-click and try to convert this object. The editable spline option does not exist. Why is that? Well, that is because the object is now a geometry object, thanks to the extrude modifier. To convert this object into an editable spline, we need to remove the extrude modifier first. Then we can convert this object into an editable spline. To create another circle at the center. Go to the spline sub-object mode. Select this spline. Then activate the scale tool. Hold the Shift key and then scale this down. We just created a duplicate while performing a scale. Now, go back to the top-level mode. And if we add an extrude modifier on top. We have a solid area, a hole, and then solid again. I’m pretty sure you get the idea here. One last thing I need to mention is that nested splines only work if the closed spline fully encapsulates the other closed spline. If they are intersecting, just a tiny bit, they will not form holes. For example, if we go back to the editable spline. And make sure the "show end result" option is turned on. If I select the second circle here. And then just move this around on the XY plane. Notice when this spline penetrates the large circle spline. The hole effect is gone. And now the small circle that becomes the hole. 52. Lathe modifier: In this lesson video, we’re going to cover the "Lathe" modifier. This is the second modifier that we can use to convert splines into 3D objects. So, what is exactly "lathe"? Well, you can think of "Lathe" like a pottery process. When creating vases, a pottery maker will put a lump of clay on top of a revolving table. He only needs to deform the clay at one side, as the revolving table distributes the changes around the clay uniformly. Essentially, with the "Lathe" modifier, you only need to provide a profile spline like this one. The "Lathe" modifier then revolve the spline so it becomes like this 3D object. Now, to create the profile spline for a "Lathe" modifier, there are several best practices that you should follow. First, you should use the front viewport when creating it. Second, you should create the profile assuming that the profile is located on the right side of the final result object. And the third, You should create the spline from bottom to top. Just remember these 3 rules as these will avoid you from doing any additional works later down the road. Alright. For example, let’s say we want to create a bowl. Before we start, let’s turn on the 3D snapping mode. For the settings. Turn off everything except the "grid points"’ checkbox. To create the profile for the bowl, remember the rules. Press F to go to the front viewport. If the bowl model will be here at the center, then we need to create the profile spline here at the right side. Not here, because this will be the left side of it. Okay. Go to the create panel and click on the "line" button. Then we want to start from the bottom and then move up. So click here to snap to the center. Then click here. At this point, press S to turn off the snapping mode. Click here. Click-drag here to create a Bezier vertex. Click here. Then here. Then click-drag again in here. Then click here. From this point, we want to create a straight horizontal line and also snap to the center at the end. So press S to turn on the snapping mode. Then hold Shift and move the mouse to a grid point near the centerline. Then click here. Right-click to finalize the line creation. Then right-click again to exit the line object mode. And press S to turn off snapping. Alright. We now have a profile for our bowl object. Press P. Then go to the modify panel and add a "Lathe" modifier. Currently, we have this ugly looking object. The problem with this object is that the lathe modifier is using the center of the object as the rotational axis. You can access the axis by clicking this expand button and click on the "axis" text here. In this mode, when you do a movement, you are moving the lathe rotational axis and not the object itself. Now, to move the axis to be exactly at the leftmost vertex location, we can just click the "minimum" button here. So this will move the axis back to the center. And this will move it to the rightmost vertex location. What we need now is the "minimum" option. Okay. Now notice how the center area looks like having a flipped normal issue. If we press F4. Basically, this is because there are many vertices at the center area that are not welded together. So to fix this we can click this "weld core" option here. We don’t need to flip the normals as they are already correct. For the "segments" value, I think we need more to make it smoother. Let’s input 36 for now. Press F4 again. So this is what we have so far. For the direction. The default value is the Y-axis. If we set this to X-axis, it will use the X-axis direction as the rotational axis. And this is what happens if we use the Z-axis. Now, the lathe modifier only cares about the local axis of the object and not the world axis. If we go back to the object mode. And use the "local" reference coordinate. You can see the Z-axis of the object is this way, and the Y-axis is this way. Just remember that every time you create a line object, or other shape objects actually. The local Z-axis is always perpendicular to the shape plane. Okay. So again the default direction is the Y-axis, and make sure you set this to "minimum". We already covered these options here when we discussed the extrude modifier. But what about this "cap start" and "cap end" options here? They don’t seem to do anything. Well, to see what these options do, we need 2 things. First, the profile has to be a closed spline. And second, we need to set the "degrees" value to be lower than 360. To show you what I mean. You can go back to the line base object. Go to the spline sub-object mode. And find the "close" command down here and then click on it. We now have a closed spline. Now go back to the top-level mode and then go to the "Lathe" modifier. Reduce the "degrees" value here until around this number. Now, notice if we turn off the "cap start" option, we'll get a hole in this area. And if we turn off the "cap end" option, we'll get a hole also in this area. Most of the time you want to turn on these 2 options. Okay guys, so that is the "lathe" modifier. 53. Bevel profile modifier: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss the "Bevel profile" modifier. Just like the previous extrude modifier, we use this modifier to convert spline objects into 3D geometrical objects. But unlike the Extrude modifier that only adds linear thickness to spline objects, the "Bevel profile" modifier can produce custom extrusion shape. To achieve this, the "Bevel profile" modifier can use 2 different methods. First is by using predefined presets and or parameters. And second by using another spline object for the profile reference. Let’s discuss the first method which is using parameters. Let’s create a star shape. Make any changes that you like on the star shape. Now, if you open the modify panel and click on the modifier list, and then type "BE". You can see 2 modifiers here, "Bevel" and "Bevel profile" modifiers. Currently, we’re discussing the "Bevel profile" modifier, and not the "Bevel" modifier. Okay. So make sure you click on the "Bevel profile" modifier here. By default, the Bevel profile modifier will create this flat geometry. You can add thickness to it by increasing this "Extrude" value. The "Extrude segments" here determine the number of edges on the side area. To see the difference you need to press F4 first. As you can see the more segments value the more edges we have along the extrusion height. Now, what makes "Bevel profile" different from the "Extrude" modifier is these options down here. This pull-down list provides predefined presets for the Bevel shape. This is "concave". This is "convex". This is "Engrave", and so on. Let’s change this back to "Concave". The "Bevel depth" defines the size of the bevel area. This value will change both the height and the width uniformly. But if you turn on this "width" option. Now, this depth value will only affect the height. And the width value here will only affect the width. The "push" parameter can be used to change the direction of the profile. A negative value will reverse the effect. Let’s change this back to 1 as the default value. The "outline offset" is used to add offset to the base spline object. The "steps" value is used to determine the number of edges in the Bevel area. Let’s just set this to 6 for now. Next is the "optimize" option. This option is useful to automatically reduce edges on flat surfaces. To see the effect of the "optimize" option, we need a linear-shaped bevel profile. Let’s use "engrave" here for example. If we turn off the optimize option here, each segment will have 6 edges even though these surfaces don’t need that much as they are just flat surfaces. Most of the time it is better to just leave this option on. The biggest feature of the parametric Bevel Profile is this "Bevel profile editor". Basically, with this "Bevel profile editor", you can create your own custom profile shape. And you can even save your custom shape as one of the presets you see here in this list. For now, let’s pick "concave" here. Then click the "Bevel profile editor" button. A floating window will appear displaying the bevel profile based on the concave preset. You can see the curve here. It looks like the shape of the bevel area on the left side of the object. If you want to make changes here and see the result directly on the object, you can turn on this option called "auto-update". Now if we click here for example and then drag it like so. The 3D object changes automatically. So that is how you add a new point on the profile. Simply hover the mouse on any part of the curve, until you see a dot cursor. And then click-drag to create a point. To remove a point. Make sure the point is selected first. To do that, you can hover the mouse until the plus cursor appears, and then click to select it. You can also click-drag like this to select multiple points. To remove them, you can either click here. Or just press the Delete key on the keyboard. Now, by default, clicking and dragg ing will create a corner type point. If you want to convert the point to a Bezier or a Bezier-corner type. You can click this button for a Bezier-corner type. And this button for a Bezier type. Or you can simply hover your mouse on any of the points, and then right-click. Then choose the type you want to use. So these are the basics of creating custom bevel profile shapes. If you like the shape and you want to save it so you can reuse it again and again in the future. You can click this "save as" button and name it to "widhi", just for example. And click "OK". Next time you create a Bevel-profile, you can recall the shape via the preset pull-down list here. Okay. Now, what If you want to remove your custom preset? Can we do that? Well, yes, but you need to do it manually. You need to open your file explorer. And then find the folder where 3Ds Max stores the user data. Usually, it is in C drive. "Users", then user name, "Autodesk", your 3ds Max version, "user settings", and "Bevel presets". In this folder, you can find all of the custom bevel preset files. Just select the file that you want and then delete it. Now, if you go back to 3ds Max. And switch to a different Bevel preset. Sometimes you need to do this a couple of times. Now you can not see the custom Bevel profile anymore from the list. Alright. So that is how you create "Bevel profile" using the parameters. For the capping section, I believe you can explore this on your own. And for the cap type, we already discussed this in the earlier extrude modifier lesson. And we need to skip this area as we haven’t discussed material yet. The second method of creating a Bevel profile is by using a secondary spline for the profile reference. So basically you need 2 splines for this method to work. First, you need a base spline, and second, you need a profile spline. When creating the profile spline, there are several best practices that you should follow. These rules are not a must, but these can save you from additional works later. Okay. The first rule is always try to use the front viewport when creating the profile. Second, create the profile as if it is located on the right side of the base object. And finally, if you need to create an open profile then you need to create it from bottom to top. For closed spline profiles, you can create it from and to any direction you like. We’ll discuss more on this later. For example, let’s say we want to create a classic style painting frame. First, we need a rectangular base object. So let’s create a rectangle in the perspective viewport. Set the length to 100 cm and the width to 170 cm. Alright. Now let’s create the profile. Remember the rules. Go to the front viewport. Create the profile on the right side of the base object. And also make sure we create it from bottom to top. First, click in here, then in here and so on. I’m creating only corner type vertices now just to speed things up. Make sure the overall height of the profile is not higher than 5 cm. For your information, this grid is at 10 cm size by default. So try to make the profile to be more or less at half of the grid. Alright. Now that is done. Press P. Select the base object and then add a "bevel profile" modifier. So, this is something that you need to remember. You need to apply the modifier on the base object, not on the profile object. Okay. Previously, we used this "improved" option. Now, select the "classic" option. As you can see the classic method doesn’t have as many parameters as the "improved" version. But you can find the "pick profile" button here. Click on it, and then click on the profile spline. Now, we have something like this. As long as you have the modifier, the connection to the profile spline is alive. Meaning, if we go back to the profile object again. And then edit the vertices. The changes will reflect instantly on the resulting geometry. But, if for example, I select the base object and then convert it into an editable poly object. That will cause the link to the profile object gone as they are both independent objects. Alright. Now, besides open type splines, we can also use closed type splines for the profile. One thing you need to know when using a closed spline profile is that the resulting object will have a void in the center. This is of course due to the nature of the profile. For example, if we select this profile object. Go to the vertex mode. Right-click and then choose "connect". Click and drag from this vertex to this vertex to close the spline. You can see that the center area is now void. One last thing I want to mention is about the profile-to-base reference. In this profile spline, you can see that this vertex is different. It has a yellow color while the others are white. This happens because it is the first vertex we created. Knowing where the first vertex located is very important, because that is where 3ds Max aligns the profile to the base object. If, for example, we select this vertex here. Then right-click and then choose "make first" here. This vertex is now the first vertex. And the resulting bevel profile object becomes smaller, as it is now using this vertex to align to the spline in the base object. 54. Project: the curtain: In this project lesson video, we are going to add curtains on the left side and also on the right side. But, before we do that. After looking at the existing room model, I decided to make some changes to make it look better. First, I want to push the ceiling forward by 30 cm. And second, I want to push the lower part of the window down by 30 cm also. Before we do any 3D modeling, at the current viewport settings, notice how dark the ceiling is. To fix this, you can try switching the display mode to "performance" for example. This can help us to see the ceiling area better. Alright. Select this ceiling object. Hold Ctrl and then also this ceiling object. Activate the offset mode. And then in the Y-axis field, input 30, then press Enter. With this, now the gap for the curtain rail is only 20 cm. But, of course, this created a void in this back area. To fix this, just press 2 to go to edge mode. Select the edge. Hold the Shift key, and drag this in the Y-axis direction. Then press 2 again to exit to top-level mode. Next, let's fix the window. For this process, it is better that we isolate the objects first. So, select the glass, frame, and wall section. Right-click and choose "isolate selection". Select the wall object. And go to vertex mode. Select these vertices. And also these vertices. Move them down for 30 cm. Go back to top-level mode. Select the frame object. Go to vertex mode that is inside the editable poly. Then select all of these vertices. Move them down also for 30 cm. Alright. And, finally, the window glass object. The process is basically the same. Select the vertices. And then move them down for 30 cm. After you are done, you can exit the isolation mode. I think the room looks a lot better now. Next, let's create the curtains. For this, we need to go to the top view. We can press G to hide the grid. Now, even with the viewport set to wireframe mode, we can not see the lines on the ceiling object. Why is that? Well, this is because we turned on the backface culling on the ceiling object. To turn it off. You can select it first. Right-click and then choose "object properties". Then turn off the "backface cull" option. We can turn this on again later when we need to place the furniture. Now, we can clearly see the 20 cm gap in front of the window. For the curtain, we want it to span from the left corner to about this location, or perhaps less. Go to the create panel. And then "spline". And then choose "line". Before we draw any line, make sure that the "initial type" and the "drag type" are both set to "corner". After all of these are set, we can start creating the curtain shape. We don't need any smooth vertices or curved segments on this curtain object as we are going to use subdivision to smooth it out. After the left part is done, we can move on to the right part. But, before we create anything. Turn off this "start new shape" option. With this option off, if we create a spline object, 3ds Max will not create a new object. Instead, it will attach the shape automatically to the selected spline object, which is this object, in our case. So, let's continue from this point. Right-click to finish up. And right-click again to exit the creation mode. As you can see both the left and the right part is a single object. So, this is what we have so far. Let's center out the pivot point for now. And, I think I want to tweak some of the vertices. If you want to tweak the vertices further, you can go to vertex mode. And just move the vertices around as you like. In this process, it is better to activate both X and Y axes and click and drag the vertices directly. Alright. After you are done, you can rename the object to "Curtain". Let's go back to the perspective view. To add thickness or height to the "curtain" object, we can use the extrude modifier. For the amount, set it to 300. To help with the shading, let's add 4 segments. Currently, if we zoom in, we can see that the curtain is not smooth. Which is expected. To smooth it out we can add a modifier called "Turbo smooth". "Turbo smooth" is one of the modifiers that can perform subdivisions. We will discuss subdivisions more in-depth in later lessons. For now, we just need to know that it basically smooths out 3D surfaces by dividing the polygons inside them. So this is what we have so far. 55. Using reference image: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss how to use a reference image to help with the 3d modeling process. The basic technique is quite simple. You just need to drag and drop the image from the file explorer into a plane object. And that’s it. 3ds max will take care of the material assignment and the material setting for us automatically. But to ensure the best 3d modeling experience when using the reference image, you need to follow this guideline. First, you want to avoid using white color on the reference image. Why? Well, until this point, you already know that 3ds max uses white as the default color to display selected objects or sub-objects. You can imagine how hard it will be to see white-colored sub-objects on top of a white-colored reference image. To avoid this, you can edit the image first using graphic editing software such as Photoshop. Just for example, here I have a reference image of an arc floor lamp product called "bow". This is actually the lamp product we're going to model in the next lesson. As you can see the background area is white. There are many different ways that you can do this. The simplest one is to create a layer on top of the original image. And then fill the layer with a dark color, for example, this blue color. And then change the blending mode to "multiply" or "color burn". Anything that can change the white color. After that, you can just save the file in a PSD format. 3ds max supports using PSD files directly, so you don't need to export the image to PNG or JPG, for example. The second thing that you need to pay attention to is the image aspect ratio. You need to make sure that the width per height value of the reference image is the same as the plane object. Otherwise, the image will be stretched or squashed. For example, we want to place this image on a plane object. We can see that the width of the image is 1964 pixels. And the height of the image is 1309 pixels. Let's create a plane object in the front viewport. We don't want any segments on the plane object as these can get in the way of the modeling process. Now, if we just type here 1964, the plane object will be very very big. We can use a tenth of the original pixel values. So we use the number 196.4 instead. And for the length value, we put 130.9. Now that we have the aspect ratio correct, we can open the file explorer. And then just drag the PSD file we saved before into the plane object. And this is what we have so far. Let's center the plane object position. But move it back a bit in the Y-axis direction so that later it does not intersect with the 3d model. The next thing that you need to do is to fix the viewport settings. By default, 3ds max reduces texture quality in the viewport to maintain performance. These default settings will make the reference image look worse than its original resolution. There are 2 settings that you need to fix. The first is the texture display resolution. To access it, click on the third label menu. Then choose "viewport global settings". In the "display performance" tab. You can see these "maximum" options. These are the values used by 3ds Max to cap the image resolution. Just change the "texture maps" value to "9999". Then click the OK button. The second setting that you need to change is the "material rendering level". To access this option, you can click on the third label menu again. And then choose "per-view presets". What you need to do is to switch this "material rendering level" mode to the "advanced material". Now, if you choose the "high quality" preset up here. This option automatically changed to the advanced mode. But, you will also have these "ambient occlusion", and "shadows", and "skylight", and other kinds of stuff turned on also. To avoid this. We can just use the "standard" preset. But we change the "material rendering level" mode to "advanced material". This will make the reference image look sharper in the viewport. After you are done, just close the window. The next thing that we want to do is to scale the reference image so it is at the correct scale. We can do this in many different ways. But, first, we need to define part of the model that we want to use as the scale reference. For this scenario, I prefer not to use the height and width values of the model for the scale reference. Because both values are adjustable. They are not fixed values. In this case, I prefer to use the base part for the scale reference. So, to do this. In the perspective view, create a cylinder object. The radius value here is half of the diameter. So 38 divided by 2 equals 19 cm. Place this cylinder near the base part in the reference image. To make the scaling process a lot easier. You can reposition the pivot point first so it is at the location of the cylinder object. Then, turn off the "affect pivot only" mode. And then use the scale tool to perform a uniform scaling. Just do what it takes to make the scale of the plane object correct. After the scale is correct. The last step is to lock the reference image so it is safe from any accidental changes. For this, we can freeze the plane object. To do that, we can right-click and then open the "object properties" window. You can freeze the object simply by turning this option on. But, please note that by default, frozen objects are displayed in grey. And so you won't be able to see the image or texture on that object. To fix this issue, you need to turn off this option "show frozen in gray". Click OK to close the window. Now, we can not select or make any changes to this plane object anymore, as it is frozen. But we can still see the reference image on the object. If later you need to unfreeze the object. You can right-click and choose this option "unfreeze all". Now, when modeling using a reference image, you will often need to see the object in wireframe mode but at the same time still see the reference image. If we just use the F3 shortcut to activate the wireframe mode, all of the objects, including the reference image will become wireframes. This is not what we need. One solution to this is using the see-through object mode. The shortcut for this is Alt + X. As you can see, only the selected object looks transparent. The other objects in the scene are still using the default view mode. You can press Alt + X again to turn off the see-through mode. If you ever forget the shortcut, you can select the object. Right-click, open the "object properties" window. And then activate the "see-through" mode here. But this method is not as convenient as using the shortcut. Another way to turn on the see-through mode is by going to the "display" panel. If you scroll down, you will see the "see-through" checkbox here. So this is one way to do it. Again, I recommend you memorize the Alt + X shortcut, especially if you often need to model 3d objects from reference images. If using the see-through mode is still not enough. You can also use the visibility value to decrease the object's surface opacity even further. To do that, you can open the "object properties" again. And just turn this "visibility" value way down. For example, 0.1. If you click OK. As you can see the object's surface looks almost fully transparent. But you can still see and work with the sub-objects as if you are in wireframe mode. 56. Project: The Bow floor lamp Part 1: In this project lesson video and the video after this, we will model this floor lamp product called "Bow". Besides using familiar 3d modeling techniques that we've learned and used before, in this lesson, we will be using a new modeling technique called the "swift loop". This is the file that we have created in the previous lesson when we discussed reference images. We already have a cylinder object, so let's just use this to create the foot part. If you go to the front view. Here you can adjust the height of the cylinder by following the reference. We can use this point as the base. And just tweak the height value until it matches the reference. For the height segments, we don't need more than 1 segment. But for the sides, let's make this 36. This is so the object's round surface looks smoother in the rendering result. If you are done, you can convert the object into an editable poly. Go to polygon mode. We want to create the black rubber padding. Select the bottom polygon. Inset it just a little. And then extrude it also just a little. Next, we can select this edge loop. And then chamfer it for 2 mm. We don't need any segment for this. And then click OK. For the top polygon. We can use a "bevel" command. Not too much. Just enough so we can select the edge loop here. And let's move this loop down. For the top polygon, I think we can add another inset just to help with the shading. Now, if you press Alt + X to turn off the see-through mode. We can see that we haven't assigned any material to this object. So press M and just use our default grey material. Next, you can press F4 to hide the edges. And zoom in to check the smoothing group. As you can see the polygons in this part look terrible. To quickly fix the smoothing group, we can select all the polygons. Then in the smoothing group section. You can use 30 degrees for the threshold. And then click on the "auto smooth" button. And so this is what we have so far. Next, let's model the base rod. For this, we can start with a new cylinder object. Assign our default grey material. And let's switch to the front view. We can press Alt + X to turn on the see-through mode. Position the cylinder object so that we can easily compare it against the reference. We want the radius to be the same size as the smaller rod diameter. We can just tweak the radius value. And reposition the object if needed. Let's round the radius value to 1.26. Now for the sides value, because it is relatively small. We can get away with a lower value like 20. Alright. We can now convert the object into an editable poly. Previously we needed to use the connect command to add a custom segment or loop. Now, we are going to use a command called "swift loop". To access this command, originally, you need to open the "ribbon menu". Then go to "edit". And then choose "swift loop" here. While in this mode, you can hover the mouse cursor on top of an edge. 3ds max will display an edge loop preview. And if we click the mouse, the edge loop will be created on that specific location. After that, you can right-click to exit the "swift loop" mode. The shortcut for the "swift loop" command is Alt + 1. So, if we press Alt + 1, we are now in the "Swift loop" mode again. And every time we click on an edge, a new edge loop will be created on that location. Remember to right-click afterward to exit from the "Swift loop" mode. Let me undo these, for now. Next, we need to extrude these polygons. So select the polygons. Right-click and then choose "extrude". For the extrude type, we need to choose "local normal". Change the extrude amount so the size matches the reference image. Let's just round this value to 0.55. Okay. And then let's select the edge loop here. And move the edge loop downward just a little. And, I think we need to bring these vertices down also. Next, for the top area. Basically, we need to do the same thing. But, first, we can bring these vertices up. Press Alt + 1 to activate the "swift loop" mode. Click here to create a loop. Right-click to exit the mode. Then we can select these polygons. Right-click and then choose "Extrude". We will be using the same extrude value as the previous one. Next, we can select this edge loop. And then move the edge loop down. And for the edge loop here, we can chamfer it. Set this to 2 mm. And then zero out this segment value. Sorry, I think 2 mm is too much. Let's just use 1 mm. Okay. Finally, we can select all the polygons. And then use 30 degrees for the auto smooth threshold. Now, we can go back to the top-level mode. Press Alt + X to turn off the see-through mode. And just check the model. I think this is already looking good. Let's zero out the Y-axis coordinate. And this foot object also. Go to the front view. And reposition the foot base object so it is touching the rod object. For the arm and the lamp head parts, we will continue creating them in the next video. 57. Project: The Bow floor lamp Part 2: Let's continue modeling the floor lamp. We've modeled the foot and the base rod in the previous video. Now, let's focus on creating the arm. To create the arm part we can start with a line object. So, in the front view. Create a line by clicking and dragging here. Then here. And finally here. Right-click. Go to vertex mode. And just adjust the handles. But before we continue, notice how jagged the curve is. This is because, by default, we only get 6 segments between vertices to define the curvature. In spline objects, these segments are controlled by the "interpolation steps" value. As you can see it is set to 6 by default. Let's increase this to 12. Or perhaps 16. Now the curve is smoother as there are 16 segments between vertices. Let's adjust the handles further to follow the reference as much as we can. Alright. Next, we need to convert the spline object into a 3D object. For this, we can open the "rendering" section. You will see these 2 enable options. Just turn on both of them. Now, the spline is rendered like it is a hose. Currently, it is black. Let's assign our grey material. I think I already like the default settings. But, in case you want to tweak the geometry. For example, you want to have more side segments. You can just change the value here. For the thickness, I think it is already matching the reference quite well. You can press Alt + X to activate the see-through mode. But, in case you want to change the thickness, you can do so by changing this thickness value. Let me get this back to 1. I think I need to increase the interpolation steps value to 20. After you are satisfied with the initial look, you can convert the object into an editable poly. Next, we want to make the left side of the arc thicker. For that, we can select these end polygons. Then press the grow button here. Let me zoom out a bit. You can also use the shortcut Ctrl + Page up to grow the selection. Until half of the arc is selected. Then right-click and perform extrude. Choose "local-normal" for the extrude type. And adjust the amount as needed. I think 0.25 is enough. Okay. Next, we want to add an edge loop at this location. For this, we can use the "Swift loop" command. So press Alt + 1. Click here. And then right-click to exit the mode. Select the polygons in this area. And then perform another extrude. The previous value is already good. So just click OK. Then go to edge mode and select the edge loop here. Chamfer it for, I think 0.1 is enough. Without any segment. Next, select this edge loop. This edge loop is actually a bit tilted. But it is too small to be noticeable. Let's just chamfer the edge loop for 2 mm. And this is what we have so far. Next, let's focus on the end part. Press Alt + 1 and add a "swift loop" here. We need to remove this edge loop. So select the edge loop. Then right-click. Now, this is important. You need to hold Ctrl and then click on the "remove" button here. And we have something like this. If we did not hold the Ctrl key while performing "remove". You will get leftover vertices in this area. Let's move these vertices so it is straight. Select the polygons here. Then perform another local normal extrude. I think 0.3 is good enough. Okay. Next, select these edges. Hold Ctrl and also these edges. Perform "chamfer" for 2 mm. And we are done modeling the arm. As the final touch, we can select all the polygons. And then use the auto smooth feature with a 30 degrees threshold to fix the smoothing group automatically. Let's see the result up close. We can press Alt + X again to turn off the see-through mode. The smoothing group is still not good. I think 30 degrees is not enough. Let's select all the polygons again. But now, we set the angle threshold to 40 degrees. Press "auto smooth" again. And we finally have a good smoothing group on the arm object. Next, we can move the arm. Or maybe, we can just select the foot and the base rod objects. Activate the X-axis constraint. And move them instead to match the arm position. Now, let's focus on creating the lamp head part. Go to the front view. Zoom in to this area. We are going to use the "Lathe" modifier for this part. Activate the line object. And just create a line here. Oh, sorry. The rendering settings are still active by default from the previous edit. Let's turn off all of these options. Delete this line. And let's retry this again. Click here. Click-drag here, hold Alt, and move the mouse cursor here. Release and then click-drag in here. Right-click to finish up. The curvature is too detailed for a small object. This is because we still have 20 steps for the interpolation value. Let's reduce this to only 4 to optimize the polygon count. After you are done, you can add a "lathe" modifier. Activate the axis sub-object mode. And then move it to the left until the overall size matches the reference. For the "segments" value, I think we need more than 16. Let's input 24. After that, you can convert the object into an editable poly. And let's assign our default grey material for now. To close the holes, we can select the border around the hole. Right-click, and then choose "cap". Just do the same with the bottom part. Alright, this part is done. Next, we want to create the large round lamp head. I think this part is basically just a sphere. So let's just do that. Create a new sphere object. Assign the default material. Then, let's use the front view so we can resize the sphere object against the reference image much easier. Press Alt + X to use the see-through mode. And just position the sphere object and also change the radius value as needed. After the size looks correct, we can cut the sphere using the "hemisphere" parameter. Alright. So this is what we have so far. Press Alt + X. And convert the sphere object into an editable poly. Then, select the center vertex and then press Delete. Now, if you look at this product's photo. You can see that the inner part of the lamp head has a different material. It is white, while the outer part is yellow. We can add a shell modifier to the object to add thickness to it. We don't need the outer amount. We only need the inner amount. Let's make this 1 mm. Nope, too thin. Let's try 2 mm. Okay, I think this is just about right. Convert the object into an editable poly to collapse the modifier. Alright. Now move the sphere so that the Y-axis coordinate is at zero. For this part, let's center out the pivot point first, just to be safe. The Y-axis coordinate is already at zero. To align the top part to the bottom part, besides inputting the X-axis value manually, you can also use the align tool. So, while the top part is selected. Activate the align tool. Then click on the bottom part. For now, we only need to align the X-axis. Set "center" for the current and the target objects. And then click OK. Now, we can select the bottom part. Use the attach command, and select the top part. Finally, depending on how you want to use the model. You may not need to combine all of these objects into a single object. But, for our project, we want to combine them all so it will be easier when later we need to move the lamp around. So, select the foot object. Right-click, attach, and click on the other objects. And then we can rename the object to "bow floor lamp". And it is done. 58. Project: Tileable 3D pattern: In this project lesson video, we’re going to create this tileable 3D pattern based on a reference image. For a disclaimer, I downloaded this reference image from 123rf.com. Just like the previous project, the skill you’ll gain from this project can be very useful for creating wall panels, or wall reliefs, or furniture, etc. Basically, anything that requires a tileable 3D pattern. So let’s begin. First, let’s create a plane object. Set it to square as the reference image has a square size ratio. Click-drag from the center. And zero out all of the coordinate values. Next, you can place the reference image onto the plane object. Press T to go to the top viewport. And press F3 to see the surfaces. Then to make the image looks better, you can press Shift + F3 or just click here and choose the “high quality” preset. Now, you really want to avoid working on images that have a pure white color like this. Because 3ds Max by default uses white color for the selected objects. So, you can imagine having white colored objects on top of a white colored background. It will be very hard if not impossible to work like that. Previously I edited the images off the record in Photoshop to make them darker. Now, I’m going to show you how you can do that right inside 3ds Max. Open the material editor by clicking this button here, or simply by pressing M on the keyboard. Then open the material of the plane object. We can use this eyedropper tool and click on the plane object. Then double click on the material so we can access the parameters in this right section. First, we want to remove all of the shading colors. So set the self-illumination value to 100 percent. Then for the "diffuse" color, we want to have a dark blue color. Okay. Currently, the diffuse color doesn’t do anything as the texture image is overriding it. This is like the image is on top of the diffuse color and covering it. To reduce the image opacity so we can bring back more of the diffuse color, we can expand the “Maps” section here. You will see the “diffuse color” map slot. Reduce the “amount” value here to only 10 percent. As you can see, we now have more dark blue colors than black and white colors. You can press M again to hide the material editor. To create one unit of a tileable pattern. We need to pick one point in the image and then try to find the next similar point in a diagonal direction. So this is the next point. Then we can create a rectangle based on those 2 points. This will be the area we want to focus on. To block the area we can create a rectangle. Let’s zoom in a bit. Then click on this point and then drag until the second point. Don’t worry if we can’t get it right at the first try. We can tweak it further by first converting it into an editable spline. Go to the segment mode. Select the upper segment, and move it up and down as needed. Then select the left segment. We can click the X arrow to constrain the movement to the X-axis. This way we can drag the segment on the X-axis without directly using the transform gizmo. Then the right segment. Finally, we can adjust the bottom segment. Use the Y-axis constraint for this segment. Next, we can start creating the shapes. Let’s start with the circle. Press 3 again to go back to the top-level mode. Go to the create panel and create a circle in this location. And just adjust the position so it matches the reference. I think I need to make it just slightly bigger. Okay. Next, we can copy this circle by holding Shift and drag it here. Adjust the position again as needed. Then hold Shift while dragging the circle to the right. Remember we only use the X-axis now and shouldn't change the Y-axis position. Next, we want to create the S-letter shape. Let’s start in this area. Use the line object. Turn on the snapping mode. But for the setting, turn off everything except the vertex option. Alright. Click here to snap to this vertex. Then press S to turn off the snapping mode. Then click here, then here, and so on. Until we are back to the first vertex. Choose yes to close the spline. Press 1 to go to the vertex mode. Then select this vertex here. And let’s convert this into a Bezier type. Adjust the handle so it follows the reference. Then this vertex. Convert this into a Bezier type also. Adjust the handles as needed. Now for this vertex, this should be a Bezier-corner type. This one should be a Bezier-corner type also. I’m speeding up the video now as there is no new technique to discuss. After we have the shape that we want, go to the top-level mode. Hold Shift and drag it up to copy it. Click “Ok” to copy. Then activate the snapping mode. Hover on this vertex and then drag it to snap to this vertex. Next, turn off the snapping mode first. Then duplicate the shape to this area. Now to flip this object horizontally we can click this “mirror” button here. Just click the “Ok” button because the default setting is already correct. We want to mirror in the X-axis. And we don’t need to create any duplicate. Okay. So we have a mirrored version. Then just position it and duplicate again, and just repeat the process. After you have all of the shapes in place, we can now combine them all into a single object. We can select the rectangle shape. Right-click and then choose “attach”. And keep clicking on the other shapes to attach them. Alright. I think I want to increase the interpolation steps to 10. Next, go to the spline sub-object mode and then activate the "trim" command. Keep clicking on the segments that we don’t need to remove them. After you are done, you can go back to the top-level mode. We want to hide the reference image. Click on it and then right-click, and choose “hide selection”. Press P. Previously we haven’t "weld" the vertices after performing Trim. So let’s go back to the vertex sub-object mode. Ctrl + A to select all. Then find the weld command and then click on that button. Alright. Next, press 1 to go back to the top-level mode. Then add an extrude modifier. Let’s input 2 cm for the amount value. So until now, we have something like this. Next, to duplicate the object to the X and also to the Y direction. First, we need to know the exact dimension of the object. How much the width and the length of it. To do that, we can open the "utilities" panel. Then click on the "measure" button here. So we can see the precise dimension down here. We’re going to use these numbers later. Okay, now open the “tools” menu, then choose “array”. Let’s say we want to create 10 copies in that direction. We need to use the X movement field and input this x dimension value. So type in 16.871 then enter. Now we can turn on the preview button here. We can see the object is repeating seamlessly. Next, we also want to duplicate that way. To do that we need to use the 2D mode. For that direction, I think we only need 5 copies. And we need to use the Y-axis by inputting this Y dimension value. So type in 29.233. Now we can see that our 3D pattern works seamlessly in the Y-axis direction also. We can click the “ok” button here. Finally, as we discussed earlier, you can group them all. Or you can also convert one of them to an editable poly and just attach them. 59. Project: The backdrop: In this project lesson video, we will model the backdrop for the TV and the TV shelves. This is the file we have from the previous curtain project. We will place the backdrop on this wall. So let's select the wall section and then isolate the selection. For the base object, let's create a box. Roughly about this size. Before we continue, you may be wondering by now. The box has a black object color, but why does it look grey in the viewport? Well, this is because we switch the viewport to the "performance" mode when fixing the ceiling. If we set this back to the "standard" mode, we can see the real color of the box object. These viewport display modes have no impact on the geometry nor the rendering result. I just want to point this out to avoid confusion. Alright. Let's set the length to 250 cm. For the width, this should be just 2 cm. Now, for the height. We will have a crown molding later at the top for 20 cm. So set this to 280 cm. Later we will add 4 panels here. So for the length segments, set this to 4. Next, we want to snap this corner to the door border. To play safe, we can lock the selection first. Make sure the X and Y axis constraints are active. Turn on 3D snapping. And then hover on this vertex and then drag it to this vertex. Now, we can turn off the selection lock and also the snapping mode. Next, we want to move this 1 m to the left. So, make sure we are in the offset mode. In the Y-axis field, type in minus 100. Next, convert the box object into an editable poly object. Go to polygon mode. And then select this side polygon. Let's extrude this for 4 cm. Click OK. Then select this side. Extrude this for 3 cm. We want to add another extrude, so click this plus button instead of the OK button. Then type 4. Then OK. Select the side polygon and then extrude it for 60 cm. To create a hole in the center. We can select the polygon at the front and also the polygon at the back. Right-click and then inset them for 10 cm. Then click OK. To bridge a hole between these polygons, we can use the "bridge" command. Now, we have something like this. Next, we want to add some details to the center panels. Select these 2 polygons. Then bevel them. Choose "by polygon" for the bevel type. This is so each polygon has its own bevel effect. For the height amount, just set this to half centimeters. The inset amount is already good. So just click the OK button. After this is done. We can move on to importing the tileable 3d pattern objects we created before and put them here. To import 3d models from other 3ds max files, we need to use the "merge" command. So, go to the "file" menu, "import", and then choose "merge". Find the file and just double-click on it. 3ds max will display the list of objects contained in that file. All of the tileable pattern objects are named "rectangle". This plane object is the reference image, so we don't need to import it. To select and import only the pattern objects, you can type here "rect". You can see all the objects with the "rect" name are highlighted in the list. Just click OK. And we have the 3d pattern objects in this file. Let's change the object color to black. And assign our default material for now. Although later we will combine these with the main backdrop object. I need to do this so you can see the objects easier in the viewport. Alright. Let's rotate these objects. Turn on the angle snap. And then rotate it 90 degrees this way. Then rotate it again 90 degrees this way. Press T to go to the top viewport. Then press Z to zoom extent. And move these objects so they are inside the side panel on the backdrop object. Notice how thick these objects are. Because they are instances of each other, we can easily adjust the extrude modifier on one of them. Let's make this 1.5 cm. This will affect all of the objects automatically. And let's position them so they are intersecting the hole border in the panel just a little bit. Go back to the perspective view. And then move them up. Next, we can hold the Alt key and deselect all objects that are already inside the panel. Then make sure you use the Z and Y axis constraints to move these up. Next, to play safe. Just like before. We can lock the selection first. And then turn on the 3D snapping mode. Just find a vertex that we can snap and drag it to the corresponding target vertex. So we have something like this. Let's turn off all of the snapping modes. And also the selection lock toggle. Zoom in a bit. Hold the Alt key and then deselect the center pattern objects. Delete these objects. And let's select these top pattern objects. Make sure the wall is not selected. Okay, now we can safely delete them. Next, we want to attach all these pattern objects to the backdrop object. So select the backdrop object. And then find the "attach" command. Now, this is important. You don't want to use the ordinary attach button. You want to use the one that has a dialog window. This is because we don’t want to click the objects one by one. Instead, we want to use the names of the objects as a regular expression. So type "rect" here, then click the "attach" button. Now they are all a single object. For the left part of the backdrop, we can use the symmetry modifier. By default, the Z-axis is on. Of course for this model, we only need the Y-axis. And we are done modeling the backdrop. Let’s name this object "backdrop". And we can exit the isolation mode. And here is the result. In the real world, you may need to add metal frame structures on these panels so they won't fall apart easily. But we can skip that process as we won’t see these structures in the rendering result. 60. Project: Echasse vase: In this project lesson video, we’re going to create this vase called "Echasse" [Esesy] which is manufactured by a Danish furniture company called "Menu". The product has 3 different sizes. The small one, the medium one, and the large one. We’re going to model the medium one which has a height of 45 cm. Press F to go to the front viewport. As always, let’s create a plane object. Set it to square, and click-drag from the center. Press F3. Then press Shift + F3 to activate the "high quality" mode. But, turn off the "shadow". And also turn off the "ambient occlusion". Next, open your file explorer and drag the reference image onto the plane object. Just like before, we’re going to make the image more towards a dark blue color. Previously we used this type of "material editor" which is basically a node-based editor. Now, I’m going to show you that we can use a simpler material editor which is this one. We can use the eyedropper tool here to pick the material. Maximize the "self-illumination" value to 100 %. And then change the "diffuse" color to a dark blue color. Go to the "Maps" section and set the "diffuse color" amount value here to 10 %. As you can see, we now have more dark blue colors than black and white colors. You can close the material editor with the X button here. Or by pressing M on the keyboard. Next, we want to move the pivot point so it is located at the center bottom of the product image. Go to the "hierarchy" panel. And activate the "affect pivot only" mode. Press W and move the pivot point so it is precisely at the center leg, at the bottom of it. After it is done, you need to turn off the "affect pivot only" mode. Now we can position the reference image so it is at the center of the world. Next, we need to create a dummy object that has a height of 45 cm. So, press P first. Then create a box object. Then set the height value to 45 cm. Press F. We need to scale the reference image to follow the height of this object. So select the reference image. And scale this down uniformly like so. If you need more precision, you can hold the Alt key and then drag this spinner. Okay. Now, we can delete the box object. Move the reference object to the back. To make it unaffected by any changes. Go to the display panel. Turn off the "show frozen in gray" option. And then freeze the object. Now, we can not select nor transform the object. Go to the front viewport. Press G to hide the grid. For the glass vase, we’re going to use the "Lathe" modifier and then the "Shell" modifier. So, activate the "line" creation mode. Start from this center line here. Click here. If the zoom level is too close, we can hold the middle mouse button to pan the viewport. Hold Shift and then click here. Then go up, until this point. Click here. Then right-click to finish up, and then right-click again to exit the line creation mode. Next, go to the vertex mode by pressing 1. Drag this vertex to the left. Then, we want to convert the selected vertex to a round curve using the "fillet" command. In the geometry section, find the "fillet" button. And then drag the spinner up. If it is too fast, you can hold the Alt key while doing it. Drag it until you get something like this. Before we tweak the vertices, you can see how this curve is jagged. This is due to the low interpolation value. We can find the interpolation value and change it to 10. But before that, I think I want to explain that you can actually reorder the section in the modify panel. Let’s say we want to move this "interpolation" section to the top. To do that, let me collapse all of the sections first so we can see the process much better. Okay. So, to move this interpolation section so it is below the rendering section, you need to grab on this sandwich icon and then drag it up like so. Now the interpolation section is on top. Let’s change this to 10. I think this is enough for our vase. Alright. Let’s tweak the shape now. Select this vertex and then move this to the right. And then drag this handle to the left. Then, move this vertex slightly to the left. But make this lower handle longer. Now let’s move this handle to the right just a tiny bit. In this condition. You can see that there is a snapping mechanism when we are moving the handle. It snaps between a linear state and a curve state. Now, this actually happens because 3ds max tries to optimize the edge counts automatically at a certain degree threshold. To turn off this effect, we can turn off this "optimize" option. Now we can move this handle without the snapping restriction. I think we can adjust the vertices more to make it similar to the reference image. Okay. Let’s go back to the top-level mode. Now we’re going to apply the lathe modifier to turn this profile spline into a 3D object. So add the "Lathe" modifier. The axis is currently at the center. We can choose "min" to fix this. Press P and then F4. The overall topology looks nice but we can still add more segments to make it even better. And if we zoom in and then rotate to see the bottom part closely. We can see we have a stacking vertices problem at the center. We can turn on the "weld core" option to fix it. And let's input 36 for the "segments" value. Now the vase looks better. Because we turned off the "optimize" option in the interpolation section before. We get these overcrowded edge loops at the bottom area. We can fix this issue by converting the object into an editable poly. And then rotate and zoom in again to the bottom part of the vase. Go to the edge sub-object mode. To select an edge loop, previously we used the Shift key method. Now, we’re going to use the double-click method. So double-click here. Then hold Ctrl and double-click again to select more edge loops. You need to be very careful though when using the double-click method. I’ve seen so many cases that my students accidentally move the edges instead. Alright. To remove the edge loops, if you just click "remove" here. This will leave vertices at the intersection areas and create a lot of non-quad polygons. Let me undo this first. What you should do instead is, after you right-click, hold the Ctrl key and then press the "remove" button. Now those leftover vertices are gone. Go back to the top-level mode. Currently, the model doesn’t have any volume or thickness. This will cause problems later if you render it. To fix this we can add a "shell" modifier. We don’t want the thickness going out, but it should be going in. So turn the "outer amount" value to zero by right-clicking on the spinner. And then increase this inner amount value. I don’t know the exact number here, but I think 3 mm will be fine. So, this is what we have so far. Let’s move on to creating the legs. For this, we’re going to use the "line" object again. So go to the "Create" panel, "shapes" and then "line". Let me zoom out a little. Click here, and then hold Shift and move the mouse down until the bottom and then click again. And right-click. Then for the leg bridge, click here, hold Shift, and move the mouse to the left side and then click here. Then right-click. We’re going to use the symmetry modifier later for the left part. Right-click to exit the line creation mode. Right-click again and then choose "attach" and click on this leg spline. Now they are a single object. Next, to make them look solid, we can go to the "rendering" section. Then enable both the "renderer" and "viewport" options here. Then for the side segments. I think 12 is already good as the object is relatively small. But we can still adjust the "thickness" value to better match the reference image. You can hold Alt to make the value changing in a smaller increment. I think I need to adjust the position of the lines just a tiny bit to make them perfectly aligned. And let’s adjust the "thickness" value again. Okay, I think this is enough. Go to the top-level mode. And add a symmetry modifier. You can see that the mirror plane is located here which is the pivot point location. We want it to be at the center of the world. To do this, we can activate the "mirror" sub-object mode. And move the mirror plane to the center. To quickly and precisely move this to the center, we can just zero out the X coordinate. Press P. So this is what we have so far. But notice we have so many edges here. This is due to the line interpolation value. To fix this, we can go back to the line base object. You can turn on the "show end result" toggle button. And in the interpolation section, reduce the "steps" value to 5. I think this is enough. We don’t want to go too low as that can cause smoothing group problems. Go back to the "symmetry" modifier. Now for the other 2 legs in this direction. We can duplicate this object and rotate it. But, I’m going to explore a different approach now. We can right-click on the "symmetry" modifier and then choose "copy". And then right-click again and choose "paste". Now we have 2 "symmetry" modifiers. Select this one and go to its "mirror" sub-object mode. We want to rotate the mirror plane 45 degrees. So, activate the rotate tool and also activate the angle snap mode. Rotate this as far as 45 degrees. Currently, we get this L shape legs as a result. This happens because of 3ds Max slices and removes the other half. To fix this, you need to turn off the "slice along mirror" option. Now we can see all of the 4 legs. Next, we want to make the model look more realistic by adding rounded corners on these tip edges. As you can see in the reference image the tips of the legs are actually a bit rounded. Basically, we can do this by adding a "chamfer" modifier. The object looks messed up because all of the edges get chamfered. Let’s fix the "amount" value first to only 2 mm. Next, we want to constrain the chamfer so it only affects edges that form 90 degrees corner. Currently, it is set to 20 degrees which is too small. That is why it affects all of the edges. Let’s just input 80. And for the segments. I think we can set this to 2. So we get this nice rounder curve. Until now, this is what we have. Press F4 to hide the edges. I think the smoothing group already looks good. So we don’t need to change the smooth setting. Let’s combine the 2 objects into 1. Select the legs and convert it into an editable poly. Now, notice that the object’s pivot point is located here. The ideal location should be at the center and at the bottom of the object. So go to the hierarchy panel. And then turn on the "affect pivot only" mode. And just zero out all of the coordinate values. Then we can turn this off again. Next, we want to attach the glass vase object. So right-click, and then choose "attach". And then click on the vase object. Right-click to exit the attach mode. And we have a finished model. 61. Project: The crown molding and plinth: In this project lesson video, we will fix the floor, then create the plinth, the crown molding, and then finally create the downlights. This is the file that we have from the previous backdrop project. Let's fix the floor first. As you may already know, the floor here at the door area is void. So, select the floor object. Press 2 to go to edge mode. Select the edge here. Activate the move tool. Hold Shift and then drag it to the left, like so. Next, we want to create the plinth. For this, we can select the floor object, hold Ctrl, and also the left wall section object. Right-click, and then isolate the selection. We can start by creating a line object. Turn on 3D snapping. And let's start from this vertex, then this vertex, and so on. Just follow the wall section until we are back to the initial vertex. Choose yes to close the spline. And this is what we have so far. Next, we can rename the object to "plinth". We will be using the "bevel profile" modifier to create the plinth. So now we need to create the profile. Press F to go to the front view. Press S to turn off the snapping mode. Let's create a rectangle object as the starting point. For the length, we want the plinth to be 10 cm high. And for the width, just set this to 1 cm. Then, convert the object into an editable spline. Go to vertex mode. Use the "refine" command to add a new vertex here. Then move this vertex to the right. Select all the vertices, and let's convert them all to the "corner" type. And just adjust them as needed. So this is the shape that we want for the plinth. Now, this is very important. From all of these vertices, there is only one yellow vertex. This is considered the first vertex. If later, we use this spline as the bevel profile. This first vertex will be used as the reference for the base spline location. So the first vertex will be positioned here. In our case, we want the base spline to match this vertex, not this vertex up here. Basically, we need to change the yellow vertex from the top to the bottom one. To do this, just select the bottom vertex. Scroll down, and then click on this button "make first". Now, this vertex is the yellow one. If you are done, you can rename the object to "BP plinth". BP stands for "bevel profile". Go back to the perspective view. Select the "plinth" object again. Add a "bevel profile" modifier. We want to use the classic one. This is so we can pick an external profile by clicking on this button. Then click on the profile spline we created before. And this is the result. Again, because we are using the "performance" mode, everything looks grey. If we set this back to the "standard" mode. We can see that the plinth object is actually black. So open the material editor and assign our default grey material. For now, I will use the "performance" mode as we are going to work on the crown molding object. Exit the isolation mode. To create the crown molding, we can select the ceiling object and then also the back wall section. Then isolate the selection. We want to create a spline for the base object. Because the shape is a rectangle, we can just create a rectangle object. Activate the 3D snapping mode. And just click and drag from this vertex to this vertex. And we have the base object. Let's rename this to "crown molding". Next, to create the bevel profile, we can go to the front view. And then press Z. For the profile, I want to make the height of it 20 cm and the width of it to be around 15 cm. Right now, we want to snap to the grid points, not to vertices. We can use a rectangle object like before. But let's explore a different method. Let's use the line object. And just click release on the grid points to create a 10 by 20 cm rectangle. Close the spline. Press S to turn off snapping and then press 1 to activate the vertex mode. Select this vertex and move it here. And this one, move it a bit to the left. To add more details, we can use the "insert" command. We can click here, then move the vertex here. Then here. And so on. Right-click to finish up. And just tweak the vertices further. Ideally, we use a reference to create the profile. But in this case, we just create a custom shape that we like. After you are done, go back to the top-level mode. And then rename the object to "BP crown molding". Go to the perspective view and then select the crown molding object. Assign a "bevel profile" modifier. Use the classic mode. And then pick the profile we created before. So this is the result. As always, we can assign our default grey material. And then exit the isolation mode. Next, we want to create the downlights. For this, we can start with a cylinder object. Make sure you turn on the "Auto grid" option. And then click-drag like this on the ceiling surface. Press Z to zoom extent. Then for the sides, we can set this to 36. For the diameter of the lamp, I want it to be 15 cm. So input 7.5 cm in the radius field. For the height, let's input 0.5. And for the height segments, just set this to the minimum value. Convert the cylinder into an editable poly object. Go to the polygon mode and then select this polygon. Scale it down just a little. Then "inset" it for 1 cm. For the final touch, we can select this edge loop. And then chamfer it for 1 mm. Remove the segment. Then click OK. Previously we used the "auto smooth" feature a lot. Now, let's explore defining the smoothing group using the manual method. Select this polygon. Let me use the move tool so the gizmo does not get in the way. Hold Ctrl and double-click on the polygon next to it. And then give these polygons a different smoothing group number, for example, 18. And for the bottom polygon, we can set this to 25. You can use any number as long as they are different from the polygons next to them. Alright. Go back to the top-level mode. And rename this to "downlight 001". Assign our default material. Next, to position this downlight object, we can go to the top view. Let's move this to the left side. Place it so it is touching this line. Just at the front of this panel's corner. Then hold the Shift key and then drag this in the Y-axis direction. Make sure it is set to "instance". This is so if later we need to edit the downlights, we can just edit one of them. Now, to easily align both objects against the backdrop. We can select them both and then group them together. Just use any name as we only need this group temporarily. Now, we can go to the perspective view and try to align it with the backdrop object. Click on the "align" tool. Then click on the backdrop object. We want to align them on the Y-axis direction, and set both to use the "center" options. Click OK. Next, we want to move this to the left for 10 cm. Set this to the offset mode. And then type in minus 10 in the X-axis field. Hold Shift and then duplicate this to the right side. Place them so they are touching the line again. Then move them for 10 cm to the right. Next, we can ungroup the objects. And ungroup this one also. We still need to add 3 downlights on the drop ceiling area. So, hold Shift, and then duplicate the downlight. Let's move it to the right about this location. Now, we know that the ceiling is dropping by 30 cm. So instead of using the snapping feature, we can just directly input the z coordinate for 270 cm. Then go back to the top view. Hold Shift and then duplicate this to the center area. Make sure it is set to "instance", and make it 2 copies. To precisely place them all at the center of the room, we can select them. Then group them again. Input zero for the x coordinate. After it is done, you can ungroup the objects. And this is the result we have so far. 62. Project: The loudspeaker: In this project lesson video, we will model this loudspeaker product designed by "Bang and Olufsen" called "Beolab 1". This is actually the old model of the "Beolab" product line, which was released in the year 1996. So, you can imagine how hard it is to find references for this product. After searching around, I have the front view reference image. I already placed it on a plane object and already fixed the scale. You can just download this file to get started. Let's start with the foot part. We're going to use the lathe modifier for this. We can use the line object to create the lathe profile for the foot by following the reference image. After that, we can add the "Lathe" modifier. Activate the "Axis" sub-object mode. And move this to the left. Or just enter zero in the X-axis coordinate. Let's apply our standard material. And, let's go to the perspective view. As you can see we need more sides. Let's just use 36. Alright. Convert this object into an editable poly object. Select these 2 edge loops, and then chamfer them for 2 mm. And zero this out. Or, perhaps, 1.5 millimeters would be better. Okay. For the bottom area, we can select the border and then perform the cap command. If you are done, you can check the smoothing group. I think this is fine as it is. But, before we model the top part, let's set the pivot point to the center. Activate the "affect pivot only" mode. "Center to object", and then zero out the Z coordinate value. Alright. Now we can start modeling the top part. Let's go to the front view. If we look at the product images carefully. I believe the shape of the top part is not really a square. And we can see that the right and left sides are flat. Only the front and back sides are curved. To start, let's create a rectangle as wide as the reference image. And then center it. For the curved surface, we need another shape such as an "ellipse". So, let's create one. And then center it also. Then we can tweak the size of it. Again, we don't have any precise reference for this. So just find the size that you think is the best. Next, you can convert one of the objects to an editable spline. Then use the attach command to join in the other object. Go to the spline mode and then select one of the shapes. Now find the Boolean commands. Choose the "intersection" mode. Then click on the Boolean button. And then click on the ellipse shape. Finally, we have the base shape for the top part. Next, go to the top-level mode. Use the rotate mode. Press A, or press this button to turn on the "angle snap" mode. And just rotate this shape for 90 degrees. Okay. Add an extrude modifier. You can use any number for the amount value. Press M, and assign the default material. Convert the object into an editable poly. This is what we have so far. Basically, this will be used for the bottom part. Now we need to create the inner part and then the upper part. Let's create the inner part first. Just duplicate the object. And scale it down just a little. We need it so we can easily select and apply different materials to the object later. Let's duplicate another one for the upper part. And then, press Alt + 1 to add a swift loop here and then here. This is just to help with the shading. Then select all of these edges. And then connect them. Then move the resulting edge loop a bit to the front. Alright. Next, let's chamfer the edge loop. Zero this out. For the amount value, let's just use 1.2 mm. Now, you need to click on this button to make the chamfer area become void. Okay. Next, to close the holes, we can use the border mode. Select this border and then use "cap". And just do the same with the other border. Next, we can attach the bottom part. But don't attach the inner part yet. Add a swift loop here and then here. And then go to vertex mode. Select all these vertices. And then move them down so it creates a gap as big as this gap. So, this is what we have so far. We can now add a chamfer modifier. For the amount value, I think 1.5 mm should do it. And, let's check the smoothing group. I think the smoothing group looks fine. But, I want to convey more details on the chamfered areas. So, let's change the smoothing option to "smooth chamfers only". And let's check the model again in case of any smoothing error. After you are done, you can convert this object into an editable poly again to collapse the modifier. Remember that we haven’t attached the inner part. So, use the "attach" command and then click on the inner part. Next, select the top polygon of the inner part. And then move it, to about this location. Alright. Select all these top vertices. And then move them up, until they are aligned with the reference image. Do the same with the vertices at the bottom. Next, we need to align the center vertices to the reference image. We can press Alt + X to make them see-through. Although it doesn’t help much in this condition. We can turn down the visibility value, but let's just try to eyeball it. And I think it is done. Press Alt + X again. You can do one last check of the model just in case of any error. Finally, as usual, we want to combine all of them into a single object if possible. Select the bottom part. Use the attach command and click on the to part. Rename the object to "loudspeaker 001". We use numbering because later we need 2 of them in the interior scene. 63. Project: Placing the furniture: In this lesson video, we are going to place some of the furniture we created before into the main room file. Let's start with merging the TV shelves and then after that the TV. Go to the "File" menu. Then choose "import", and then "merge". Select the file where we save the shelves objects. Then just double-click on it. Using the file menu "merge" method, we get to choose which object in that file that we want to merge. If you want to merge all of them, you can just click "all" here. Then click OK. Because the objects that we want to merge are assigned to a material that has the same name as the material inside this scene, 3ds max will prompt us to make sure what we want to do with these materials. We can rename the material. Or use the material from the merged object. This will override the existing scene material. Or we can ignore the material in the merged file and just use the existing scene material. In our case, both materials are basically the same. But, let's just use the existing material in the scene. So here are the objects. As you can see, we need to rotate them. So, turn on the angle snap mode. And then use the rotate tool to rotate them 90 degrees. Next, to place these objects so they are exactly aligned to the center of the backdrop object, we can use the "align" tool. Click here and then click on the backdrop object. We just need to align them in the Y-axis. And set both the alignment modes to "center". Alright. Now, to move the shelves so they are touching the backdrop panels let's first isolate them. Deselect the backdrop object. Next, use the "selection lock" mode just to play safe. Deactivate the angle snap mode. And then activate the 3D snapping mode. Make sure currently it is only set to the vertex. Then turn on the X-axis constraint. And then hover over this vertex and then drag it so it snaps to the target vertex at the backdrop object. Now we have something like this. We can now turn off the 3D snapping mode and also turn off the lock selection mode. Next, for the top shelf, we can set its height from the floor to 165 cm. And the TV shelves are done. Next, let's bring in the TV. Go to the "file" menu, "import", and then "merge". Double-click on the file. And double-click also on the TV object in the list. And just like before, we can use the scene material. Next, turn on the angle snap mode. Rotate the TV object for 90 degrees. Now, we are going to explore a different method of alignment which is basically just using manual input. If we select the backdrop object. Notice that the Y-axis coordinate is at 5 cm. By knowing this, we can just input the same value for the TV object Y coordinate. And it is done. For the z coordinate, let's place the TV 65 cm above the ground. To move the TV to the backdrop object, for now, we can go to the top view and just eyeball it. Alright, the TV and the shelves are done. Next, let's merge the picture frame object. Go to the "file" menu, "import", and then "merge". Double-click on the file and then double-click on the object name. Then use the scene material. Now, for aligning the picture frame object, we are going to use a different method. We're going to use the "normal align" tool. So, click on this normal align button. Then we need to click on the surface that we want to align. Then click on the wall surface where we want to place the picture frame object. Then click the OK button. Before we duplicate the object. I just remember that 3ds max by default uses 3 digits numbering when cloning objects. So, let's change the numbering to "001" instead of "01". Next, go to the top view. And let's move it here. Then hold the Shift key, and then drag this down to this location. Choose "instance" and make it 2 copies. Next, to center them, we can select all of them first. Then group them. And then set the Y coordinate to 5. After that, we can ungroup these objects. Next, we want to create the carpet. For the carpet object, we can use an extended primitive object called the "chamfer box". Basically, it is a box but has chamfered corners. Just click-drag here, release and move the mouse up and down, click and then move the mouse again to define the chamfer. Then click to confirm. For the dimension, I already have a texture for the carpet and so I just need to follow the aspect ratio of this texture. For the length, we can use 250 cm. For the width, we need to set it to 167 cm. Then for the height, we can set this to only 1 cm. Next, we can increase the segment values to help with the displacement later. Set this to 25, and for this one, set it to 17. Oh, sorry guys, this should be 167, not 169. And let's position this carpet at 5 cm in the Y coordinate. Alright. Now, to merge the coffee table object, I want to explore yet another method. We are not going to use the "file" menu now, instead, we can open the "file explorer". And then just drag and drop the coffee table file directly into the viewport. 3ds max will prompt us, whether we want to open, merge, or create an external reference. Right now, we want to merge the objects so choose "merge file" here. Just like before, we can choose "scene material". Now, this is important. You do not want to right-click the mouse. Instead, you need to move the mouse around to pick a location for the new objects. Then left-click to confirm the location. And, after we have the object. We can then change the Y coordinate to 5. And then rotate the object. Currently, the angle snap is already active. So just rotate this for 90 degrees. One thing that you need to be aware of when using the drag and drop method is that you don't get to choose which objects to merge. All the objects in the file will be imported. Just for example. We can open the file explorer again. And then drag and drop the floor lamp file. Choose "merge". Then choose the "scene material". Move the mouse around to any location that you like and then click to confirm. Notice that we also brought in the reference image plane object. We don't need it, so, deselect the lamp floor object. And then delete the reference image. Select the floor lamp object. Set the Z coordinate to 0. And move it to about this location. You can rotate the lamp, so the head is pointing towards the coffee table. You can keep adjusting until you like what you see. So those are the basics of importing or merging 3d objects and also different ways to align and position them. 64. Subdivision modeling introduction: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss the basics of subdivision modeling. So what is exactly subdivision modeling? Well, to make things simple. Subdivision modeling is an approach in 3D modeling where we can create complex organic models from just simple or less complex geometries. The way this works is through subdividing each polygon into 4 or more polygons. To give you an example. Let’s say I create a box here. Press F4 to see the edges. As you can see, this box has 6 polygons. Top, bottom, right, left, front, and back. Now, if I add a modifier to this box called "turbo smooth", which is one of the modifiers in 3ds Max that can generate subdivision models. Notice how the box now becomes almost like a sphere. This is possible because each of the previous polygons is now subdivided into 4 polygons. Basically, we now have a total of 24 polygons. We know this because 4 multiply by 6 equals 24. Now if we increase the "iterations" value here to 2. The box object becomes even more like a sphere. It looks smoother because each of the resulting polygons gets divided again into 4. So now we have a total number of 24 multiply by 4 equals 96 polygons. By knowing how this "iterations" value works, you really don't want to scroll this up carelessly. Because your computer might get crashed as it suddenly needs to calculate millions of polygons. Besides using "Turbo Smooth", to get subdivision results in 3ds Max, you can also use "Mesh smooth" modifier. Or, you can also use a newer, more sophisticated method of subdivision called "open subdiv". For this, you can use a modifier with the same name which is "Open subdiv". Or, if you use an editable poly object, you can produce subdivision surfaces right away without the need of additional modifiers. So for example, if I convert this box into an editable poly object. And then scroll down until we can see a section called "subdivision surface". There is a checkbox here called "use NURMS subdivision". If you turn that on, we get a subdivision result. But, why are the edges suggest that we only have 6 polygons? Well, this is due to the "isoline display" option here. If we turn this off, we can see the real polygons generated by the subdivision. Now, you might be wondering again, why is this option called NURMS? Well, NURMS stands for "Non-Uniform Rational Mesh-smooth". It is a mathematical algorithm used in the subdivision process. So, for now, the terms "subdivision", and "subdivision surface", and NURMS, are all basically the same thing. Okay. Now, if we increase the iterations value to 2. We’ll get a smoother result as expected. But, you need to understand that the polygons we see here are not real. I mean, they are not the actual polygons that we can edit directly. To show you what I mean. If you activate the polygon sub-object mode. And then try to select this polygon for example. You can not do that. Instead, you can only select this group of polygons. The orange cage you see here is the actual geometry. So again, I repeat. This sphere-like object is the result of the subdivision process. While this orange cage is the real geometry that you can edit. You can see the real geometry again if you turn off the NURMS option. Now, when you are in the process of modeling using the subdivision method, you will need to turn on or off this NURMS option quite often. Instead of clicking here back and forth, you can also right-click and then choose "NURMS toggle" here. When working with subdivision modeling, the most important concept that you need to remember is this. "The more edges close to each other, the sharper the resulting corner will be". To give you a clear example of this concept. Let’s say you select this upper polygon. Then right-click, then choose "extrude" here. Click-drag to extrude the top polygon like so. Now, select this polygon. Hold Ctrl, and then this polygon. Extrude both of them like so. And then again. Now, notice if we select all of these polygons on top. Currently, the corners produced in this area are smooth. But if we move them down like so. Because now we have 2 edge loops close to each other in this area, the corner here becomes a bit sharper. If we extrude these again. But place the resulting polygons near here. Because now we have 3 edge loops close to each other in this area, the corner becomes very sharp. So this is the basic concept of subdivision modeling. In the upcoming projects, we’ll explore more of how we can apply this concept to model different objects. 65. Using non quad polygons: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss another important concept or rule in subdivision modeling that relates to the use of non-quad polygons. This is the second concept of subdivision modeling we learned so far. So, the concept goes like this, "Always use quad polygons unless on flat surfaces". To give you a clear idea of how this concept works, let’s create a plane object. Press F4 to see the edges and then press G to hide the grid. Convert the object into an editable poly. Then press 5 to go to the element sub-object mode. Select this element. And then press W to activate the move mode. Hold Shift and then move it on the XZ plane. To about this location. Choose "clone to element" and then hit "OK". Next, we want to bridge these edges to these edges. To do that, we can go to the edge mode. Double click here. Then hold Ctrl and then double click here. Find the "bridge" settings button. And set the segments to 3. Then click "OK". Now, if we go back to the top-level mode. And then add a modifier called "Turbo smooth". Increase the "iterations" value to 2. At this current state, we get this nice smooth looking surface. This is due to the original geometry consisting only of quad polygons. There are no non-quad polygons here. The problem with non-quad polygons is that they tend to break the subdivision result. For example, if we select this edge, and then remove it. We just created a 6 sided polygon. If we go back up to the "turbo smooth" modifier. We can see that the surface now looks dented. Unless this is the effect that you want. Most likely you want a smooth surface result. Not dented like this. The problem can also occur if the non-quad polygon is located not in the corner area, but just touching the corner area. To show you what I mean. If we select this edge and then remove it. Then go back to the "turbo smooth" modifier. The effect is very subtle, but you can still spot a wrinkle on the surface. Yes, this is not as obvious as non-quad polygons or corner areas. Still, this is something you need to be aware of. Now, what if we really need to create N-Gon or non-quad polygons. Should we just avoid them at all costs? Well, no. Sometimes having N-Gons can help us to save time. You can have them as long as they are on flat surfaces and not directly touching the corner areas and or the border areas. To show you what I mean, let me undo this first. Okay. If we go to the vertex mode and then select this vertex here. And then remove it. Now we have an N-Gon or a non-quad polygon. This polygon has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 edges total. Now, if we go back to the "turbo smooth" modifier again. Although it does create this ugly star-like topology. But if you press F4 to hide the edges. The surface is perfectly fine. It does not create any wrinkles or dents. So to recap. If you have an N-Gon that is not on corner areas, and or not touching the corner areas directly. Then that N-Gon will be fine. Alright. Now, what about borders? Well, having an N-Gon touching the border is actually fine as long as it is flat and you can make sure that the border will always be a border and not turning into a corner. For example, if I select this vertex and then remove it. Sorry, we need to remove this also. So we have a non-quad polygon like this. If we go back to the "turbo smooth" modifier. As you can see the surface is totally fine. This might sound like good news. But, you need to be aware that, most often, you don’t create hanging borders like this. Usually, you want to add volume to the object you are modeling. So, you may select the edges. Hold Shift and then drag them to continue modeling the surface. If this happens. Now, this N-Gon becomes a problem. Because it is now touching a corner area. If you subdivide it. You can see this surface slightly curved down. So, my final general tip for using non-quad polygons is to create buffer polygons. Essentially, if you have a non-quad polygon, you should have quad polygons around it to separate it from the corner areas and or from border areas. 66. Avoiding concave polygons: In this lesson video, we’re going to discuss yet another important concept or rule in subdivision modeling. Basically, when doing subdivision modeling you always need to "avoid extreme concave polygons". So what is a concave polygon? Well, based on the angles formed by the edges on a polygon. We can split polygons into 2 categories, "convex" and "concave". A convex polygon is when each of the vertices on that polygon does not create an angle smaller than 180 degrees. On the other hand. A "concave" polygon is when one or more vertices form an angle smaller than 180 degrees. So again, these are "convex" polygons. And these are "concave" polygons. I’m sure you get the idea here. Now, if you ever need to create an N-Gon on a subdivision surface, you should always try to use the "convex" type and avoid using the "concave" type. Especially if it is an extreme concave polygon. Let’s just see an example so you can understand this concept better. We’re going to create an extreme concave shape which is a letter-U-like shape. Go to the top view. Then make sure the snapping mode is set to grid points. And turn on the snapping mode. Activate the line creation mode. Click here, then here, and so on to create a U shape.\ Right-click to finish up. And then press 1 to go to the vertex sub-object mode. Select these 2 vertices. Oh yes, don’t forget to press S to turn off the snapping mode. Then scroll down to find the "fillet" command. Then just drag this value up, to the maximum. Select these 2 vertices at the center. We’re going to use the weld command. Turn this up first. Then click "weld". Now we only have one vertex here. Next, press 3 to go to the spline sub-object mode. Select the spline. Then, find the outline command. Make sure the "center" option is active. Then while holding Alt, click-drag this spinner so we have something like this. Next, we need to reduce the number of edges in this area. We will use subdivision later, so we don’t want to start working with too many polygons. We can reduce the interpolation steps value here to, I think, 3 is just enough. Now, press P. And convert the object into an editable poly. Go to the polygon sub-object mode. Select this N-Gon. And then extrude it up, Like so. Okay. Now, if we press F4, we can see that we have all quad polygons on the side area. But on top, we have this extreme concave N-Gon. If we try to use subdivision on this object. This is what we get as a result. A very ugly looking model. Now, at this stage, you might be thinking that you can fix this by creating some buffer polygons. You can use the "Swift loop" command. And add an edge loop here. If we activate the NURMS toggle again. As you can see, that does not really help. Yes, you have a straighter side area. But the top area is still broken. Now, you might be thinking again to add more buffers using the "Inset" command. If you turn NURMS on again. It kind of makes the corner areas sharper. But certainly, it doesn't help this area. So, the way to solve this issue is to slice up the concave polygon. You may end up with smaller concave polygons. But as long they are not as extreme as this one, the subdivision can work. To slice the polygon, you can use any methods that you like. We’ve discussed these methods before. For example, we can select this vertex, and then this vertex. Then right-click, and choose "connect". That’s one way to do it. You can also use the cut command. Click on this vertex, then on this vertex. Or you can also use the "paint connect" method. For cutting on vertex, you need to hold the Ctrl key. Click-drag from this vertex to this vertex. So again, there are many ways that you can do this. Currently, we still have several concave polygons. But they are not as extreme as before. If we activate NURMS again, we can see we have this nice surface. I know the resulting topology looks ugly. But if we hide the edges. The top surface is totally fine. Please don’t mind these areas as we never focus on them. Or, perhaps we can increase the iterations value to 2, just to help those areas a bit. Now, you need to realize that we can get this nice surface because we also added the buffer polygons earlier. Which are these quad polygons surrounding the N-Gon areas. 67. Project: Teacup: In this project lesson video, we’re going to model this teacup object using subdivision. The focus of this lesson is to understand\ how sharp corners can be formed by adding more edge loops. We will explore different ways to achieve that. Such as using "inset", "chamfer" and "connect". And we are also going to use a new command called the "Swift loop". Let's start by creating a cylinder object. Just a small and short cylinder. Use the move mode and center the object. Now, if we press F4, we can see that we have so many segments vertically, and a lot of segments also along the side. Remember we will be using subdivision so we must use as few polygons as possible. For the "sides" segments 10 should be enough. And for the "height segments", just right-click here to set it to the minimum value which is 1. Next, to start modeling, we need to convert the object into an editable poly. Press 4 to go to polygon sub-object mode. Select the upper polygon. Let’s hide the grid first so it doesn't get in the way. Right-click and then choose "Bevel". And Bevel the polygon to about this high and then make it to about this size. Let’s do another Bevel, like so. And then another Bevel again, but for this one, make it very tall. Okay. Then right-click and then choose "Inset". Inset the polygon to about this size. Next, we want to bevel this down. For this, we can press F3 first so we see the object in wireframe mode. Then we can Bevel this down and then make it smaller. Like so. And, let’s do one last Bevel to round the bottom. After you’re done, press F3 to go back to solid mode. And then right-click, and click "NURMS toggle" here. We can go back to the top-level mode and then press F4 to see the resulting geometry better. We can see that the shape is just bad. Why? Well, this is because this bottom corner is too curved. Also, this upper part is too curved. Basically, we don’t have enough corner definition due to the lack of edge loops on the corner areas. Let’s fix this. Turn off the "NURMS toggle" for now. And then press F4 again. We can start from the bottom part. To make this corner becomes more defined, we need to add more edge loops. There are many ways that we can do this. We’re going to explore each of these methods one by one. First is by using the "Inset" command, which is perfect for bottom or top N-Gon like this. So select this N-Gon. Then perform an Inset command. Try not to make it too small as we actually need the resulting edge loop to be close to the existing corner. So that is one way to do it. Another method is by using the "connect" command. To use this command, we need to be in the edge sub-object mode. And then we need to create a ring selection. And then right-click. And then "Connect", but choose the "Connect settings" button here. With this, we can access this slider to slide the resulting edge loop. We need to make it near the bottom corner. So that is the second method of adding edge loops. Now we can see 3 edge loops close to each other at this bottom corner. If we activate the "NURMS" toggle button again. We can see this corner is now quite sharp. Not rounded like before. But looks more defined. Let’s explore another method of adding edge loops which is using the "Chamfer" command. For example, we want to make this edge-loop look sharper when subdivided. Double-click on it to select the edge loop. Right-click and then choose "chamfer", but use the "settings" mode here. Then we can tweak the "amount" value here. You can hold the Alt key while doing it to slow it down. Okay. Now you can try activating the "NURMS" toggle again. This area becomes sharper because we have 3 edge loops here that are close to each other. Alright. The next method, which we haven’t discussed before, is using the "swift loop" command. For your information, the "Swift loop" command was originally part of a third party plugin called "Polyboost". But, since Autodesk bought the plugin, it now becomes part of 3ds Max by default. Just like the other Polyboost commands, you won't find them in the editable poly parameters. Instead, they are all grouped in a special UI panel called the "Ribbon". So to access the "swift loop" command, first, you need to turn on the "Ribbon" interface by clicking this button. You will see a lot of options here. What we need now is the "edit" category. And then click this "Swift loop" button here. While this is active, whenever we hover the mouse cursor on an edge. 3ds Max will display a preview of an edge loop. If you click, the edge loop will be created. If we want to make this corner sharper, we can create an edge loop near that corner. You need to hover the mouse cursor on an edge that is perpendicular to that corner. And then click to create the edge loop. Then we want to strengthen this corner also. So click here. And on this upper area, like so. Finally in this area. To exit the "swift loop" mode, you can right-click. So that is how we use the "swift loop" command. Next, for this N-Gon area, we can use inset again. Go to the polygon mode. Select this polygon. Right-click, "Inset", and just drag it like so. Okay, the main body of the teacup is basically done. But if you turn on the NURMS option, we can see the object still has some jagged edges. To fix this, we can scroll down and increase the "Iterations" value here to 2. Alright. It looks better now. Next, we’re going to create the handle object. For this, we’re going to create the spline manually using the line object. But just for the initial guide, we can use an ellipse object. Click-drag to create the ellipse. About this size. And just do transformations as needed until you like the shape of it. If the size is not right, you can either scale it or you can change the "length" and or the "width" parameters to resize it. Just take your time until you like the result. After that, we can start tracing the shape using the line object. We don’t need a smooth curve as we’re going to use subdivision later. We only need several vertices to suggest where the final curve will be. After you are done, you can safely delete the ellipse object. Now, to convert this object into a 3D object we can use the spline "rendering" feature. We can see the effect better in perspective viewport. Go to the "modify" panel, find the "rendering" section. Enable both the "renderer" and the "viewport" options. By default, it uses a circle for the profile. What we need now is a rectangular profile. We can control the "width" here. And we can also control the "length" here. We need to make it thick enough because later when we add subdivision the object tends to shrink in volume. After you are done, press F4 to see the edges. Then convert the object into an editable poly. Then, we want to select the polygons in this area to scale them. Press 4 to go to polygon sub-object mode and then select these polygons. Leave the polygons at the end. Activate the scale mode. And scale it down on the Y-axis. Like so. Next, we need to use the edge sub-object mode. And tweak the edges at the end of the handle to make it thicker. And to make the end polygons to face the main cup object. Let’s focus on this area. Go to the polygon mode. Select this polygon and then Bevel it. Make the size smaller. We need to do this also on the bottom part of the handle. Bevel it and make it smaller. Just make sure that none of the polygons penetrate and show up inside this area. Let’s turn on the NURMS toggle. We can increase the "iterations" value to 2 to make it smoother. The handle already looks nice. But this area is just too curved. We can add more definition using the "swift loop" method. So go back to the edge sub-object mode. And let’s turn off the NURMS toggle for now. Activate the "swift loop" mode. And then click here. Now, if we turn on the NURMS toggle again, we can see that the shape looks more flattened. Which is exactly what we want. Next, we can attach the handle to the main cup object. Go back to the top-level mode. And select this object. Right-click, "attach" and then click on the handle object. And it is done. But, I think the handle looks a little too big. If you want to tweak the size, you can go to the element sub-object mode. Select the handle part. And you can scale this down or move this as you see fit. Then, go back to the top-level mode. And there you go, our teacup model is finished. 68. Project: The sofa Part 1: Starting from this lesson video, we will be modeling this sofa product called "Engage". Because the product dimension is available in inches, it will be easier if we change the display unit to inches for now. We can go back to centimeters later. So, open the "customize" menu. Then choose "unit setup". Notice for the "system unit", I'm still using centimeters. I'm just changing the "display unit scale" to the "US standard". And then choose "decimal inches" as these are the formats used in the product's website. Next, we can start by creating a box. We can input the product's dimension into this box object. Remember, we are now working on inches. So type here 33. Press Tab. Then 90.5. And then 32.5. Next, position the object so it is at the center of the world. Now, to make this object displayed as a wireframe box, you can open the "object properties" window. Turn on this option "display as box". And then we can "freeze" the object. Now, we cannot select nor change the object. Next, we want to bring in the front reference image. Press F3 to use the solid view mode. Then press G to hide the grid. Because the provided image is square, creating the reference image becomes a lot easier. Just turn on the "square" option here. And then click-drag on the viewport. Center the object. Previously we used the drag and drop method. Now, I'm going to create the material manually using the standard scanline or the legacy material. Open the material editor. Select the second slot. We can click here to change the material type. In the "scanline" category, choose the "Standard" legacy material. Just double-click on it. To add a texture to replace the diffuse color, just click here. Then in the "general" category, choose "bitmap". Then select the reference file I provided for this lesson. We want to use the front view reference image. Now, we are inside the "bitmap" map. Click here to go back to the parent material. To make the texture bright or not affected by shadows, you can maximize this "self-illumination" value to 100. Assign the material to the object. To avoid the white color in the reference image, you can change the diffuse color to other colors such as blue. And then, in the "maps" section, you can reduce the diffuse map strength to only 50 percent. Next, just as we discussed before, if you need high-resolution images to be displayed in the viewport. You need to open the "viewport global settings". And then in the "display performance" tab, make sure the "texture maps" maximum value is set to 9999 pixels. And also, you can go to the "per-view presets". You can be in the "standard" preset but you need to set this "material rendering level" to the "advanced material" mode. These settings will make sure the highest quality possible for the reference image. Next, we can move this up so that the feet in the reference image touch the ground level. Then, to make the scaling process easier, we need to position the pivot point so it is also at the ground level. So, activate the pivot-only mode. And then move the pivot point down, until it is at the ground level. Turn this off. Now, we need to scale the reference image so that the width of the sofa in the image is the same as the width of our reference box. You can hold Alt while dragging the spinner for more precision. Notice the backrest area is not as tall as the reference box. This is due to the perspective effect of the photo. That is why we only use the total width for aligning the dimension. If you are done, you can push this to the back. And to protect it from any accidental changes, we can open the "object properties" window. Turn this "show frozen in gray" option off. And then turn this "freeze" option on. And then click OK to close the window. And this is what we have so far. Next, we also want to bring in the reference image for the side view. The reference image is for the right view so change this to the right view. Press F3, then press G. The image has a square aspect ratio also. So, create a plane object with the "square" option turned on. Click and drag here. For the material, to save time, we can just duplicate the previous material by dragging this slot to this slot next to it. But, let's name these materials correctly to avoid conflict. Name this one "front". And name this one "side". For the side texture file, we can click here and then click here to change the file. Select the side reference image I provided for this lesson. You may notice that I already tint the image with a blue color off the record. So go back to the parent material. And then for the diffuse map strength, we can safely use 100 percent. Now, we can assign this material to the plane object. Next, to scale the object, the process is the same as the front reference image. Align the leg with the ground level. Then move the pivot point so it is at the ground also. Turn this off and then activate the scale tool. You can use the spinner to scale the image down. Until the top part is touching the reference box. And then move this so it matches the reference box in the y-axis direction. Then we can move this reference image to the left. And then open the "object properties" window. Turn this off, then turn this on. Click OK. If later you need to hide or unhide or perhaps need to select these frozen reference objects. You can do so by opening the "scene explorer". You can show and hide objects using these eye icons. You can also rename the objects right inside this window. To do that, you can click to select the object. Then click again on the name to rename the object. Let's name this box object as "ref size". Then click here and then click again. Rename this to "ref front". And for this one, rename it to "ref side". Let's check again in case the names are incorrect. Alright. We can close the scene explorer for now. Let's create the base of the sofa. For the base, we can easily create it using a chamfer box object. Just create a chamfer box roughly at the center area. Then, we can assign our default material. Let's center out the object. Before we continue, I don't want to use inches anymore. We already have the reference object for the dimension, therefore we can go back using centimeters. I'll just use the generic units here. Because the system unit is in centimeters, the generic unit is also in centimeters. It is just that the unit letters will not be displayed after the numbers. If you want to show the unit letters then you can choose the metric option. Again, I don't need to see the unit letters so I just click the OK button. Next, go to the front view. And move this chamfer box up until it aligns with the reference image. Just tweak the dimension of the chamfer box to match the reference image. Next, go to the right view. And then change the length value. And just move it if needed. The reference images that I got from the website are not that accurate. So, expect to see some differences here and there between the side and the front view. They are not perfect. But at least they provide us some guidance on how the 3D model looks. Next, we want to add some segments on the base object to help with the shading. For the width segments, I think 6 is good enough. And for the length segments, I think 4 is enough. Then convert the object into an editable poly. We need this so that later we can attach other objects to this base object. Next for the legs. We can start by creating a cylinder object. About this size. Let's first apply the default material. For this cylinder, we don't need any height segment. For the number of sides, we can set this to a higher value such as 24. To align it against the reference, we can go to the front view. Press Alt + X to activate the see-through mode. Move it and change the radius so that the cylinder is as big as the bottom leg. Convert the object into an editable poly. Press F4. Then, we can go to vertex mode. Select all of these vertices. Move them up here. And then use the scale tool to scale them uniformly. Just tweak the position and the scale of these vertices so they match the reference image. Both the front and the side views. After you are done, you can activate the edge mode and select only the edges at the bottom. And then perform chamfer. We do this to make the bottom corner rounder just like the leg in the real product. Alright. After you have one leg created, you can use the symmetry modifier to create the other 3 legs. For this, it is better to use the base object because the pivot point is already at the center. Right-click and then "attach". And then choose the leg object. Next, add a "symmetry" modifier. We want to use the X-axis and also the Y-axis. But the flip version of it. And I think the base and the legs are done. We can convert this object into an editable poly again to collapse the modifier. We will continue modeling the rest of the sofa in the next lessons. 69. Project: The sofa Part 2: In this project lesson video, we will model the seating part of the sofa. But before that, notice that I forgot to reduce the number of segments in the plane objects. As we discussed earlier, to select frozen objects we can use the scene explorer. Just click on the object's name to select it. For example, select this one. Then in the modify panel reduce all the segments to only 1. Let's do this also for the front reference image. To create the seat part, we can use the line tool. Use the front view for this process. Activate the line tool. And then click here, hold Shift, and click here to make the line straight. And then just follow the contour of the sofa from the reference image. The basic rule that I use is I usually create at least 3 vertices to define a corner. And use 2 vertices to define flat surfaces. Close the spline. Next, go to vertex mode. And press F3 so we can focus on tweaking just the vertices. Reposition the vertices as needed and make sure that each point has a pair on the opposite side. To convert the spline object into a 3d object you can use the "extrude" modifier. For now, you can input any value for the amount. Assign our default material. And then convert this object into an editable poly. Next, we need to "inset" this large area so we can create the seam detail. For this, we can go to the front view. Use the polygon mode. And to see the reference image better, we can open the object properties window, and just zero out the "visibility" value. Now we can see the seam line. Use the "inset" command. About this far. Okay. Go to the perspective view. And then move this forward just a little. Perform another inset. About this size. And, just like before, move this forward a bit. I think I need to fix these vertices, so the surface is rounder. After you are done, you can return the visibility value to 1. Next, to create the lines that connect these vertices, you can use the "connect" or "cut" commands. But I'm going to explore a new method called the "paint connect". This command exists in the ribbon menu, just below the "swift loop" command. Click on the "paint connect" button to activate it. In this mode, you can click-drag on edges to create a loop that cuts through them. Let me undo these first. But, if you want to create the edge loop on a vertex, you need to hold the Ctrl key. So hold Ctrl and the click-drag from this vertex to this vertex. And just repeat the process. As long as you hold the Ctrl key, the new edge will be created on vertices, not on edges. Until these 2 vertices up here. If you are done, you need to right-click to exit from the "paint connect" mode. Now, if you go to the edge mode. Notice that by default the "paint connect" command selects all these new edges for us. Let's just add these 2 edges to the selection. And then perform the "connect" command. We need to create 2 edge loops. This is so we can connect them to these 2 edges up here. We can use this value to make the edge loops wider. Then click OK. We can move these edge loops forward just a bit to make the surface rounder. For this area, we can use the “paint connect” again. Just remember to hold the Ctrl key if you want to snap to vertices. Next, let's add an edge loop here. We can press Alt + 1 to activate the "Swift loop" mode. And then click here. And let's add a swift loop here also. Now, we want these vertices to line up perfectly in the x-axis direction. To do that, hold Ctrl and click on the vertex icon to convert the selection. And then find a command called "make planar". But you need to click the "X" button here. Now, these vertices are planar against the x-axis direction. Go to the wireframe mode. Select these vertices. And just move them, all the way crossing the center of the world. We will create the left part later using the symmetry modifier. Next, we want to create the seams. Go to the edge mode. Double click here. And also select these edges at the side. Right-click and then choose chamfer. For the chamfer amount, I think 0.08 should do it. So, this is what we have for now. Next, we need to select the inner edge loop. And this edge loop also. Make sure all of them are selected. Then push them inward in the Y-axis direction. And then select this edge loop. Push them inward also in the X-axis direction. Notice the center vertex location is now too extreme. Let's select it. And just move it to make the surface more relaxed. Next, select the upper edge loop. And move them forward slightly. We also need to do this on the upper edge loop of the side seam. And let's fix the center vertex again. Go to the right view. And select these vertices at the front. Then move them. Sorry. Move these vertices to the front until they are touching the reference box. Then move these vertices backward. After that, you can add a symmetry modifier. Now, if we turn on the X-axis, we get something like this because the pivot point is not at the center of the world. We can turn on the "mirror" sub-object mode. In this mode, we are moving the center of the symmetry. To precisely center the mirror, just input zero in the X-axis coordinate. Alright. Finally, we can add a "turbo smooth" modifier to subdivide the polygons. Press F4. And here is the result. I think the seams are already looking good. The final touch we want to add to the model is the wrinkles in this bent region. We can go back to the edge mode of the base editable poly object. Press F4. To add wrinkles to our 3d object, we can do this easily using the "paint connect" mode. Just add the edge loop in the location where you want to have the wrinkle. Oops, sorry. To use the "paint-connect" correctly, the edges need to be visible. So, let me undo this. Rotate the view so all of the edges we want to paint-connect are visible. Let me remove this vertex. Activate the paint connect mode again. And then click-drag from this edge, until this edge. Then let's add one here. And then another one here. To make them look less generic, let's make this one a bit longer. And this one also. After you are done, right-click to exit the paint-connect mode. Click this vertex, hold Ctrl, and then double click here. Move them up. And then move them forward. Then select these vertices. But for now, we'll go the other direction. Move them down. And then move them backward. Just repeat this process until you create the wrinkles that you like. After you are done, go back to the top-level mode. And then press F4 to hide the edges. And here is the result. In the next video, we will model the cushion. 70. Project: The sofa Part 3: We will continue modeling the sofa. In this video, we will focus on creating the cushion parts. Let's start with a box object. Assign our default material. Go to the front view. And then move the box object up and then center it so it aligns with the right cushion in the reference image. Set the height value. And then also the width value as needed. Go to the top view. And position the object as you see fit. Next, let's add some segments. For the length segments, I think 4 is enough. And then for the width segments, let's set this to 6. This is so the polygons are square. For the height segments, let's set it to 3. Alright. Now, we can convert the box object into an editable poly object. Next, we need to tweak the overall shape of this object to follow the cushion shape in the reference image. Go to vertex mode. Click on this vertex. Hold Ctrl and then double-click here. Then double-click here. And so on. After we have the vertices selected, we can go to the front view and move them down. Align them with the seam line of the cushion. We need to do the same with the bottom part. Now, besides using the point-to-point vertex selection. I want to explore an alternative method. Let's isolate the selection first so we can see this better. The second method is using selection conversion. So go to polygon mode first. Then activate this "by angle" option. Then click on any of the polygons down here. The neighboring polygons that form an angle less than 45 degrees will get selected also. Then while holding Shift, click on the edge icon. Now, only the edges at the corners are selected. You can also use the loop selection method to create this kind of selection. Basically, there are many ways that you can use to achieve the same result in the modeling process. Move these edges up so they are aligned to the cushion's bottom seam line. Then select all of these vertices. Scale them out sideways. Select these vertices, and these vertices also. Move them down a bit. Basically, I'm just moving the vertices here and there to get the object's shape as close as possible to the reference photo. Next, we want the center polygons to be slightly puffed out. We can do this easily by converting the polygon selection to the vertex selection. Then to push them outward, we can use the local coordinate system. And move them in their local Z-axis direction. Essentially the local Z-axis is the same as the normal direction. If you are done, don't forget to change the coordinate system back to the view mode. This is what we have so far. Next, we want to chamfer the corners into 2 edge loops. So, select all the edge loops at the 4 corners by holding the Ctrl key and then double-click on them. Okay. Now we can chamfer them. Set the segment value to zero. Alright. I think we need to bring these 2 edges at the center slightly upward. Next, let's subdivide this cushion object first using the built-in NURMS subdivision feature. Then convert this object into an editable poly again to collapse the subdivision. Overall, the cushion object is already looking good. Although you can still make some small tweaks here and there on the model. Such as bringing these vertices up to make the top surface a bit rounder. And so on. After you like how it looks, you can add the "turbo smooth" modifier. Next, we want to add the seam lines. Now, instead of using the chamfer command and manually move the vertices as we did on the seating part. I'm going to explore yet another method for creating the seam. This is actually the lazy method. But it can work well especially if the object is far away from the camera. First, we need to clone the object. Just choose “copy”. Now, we have 2 cushion objects. Select one of them and then use the isolate selection mode. Convert the object into an editable poly to collapse the "turbo smooth" modifier. Go to the edge mode. And then double click on the edge loop at the location where you want to have the seam. Do this also for the bottom part. Next, we need to create a spline object out of these edge loops selection. To do this find and then click the "create shape from selection" button. Just choose "linear". And then click OK. Now, we have a new spline object. To make it visible in the rendering and in the viewport, we need to turn on both of these settings. For the "sides" value, I think 10 will be enough. And then for the thickness, we can use 3 mm. If you are done, you can just delete this object. This will also automatically turn off the isolation mode. Let's convert the cushion object into an editable poly to collapse the "turbo smooth" modifier. Then right-click, and then attach the seam line object. For the left cushion, we can just duplicate this one. Right-click, then choose "clone". Click OK. Then for the X-axis coordinate, just add a minus symbol in front of the existing number. So, this is the result. But I think we need to move them forward just a little. And that's it, the cushions are done. In the next lesson video, we will model the backrest part. 71. Project: The sofa Part 4: In this project lesson video, we will model the last part of the sofa and that will be the backrest. Go to the front view. And start by creating a plane object. Use the square option. Click-drag here. Try to make the plane object as wide as the 2 holes in the reference image. Right-click and then press M. Assign our default material. Convert the object into an editable poly. Go to vertex mode and then select all of these vertices. After that, you can use the connect command. Select the center vertex. And then chamfer it. Just use zero for the segment value. Make it about this size. Then select these 4 vertices. We need to scale them just a little, so they form a bit rounder region. Next, select the center polygon. And in the perspective viewport, move the polygon backward just a little. Then we can "inset" it. And then move it backward. And then inset again. And then move it backward again. To combine the vertices into one you can use the "collapse" command. And just tweak the vertices so the hole forms a nice curve. Alright. Next, we can use the edge mode. And then double-click here. In the front view, hold the Shift key and then drag these edges up following the reference image. Then double click on these edges. Hold Shift and then drag them down. Select the upper edges again. In the right view, we can hold Shift and then move these edges back, to about this location. Don't worry too much about the thickness of the backrest for now. Hold Shift and then move the edges down. This is what we have so far. Now, we need to create the pairs for the front edge loops at the backside. Use the Alt + 1 shortcut to use the swift loop mode. Create 5 edge loops roughly at the height of the front edge loops. Okay. Go to the top-level mode. And let's input zero on the X coordinate to center this object. Next, we need to duplicate this object 3 times to the right. For this, we can use the lock selection, and also the 3D snapping mode. Hover on this vertex, hold Shift and then drag it to this vertex. Create 3 copies and then hit OK. Next, we can select all of these objects and isolate the selection. And let's turn this off. Select the left-most object. And then use the attach command to combine them all into a single object. Then, to merge the double vertices, we can select all of the vertices. And use the "weld" command. We can see the before and the after-vertex numbers. Basically, all vertices that are closer than 1 mm to each other will get merged into one. Alright. Let's continue modeling the right area. Go to the edge mode. Click here, hold Ctrl, and then double-click on this edge. Then on this edge. Next, hold the Shift key and then drag them, to about this far. Then, to close the side hole, we can deselect the top edge. Then use the "bridge" command. Next, for this top corner, let's make it less sharp. We can use a chamfer to split the corner edge. Zero out the segment. And just find the amount value that looks best. Okay. Next, I want to make this area a bit smaller. So, select this polygon. Hold Ctrl and then double-click here. Scale them down in the Y-axis. Then to convert the selection to only the inner edges, you can hold Ctrl and Shift together and then click on the edge icon. Now we can perform the “connect” command on these edges. Use 2 segments and then we can adjust the width between these segments. Okay. Convert the selection to the vertex selection. We need to push each of these vertices outward along their normal directions. Previously we used the local z-axis coordinate system. Now, I want to show you another approach. While still in the vertex mode, assign a modifier called the "push" modifier. We can use this spinner to control how far the vertices are pushed from their original location. After you like the result, we can convert the object into an editable poly again to collapse the modifier. Next, we need to split the edge loops here and here. For this, we can convert the polygon selection by holding the Shift key and then click on the edge icon. So, we get the border edges selected. But we don't want to select these edges. Okay. Now we can chamfer them. For the amount value, I think 2 mm is enough. Click OK. Let's focus on the seam at the back first. Select the inner edge loop. Move it inward into the surface. Then select the top edge loop. Move it outward from the surface. Alright. Now, for the front seam, we're going to do something different. Select the inner loop. And move it inward. While the edges are still selected we need to perform a "split" command. Then we can double-click the top edge loop. And move it forward. The reason we are splitting the inner edge loop is to make the front part an independent element. This way any selection created in this element will not affect the other elements. So, if we select the edge loops here or here, the edges at the top and back will not get selected. You will understand better as we select these edges. As you can see the edge selection does not go all the way to the side or to the back parts. I think it will be safer to use the selection-only mode for this process. We might accidentally move some edges if we use the move mode. Alright. After we have something like this, we can perform chamfer. I think 2 mm is too big for the front seam. Let's just use 0.17. Okay. Next, select all of the inner edge loops. Activate the move mode and then move them back. Let's check if there are any errors in the geometry. I think everything looks fine. Later the armrest part will collide with the backrest part in this region. We want to make it look like it is pressed a little inward. For this, we can select all of these vertices. Move them back a bit. And then also to the left. Deselect these vertices. And push the rest a bit further. If you are done, you can add a "symmetry" modifier. We only need the X-axis. Then apply a "turbo smooth" modifier. Previously we used the front reference image to create the backrest. As we all know, the photo has a perspective effect. That is why the backrest object is not wide enough to touch the side armrest. We can fix this easily along with fixing the height and the tilting effect, using a modifier called "FFD". "FFD" stands for "Freeform deformation. Just use the 2 by 2 version of the FFD modifiers. With this modifier, we can activate its "control points" sub-object mode. Press Ctrl + A to select all of the control points. And then scale them in the X-axis direction. Until the side end of the backrest is touching the armrest part. Next, we can go to the right view. Let's exit the sub-object mode, and then hide the seating object for now. Activate the "control points" mode again. Sorry, let's use the top-level mode first and move the whole object backward a little. Then go back to the "control points" mode again. Click-drag to select these 2 control points. Then move them back. Next, select these 2. And move them to this position. Just repeat the process for the other control points until the shape of the object follows the reference image. And I think the backrest object is done. Next, select the 2 cushion objects. Go to the right view. For these 2 objects, we can add the same or single FFD 2 by 2 modifier. Go to the "control points" mode. Select and move these control points to the front. And then move these two just a little. Next, select the seating object. Add an FFD 2 by 2 modifier also. Activate the "control points" mode. Select these 2 control points and move them forward. Until the edge line here is touching the backrest object. Do the same with the bottom part. Alright. Finally, we can combine all of them into a single object. Let's use the base object to attach the rests. But notice that the pivot point is not at the center. So, turn on the "affect pivot only" mode. Zero out the Z coordinate. And, we should zero out the Y-axis also. Turn this off. Right-click, choose "attach", and just keep clicking on the other objects. After that, we can rename the object to "sofa". And alhamdulillah, the sofa model is done. 72. Renderer basics: In this lesson video, we will discuss the basic concept of "rendering" and "renderer", and then how to set the active renderer in 3ds Max. "Rendering" is a process of producing an image or video from 3D scene data. What 3d scene data means is basically everything that you create inside 3ds max, including 3d models, materials, lights, etc. To perform rendering, one way to do this is by clicking on this button. Yes, it will just produce a pure black image. This is because we don’t have anything yet in the scene. We will discuss more about this later. For now, let’s continue discussing the "renderer". The program that is responsible for performing the rendering process is called the "renderer" or also known as the "rendering engine" in other software. 3ds Max provides different types of rendering engines out of the box. And you can also purchase 3rd party renderers such as V-Ray, Corona, Maxwell, etc. If you have multiple "renderers" installed, you need to pick which of them you want to use. To see the renderer settings in 3ds Max, you can open the "render setup" window. For this, you can click on this button. Or you can also go to the "rendering" menu, and then click this "render setup" menu item. Or you can also press F10 for the shortcut. After you have the window opened. Notice up here, there is an option called "renderer". If you click on the drop-down list, you can see several "rendering engines" that you can use. Just for a quick overview. The "scanline renderer" is the legacy renderer from the older versions of 3ds Max. It is still useable for producing non-photorealistic renderings. Below you will find "Arnold". Unlike the "scanline renderer", "Arnold" can generate photorealistic renderings as it can simulate how light behaves in the real world. Previously "Arnold" was a separate program developed by a company called "Solid Angle". Autodesk bought the company. And since version 2018, "Arnold" becomes available in the standard installation of 3ds Max. Here, you can also see the "Corona renderer" option. Unlike the rest, "Corona renderer" does not come bundled with the standard 3ds Max installation. You need to purchase it separately and then install it manually. Just like "Arnold", "Corona renderer" is also capable of generating photorealistic renderings. If you have other "rendering engines" installed. Then you will be able to see them here also. To give you a clear idea of the difference between the old "scanline renderer" and the new "rendering engines" such as "Arnold" or "Corona", you can take a look at these 2 sample images. The left side image is rendered only with the "scanline renderer". You can see how dark the shadow is, making it impossible to see anything below the box. This does not look realistic at all. As for the right-side image. We can clearly see that there are actually teapot objects below the box. Modern "rendering engines" support "global illumination". Which are fancy words for describing light rays that can bounce around, just like how the light behaves in the real world. We can see the teapot here because the light rays do not stop when they hit the floor. Instead, they will bounce off the floor. And will keep bouncing off until a certain limit that we can set in the renderer. 73. Material basic concepts: When discussing look development, there are 3 terms that people often get confused about when using them. They are "material", "shader", and "texture". As a general guideline, "material" is a collection of parameters that determine how 3d objects will look when rendered. Next is "shader". "Shader" is actually a program or a piece of code. You can use shaders to set rules and logics, or even generate procedural graphics, etc. Essentially, because it is a program, to create a shader you actually need to write some codes. The good news is, there are many visual tools that we can use to create shaders as the replacement of writing the actual codes. This can greatly help artists or non-programmers to create custom shaders. And the last term is "texture". A "texture" is basically an image that we place on the surface of a 3d model. Okay, so that is the basics. Again. "Material" is a set of parameters. "Shader" is a program. And "textures" are basically images. Now, the way these 3 things work together is like this. Material is the hub for shaders and textures and 3d objects. So in order for a 3D object to use a shader and texture it needs a material. Inside a material, we can define the shader that we want to use and also the textures. In a single material, we can have multiple shaders and also multiple textures. But at minimum, a material needs at least one shader for it to work. It is impossible to have material without any shader working behind it. In fact, what we know as "material" is actually a shader that exposes some of its parameters to the users. It is a bit too complicated to discuss everything now. As a beginner, it is safe to assume that "material" and "shader" are two different things. Now, in terms of texture. The texture is actually not a must. Meaning you can have material without any texture. In practice, 3d artists treat materials like materials in the real world. So, we can create a material called "wood" for example, and assign that material to any object that we want to make looks like wood. Such as wooden tables, wooden doors, wooden bridges, etc. Then we can create another material called "rubber" for example. We can apply that rubber material to 3d objects such as car tires, earphone buds, certain furniture components, etc. We can create material for gold, chrome, wall, fabric, glass, water, etc. Basically, for every type of material we see in the real world, we should have a material in the 3D scene to represent it. These are the basic terms and general concepts in computer graphics. In 3ds Max, however, things are a bit different. We’ll get to this in more detail in future lessons after discussing the material editor. 74. Material editor: In this lesson video, we will discuss the "material editor". In 3ds Max to create and manage materials you need to use the "material editor". To access it, you can click on this button. But notice if you click and hold on to this button, you can see 2 different types of the "material editor". If you click on this one. This is the classic material editor or also known as the "compact material editor". And if you choose this one. This is the newer version called the "slate material editor". You can also access the "material editor" through the menu. If you open the "rendering" menu. You can see the "material editor" sub-menu here. Inside it, you can see the 2 types, "compact" and "slate". Besides using the UI, you can also press M on the keyboard to open the "material editor". If you use the M shortcut, 3ds Max will open the last material editor type you used. So, if you use the "slate" type for example. Then close it. And then press M, the "slate material editor" will open. But if you use the "compact material editor", and then close it. The next time you press the M shortcut, it is the "compact material editor" that will open. Now, if you open the wrong material editor. For example, you opened the "compact" type, while you actually want to use the "slate" type. You can easily switch between the two by clicking on this "modes" menu. Then choose the type you want to activate. In this case, we want to open the "slate material editor". So, what is the difference between the two? Well, both material editor types are very capable and compatible. The difference is that the new "slate material editor" uses a more visual approach to display the materials. It uses nodes and connectors and so it is relatively easier for beginners to understand the structure of the materials. Although sometimes, I still use the classic material editor for quick simple tasks. Because nowadays most of the computer graphics applications use the visual approach, we will be using only the new "slate material editor" from this point forward. I hope this way you will become familiar with the graph or node editor concept and so can easily transfer the skill to other CG software. Now let’s discuss the UI elements and how to navigate in the "slate material editor". Up here we have the menu and the toolbar. Then on the left side, we can see the "material browser" or the "map browser". This is where 3ds Max lists all the available materials, shaders, and textures that you can use to create the look that you want. You need to be aware though. What you see here are only some of the existing materials and nodes in 3ds Max. Some features are hidden depending on what "renderer" you are currently using. Because we are using "Arnold", 3ds Max will only show materials, shaders, and maps that are compatible or supported by the "Arnold" renderer. If you switch to other "renderers", for example, I open the "render setup" window. And switch to "Corona renderer". You will see a different set of items available here. Okay. I’m switching the "renderer" back to "Arnold" now. One last thing you need to know about the "material browser" is that you can actually detach the panel as a separate window. So, you can drag this out like so. And you can drag it into the "material editor" again. You will see these small arrows to help you snap the panel back to the "material editor" window. I’m just placing it back to the default location. Next is the "views" panel. This is where we can see the nodes and the connectors. And then this is the navigator. This is like the minimap version of the view panel. The purpose of this panel is to show where you are compared to all the objects in the view panel. And the last one is the "parameters" panel. This will display the parameters of the node you select in the view panel. You can hide any of these panels beside the "view" panel by clicking on the X button in the right corner. And to show them back you can open the "tools" menu. And then click on the name of the panel you want to show it again. You can also use the keyboard shortcuts listed in the menu to show and hide the panels. To better understand how these 3 panels work together. Let’s create a new material. In the "material browser", in the "material section", and then inside the "general" section. You will see the "Physical material". To create this material, just drag this to the view panel. And we have a new material. To navigate the "view" panel, you can use the same technique as the "viewport". So, hold down the middle mouse button and drag it around to pan the view. To zoom in and out, you can rotate the scroll wheel up and down. Notice as I get very close to the material node. The navigator shows a smaller area of the red rectangle. So this red rectangle is our viewing area. And this box is the material node. And in the "parameters" panel, we can see the parameters that belong to this material node. One last navigation technique that is important to discuss is the "zoom extent" technique. Just like in the viewport. If you zoom away or pan the view too far. You can quickly zoom back to the selected node, just by pressing the Z key on the keyboard. You can use these icons down here to pan, zoom, or zoom extent the view panel. But it is much faster to do these using the middle mouse button and the Z shortcut. 75. Material browser categories: In this lesson video, we will discuss basic material management including the node categories, creating and deleting materials, and assigning materials to objects. In this scene, I already have several teapot objects and a box object for the floor. Let's first discuss the different categories inside the "material map browser". As you may already notice, the "material map browser" is divided into several categories or sections. If you need to create materials, then you can find materials in these 3 sections, "materials", "scene materials", and "sample slots". You won’t find materials in the "Maps" section or the "Controllers" section. You can think of the "materials" category up here as the templates or blueprints that you can use to create new materials. The "scene materials" section, however, only displays materials that exist in the scene. Currently, it is empty, because we don't have any material yet in the scene. Next, is the "sample slots" section. Here you will find 24 sample materials that you can use. What you see here are the materials you see in the classic or the "compact mode". So, if we switch the material editor mode to "compact". These are the "sample slots" materials. If you use the "slate material editor", you won't be needing these "sample slots" feature that much. Although they can be useful to store temporary materials. We'll see how we can use these sample materials later. For now, let's go back to the "slate material" mode. Okay. So, until now. We know that we can only find materials in these 3 categories "materials", "scene materials", and "sample slots". But, what about these 2 categories? Well, the items or nodes inside the "maps" and "controllers" categories are not "materials". Remember when we discussed "shaders"? Well in 3ds Max, "shaders" are also called "Maps". We will discuss more about these "map nodes" later. Next is the "controllers". These controller nodes are small programs also, but they are not shaders. We use these controller nodes to create animations. Or in other words, to change certain values inside materials or maps over time. For now, let's go back to the "materials" category. Here you will see 2 subcategories, "General" and "Arnold". The "General" materials are the default 3ds Max materials that will always be available regardless of the active renderer. While the materials under the "Arnold" category are contextual. Meaning they are specific to the "Arnold" renderer and so will not be available if you use other renderers. Just to prove my point, if I open the "render setup" window again. You can use the F10 shortcut by the way. And then change the active renderer to "Corona" for example. Now the "Arnold" category is gone. But the "general" category is still here. Let me change this back to "Arnold". Let's open the "general" material category again. And then drag the "physical material" into the "view panel". So this is one way to create a material. Another method to create a new material is by double-clicking. So instead of dragging it, you can just double-click on the material. 3ds max will then create that material at the center of the view panel. If the materials are stacking on top of each other, you can just drag the top area of the material node to move it to another location. You can select a material node by clicking on its top area. You can also select a node by clicking on the center area like this. But just be careful not to accidentally touch one of these "wire sockets". We will discuss these "wire sockets" later. Now, to delete a material, simply select the node. And then press "Delete" on the keyboard. That material is now gone. Most of the time, you don't want to have materials with generic names like this. You should always name them based on the real-world materials that you want to mimic. To name a material, first, you need to select it. Then in the parameters panel, you can see the material's name in the text field up here. Just change this to any name you like that makes sense. For example, "plastic green matte". Now, if you open the "scene materials" category, you might be expecting to see this material in this section. But we don't see anything here. Why is that? This is because this material is a cold material. What "cold material" means is that there is no object in the scene that uses it. So, we need to assign this material first to at least one object in the scene in order for it to be accepted as part of the scene materials. 76. Assigning and picking materials: In this lesson video, we will discuss different ways to assign materials, and then learn the concept of "cold", "warm", and "hot" materials. And finally how to pick and search materials in the scene. To assign a material to an object, we can do this in 4 methods. The first is by dragging this output socket to the target object. Let's say we want to assign this material to this teapot object. Click and drag from this port point and then hover over the teapot object. And then release the mouse. Now, this teapot object is using this material. If you see the object turns black like this. This is usually because 3ds Max is late in updating the viewport. Eventually the viewport will catch up. But you can force the viewport to refresh faster by clicking on the third menu in the viewport. Open the "materials" sub-menu. And then select "Realistic materials with maps". Using this option will also allow us to view materials with complex shaders. The second method of assigning material is by clicking on this button. But in order for this work, first, you need to select an object or several objects. For example, this teapot and this teapot. Then click on this button. The third method is by going to the "material" menu. And then click this "Assign material to selection" command. Or, as you can see here, the shortcut is A. For these methods, you also need to have the object or objects selected first. One important thing you need to remember in using the A shortcut is that you need to have the "material editor" active in order to perform this shortcut. Otherwise, 3ds Max will be mistaken for the "angle snap" shortcut. To show you what I mean. If I select this teapot. And then press A. No material has been assigned. But notice how the "angle snap" toggle button is turned on and off. So, after you select the object. You need to select the "material editor" window. Only then you can press A. Now, these 4 teapot objects are linked to the same material. I think we can see this better if we change the base color to another color. Let's say yellow. Or perhaps it should be green because we name this material "green" before. As you can see, a single material can be assigned to multiple objects in the scene. And so if we change the setting of that material, all the objects that are linked to it will be affected. Alright. Now, because we have assigned this material to an object in the scene. This material is now officially not a "cold material" anymore. And so, if we open the "scene materials" category. Our material "plastic green matte" is now listed here. Materials can be categorized into 3 types based on how they are used in the scene, "cold", "warm", "hot". A "cold" material, as I mentioned earlier, is a material that is not being used. Or it is not assigned to any object in the scene. On the other hand, "warm" and "hot" materials are materials assigned to at least one object in the scene. What differentiates between the two\ is whether the object is currently selected or not. So, for example, if I click on empty space to deselect everything. This material is now a "warm material". But if I select any of these teapot objects, this material is now a "hot material". We can visually tell whether a material is "cold", "warm" or "hot" by its preview. But to better compare them we need to create 2 more materials. So let me just drag a new material here. And another one. Let's change the base color of this material to blue. And this one to red. Then I'm going to assign this blue-colored material to the floor. Then make sure one of the teapot objects is currently selected. Okay. Now we have the 3 material types. This is a "hot" material because currently the object assigned to this material is selected. This is a "warm" material because this material is used by an object, which is the floor or the box object. But currently, it is not selected in the viewport. And finally, this is a cold material. Because this material is not assigned to any of the objects in the scene. Now notice how the previews of each of the materials are different. To see the preview more clearly you can double click on it. This will make the preview larger. If you want to make it small again, you can double-click on it again. For now, let's make all of them large. As you can see, the hot material has white triangles on its corners. While the warm material has triangles also on its corners. But they are colored in grey, not white. Meanwhile, the "cold" material does not have any triangles on its corners. And, again, if you check the "scene materials" section. Only the "warm" and "hot" materials are listed here. While the "cold" ones are not. Until this point, you might be wondering. Why is it so important to know which materials are cold, warm, and hot? Well, one of the most important reasons is because this has a lot to do with deleting materials. You see, if you delete a "cold" material. That material will be gone forever. While, if you delete a "warm" or "hot" material, they are not actually removed. They are still in the scene and you can open them again if you wish. Just to give you an example. If I select the "hot" material and the "warm" materials by clicking and dragging like this in the "views" panel. And then press delete. It seems that they are gone. But notice here. They are still listed in the scene material section. Whenever I need to open them again, I can just drag any of them into the "views" panel. 3ds Max will ask, whether we want to open it as an "instance" or as a "copy". If you want to edit the material then you should choose "instance". You only choose the "copy" method if you want to create a new material by duplicating the original material. For now, we want to open and edit the material, so make sure it is set to "instance", and then click OK. We can do the same with this material. Alright. Now, watch when I select a "cold" material. And then press Delete. That material will be gone forever. Well, yes you can press Ctrl + Z to undo. If the undo history is still available. But if you forget to undo and you save and close the file. You won't be able to retrieve that material back. So, this is something you need to keep in mind when working with materials. The last two techniques I want to discuss in this video are picking and searching materials in the scene. If you want to open a material that exists in your scene, besides using the "scene material" section, you can also pick it directly from the object in the viewport. But first, let me press Ctrl + A, to select all the nodes in the view. And press Delete on the keyboard to clear them out. Alright. Let's say you want to edit the material of the floor object. Imagine that you now have hundreds of materials in the scene and you don't know exactly the name of the material. In this scenario, we can click on this button that looks like an eyedropper. Then click on the floor object. And the material of that object is now opened in the view panel. You can also do this via the "material" menu, and then select "pick from object". But I guess using this button is way faster to perform. Let me clear this again. Now imagine a scenario where the object you want to pick is being blocked by other objects. Or it is currently frozen or hidden. So you cannot use the pick tool. But you know the name of that material. In such a case, you can simply type any part of the name in this search field. For example, we can type here "green". And this is our material. We can click-drag like so into the "views" panel. And choose "instance", if we want to edit the material. 77. Sample slots: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss the "sample slots" feature. There are times when we create a material and then need to close the file. But we haven't assigned that material yet to any object in the scene. Basically, we need to save a "cold" material inside a 3ds Max file. Can we do this? The answer is yes we can do this using the "sample slots". "Sample slots" are actually a feature that exists in the classic material editor. But it is still here and so we can make use of it. If you put a "cold" material inside the "sample slots". That material will not be removed by 3ds Max and will get saved inside the file when you save it. There are a total of 24 sample slots. And it is already filled with example materials when we first start 3ds Max. To see all the sample slots much better. You can collapse the other sections. And then drag this down until we see the 4 rows. And drag this to the left. And drag this border to the right. Notice how "Arnold" renderer rendering all the previews of these materials. If your computer is fully loaded and you want to tell the renderer to stop rendering the previews, you can click on this button. If this is off, all the material previews will not be updated when you change the settings. For now, we need the material previews to always be updated, so make sure that this is on. Let's create a new physical material. We're going to explore a different method now to create a material. Hover your mouse cursor inside the "views" panel. And then right-click. Then choose "materials", "general", and choose "physical material". And we have a new material. We can press Z to “zoom extent” the material. To make this material unique. Let's change its "base color" to purple. And name this material "plastic purple". Now to save this "cold" material to the "sample slots", we can do this just like how we apply a material to an object, and that is by dragging the output port to any of the slots in the "sample slots" section. But please be aware that when you do this, you will replace the existing material in that slot with your material. And if that material is a "cold" material, then that material will be gone forever. But if that material is a "warm" or "hot" material. This will be a safe thing to perform, as you can find the material again in the "scene materials" section. So drag this to the slot at the bottom-right position until you see a red line. Then release. 3ds Max will prompt us whether we want to create a duplicate or just the instance material into this slot. We want to use the same material, so we choose "instance". Then click OK. Now, even if you delete the material from the "views" panel. If you save and close the file. And then later reopen it again. You can find your purple-colored material here in this material slot. To use or edit the material inside the "sample slots", basically we can use the same techniques we have already discussed. We can click-drag like so. Or double click like so. Or, you can also right-click, then choose "sample slots". We can see all the 24 materials here. For example, we can pick this one. And the last technique I want to discuss is assigning material directly from the "sample slots". To do this, you can simply click-drag the material and then drop it on an object. Notice how the preview now has changed. It is now a "warm" material indicated by these grey triangles in the corner. So that is how you can use the "sample slots". The downside of these "sample slots" is that you can only have up to 24 materials. So, what if you need more than 24 slots? Well if that is the case, then you should be better off using the "material library" feature instead of the "sample slots" feature. Which we are going to discuss in the next lesson. 78. Material library: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss the "Material library". So what is a "material library". Basically, it is a file with the ".MAT" extension. Unlike the ".MAX" file which can store complete 3d scene data, the ".MAT" file can only store material information. Previously we learned about the "sample slots", and how we can store material information in there. But it has many limitations. What is so great about this "material library" file is that you are not limited to only saving 24 materials. You can have an unlimited number of materials saved in this file. As long as your computer or your storage device can handle it. Another benefit of using the "material library" is that you can easily share it with other people. If you are working with a team, you can save the file in a local server or in a cloud so all the members of the team can access it. But please be aware that the "material library" file will not embed the texture or the image files. It only stores the material definitions and all of their properties or parameters. It can only point out the location or the URL of the image file you want to use. So it is better to save the texture files in the cloud or server also if you are planning to use the "material library" feature to collaborate with other people. We will discuss more about textures in later lessons. To create a "material library", in the "material map browser", notice there is a small caret button. If you click it, you will see two options. This one is for creating a new material library, which is the one that we need. And this one is for opening an existing material library. For now, click the option "new material library". Now, because a "material library" is just a file, you need to specify the location and also the name of it. Again, if you are collaborating with other people online, you should choose a shared network location to save the file. For now, I'm just using my local drive. Then we can name the material. Just for example, let's name this "Arnold metal materials". Then click "save". As you can see. We now have a section in the "material browser" called "Arnold metal materials". What makes this section different is that you can see the word "LIB" here at the right. "LIB" stands for "library". This indicates that this section is actually a "material library". To store materials inside this library, you can use the same method as before. That is dragging the output socket into the library section area. But before that, let's explore a bit on the "Arnold" material. Right-click here. Choose "materials", "Arnold", "surface", and then "standard surface". This is the "Arnold" standard material. As you can see, it has a lot more parameters and sockets compared to the 3ds Max "physical material". Let's make the preview larger. And rename the material to "gold". Change the base color to yellow, as close as you can get to a gold color. And then change the "specular" color to yellow also. But make it brighter than the base color. The term "specular" is basically the highlighted area of a surface. Next, change the "specular roughness" value to around 0.3. This will make it less glossy. Down here you will find the "metalness" value. If you want to create a metal material such as gold, then you should set this value to 1. Then, the last thing I want to change is the preview background. Notice how the material looks pretty dull. Well, this is because reflective materials only look as good as its surrounding. If we only have a plain gray background, then we will see a plain color also on the material reflection. To use a background, just right-click on the preview area. And then choose "show background in preview". Now the material looks better as it reflects more varied colors. Please note that this background feature is only for preview and will not affect the objects assigned to this material. Now that we have the material. Let’s save this material to the library. Drag this output socket into the library section area, until you see a blue line. Then release. If you don't see anything, make sure to click on the plus button to expand the section. We can see that the material is already inside the library. If you think that the preview size here is too small. You can right-click here. Then choose "display material library as" and then choose "large icons". Now we can see the preview much better. But we're not done yet. Remember that this library is basically just a file. And like any other file, you need to save it. Notice this "asterisk" symbol here at the left side of its name. This indicates that there are some changes in the file but we haven’t saved it. For this, you cannot just open the "file" menu, and click this "save" button. Because that will only save the 3ds Max file, or the ".MAX" file. Not the material library file. They are two different files. To save the material library, you can right-click here. You will see the name and the URL of the file. If you click on it, or just hover over it, you will see a sub-menu where you can save the file. Now we don’t see any asterisk symbol here. Meaning that this file is already saved. But, don't worry if you forget to save the material library files. Because, when you close 3ds Max and you haven't saved them, 3ds Max will prompt you to save them first. Now, I'm going to close 3ds Max and start a new fresh file. I just created these 3 sphere objects off the record. Imagine your colleague just created a material inside a material library. And you need to use that material. To do this, in the "material map browser", click on this caret button. And then choose "open material library". And find the file, then click "open". We can see the gold material we created earlier. Let's make the icons large so we can see the preview better. Now, if we double-click on it. Or drag it to the "views" panel. Notice how 3ds Max does not ask whether we want to instantiate or to copy. Why is that? Well, this is because the material library is just a template. When you drag like this, it will always perform "copy", or create a new "cold" material. So then, how can we edit the materials inside a material library? Well, you just overwrite the old material with a new one. For example, we can change the color to blue. And then to overwrite the old material, we can drag the output port to the old material. Until you see a red line like this. If you see a blue line, this means you are creating a new material. In our case, we want to overwrite the material, so make sure you see the red line like this. And then release. And, as always, because this is a file. You need to save it. But for now, I don’t want to save it, as I don't think I need a material named gold but has a blue color. I only want to close it, without saving it. To do that we can right-click here, and then choose "close material library". 3ds Max will prompt us. Just choose "no" if we don't want to save the file. The last thing I want to discuss is that overwriting materials can happen both ways. Meaning, we can also overwrite materials from a library to a 3ds Max scene. We can do this if the materials have the same name. Let's see an example of this. But first, I want to clear the "views" panel. Besides deleting the nodes manually, you can also open the "edit" menu. And then choose "clear view". Then click "yes". Now we have a clear views panel. Let's open our material library file again. You can assign a material directly from a material library to an object simply by dragging it like this. By doing this, we created a "warm" or a "hot" material. So if you open the "scene materials" section. You will see the "gold" material already listed here. Now, if you drag a material like this from the "scene materials" section to an object in the viewport. These 2 objects now use the same material which has the name "gold". Now, let's say you want to change the material. You can click-drag to the "views" panel. And choose "instance". And, let's just make it green. The scene material and all the objects assigned to it will be affected automatically. Okay. Now watch carefully. If I drag in again the "gold" material from the library to a new object in the scene. This will happen. 3ds Max will prompt us, whether we want to overwrite or replace the material, or rename it to a new material. This only happens because the material in the scene and the material in the library have exactly the same name, which is "gold" in our case. If you don't want to overwrite the material, you can choose this option. And just give it a new name. But if we choose "replace" and then click "OK". Now the previous material in the scene is gone, replaced by the new material from the library. That is why all of these changed back to yellow. From this example, we can conclude that having a good naming convention for the materials is very important. Especially if you are working with a large team. 79. Multi sub-object material: In this lesson video, we will be covering the "Multi sub-object material". I already created this teapot object off the record. Previously we learned that a material can be assigned to multiple objects. What we need to know now, is that we can also assign multiple materials to a single object. For example, we want to assign different materials to each of the teapot elements. For this, we need to convert the object into an "editable poly" first. So, select the teapot object. Right-click. And then choose "convert to". And choose "convert to editable poly". Let's open the material editor. And open the "sample slots" section. Now, if you just click-drag a material to the object like so. Just as before. The material will be assigned to the whole object. If we do this again using another material. The new material will replace the previous material. So now this is a "hot" material, while this becomes a "cold" material again. Let's say we want to assign this red "wall paint" material, but only to the lid element of the teapot. To do this, you need to select the polygons of the teapot lid element. We can right-click and then choose "element" here. You can also press 5 on the keyboard if you want. Now that we are in the "element" sub-object mode, we can select only the top lid polygons. While in this condition, if we click-drag a material onto that object. It doesn’t have to be exactly on top of the selection. As long as the mouse cursor is on the object. If you release. Now, only the selected polygons are assigned to that material. We can do this using the other material assignment methods. Such as by dragging the output port or by using this assign button up here. Just for example. Let's create a new "physical material" in the "views" panel using the right-click method. Use a different "base color", such as purple. Now, if we select the spout element. And then drag the output port of the material to the teapot object. As you can see. Only the spout part is assigned to the purple material. The other parts are not. So, assigning multiple materials to a single object is quite easy. But what we really need to discuss now is the inner working of how these multiple materials work. When you assign multiple materials to a single object, behind the scene, 3ds Max creates a special material called the "multi sub-object material". And besides that, it also assigns a special polygon identifier called the "Material ID". To see this more clearly, let me clear the views first. And let's use the pick material tool. Click on the teapot object. You will see something like this. This is the "Multi sub-object material". Basically, it is just a container for other materials. Currently, we have 3 materials inside it. This is the one we use for the majority of the polygons. This is for the lid polygons. And this is for the spout polygons. Notice these numbers here. These are the "material ID". This is the number 3ds Max used to assign certain polygons to certain materials. Polygons that have a material ID number 1 will use this material. Polygons with material ID number 2 will use this material. Number 3 will use this material. And so on. Now, let's select the handle element. Make sure we are in the element mode. And then click on the handle part. In the modify panel. If you scroll down. You will see the "material ID" value. If I set this to 3. As you can see now these polygons use this material. And please note that "material ID" is not a property specific to the element sub-object. It is actually a polygon property. So if we go to the polygon mode. And then select these polygons for example. And then change the "material ID" to 2. As you can see. These polygons now use material number 2 listed in the "multi sub-object material". Now, let’s take a look inside the scene material. Here we can see a total of 4 materials. These 3 materials look like normal materials. But if you look closely at this material. This is the "multi sub-object material". The preview looks like a ball with patches of fabric in different colors. Now, let's discuss how we can edit and replace the materials inside the "multi sub-object material". Let's say we want to edit this red color material. We can click here to select the node. The parameters of the material will be shown here. Or, you can also click on this material name here. This will select the corresponding material node and also open its parameters. Then you can make changes here as you need. To replace a material inside a "multi sub-object material", you can do this in several ways. For example, let's say you want to use this "black rubber" material in the sample slots to replace the purple material. Just drag it, like so, and then release it here. Choose "instance" and click "OK". You can see it in the "views" panel. A new node is replacing the purple material. Now, this purple material is a cold material. It does not connect to anything. Also, you can see that the handle and the spout parts of the teapot have now become black. Another way to replace a material is through disconnecting and connecting nodes in the "views" panel. Let's say we want to assign the purple material back into the third slot. To disconnect a node, you can click-drag the input socket like this and then release. You can also disconnect a node by clearing the material. Let me undo this first. So, we can right-click here. And then choose "clear". As you can see, clearing a material from the parameters panel will disconnect that material. Now we can reconnect the output socket of the purple material into the third slot of the multi sub-object material. This rubber material is now a cold material. Let's just delete it. The last thing I want to cover is adding and deleting the material ID slots. Currently, we only have 3 material ID slots. We can add more slots by typing here manually, how many slots we want to have in total. Or by clicking the "Add" button here. Now we have 4 slots. And 3ds Max just created a new physical material inside the new slot. Let's delete this material for now, because we're going to explore a new method of creating material. If you have an empty material slot like this. Clicking on it will open a floating "material map browser". Here you can select a material. For example, an "Arnold" standard surface material. You can click OK. Or just double-click on that material. As you can see a new material node was just created for us. Let's change the color to something different. For example, this orange color. Alright. Let's get back into these number IDs. The thing about these IDs, is that they actually don’t need to be sequential. For example, you can type here 10, or any number you like. Just be careful not to input a very large number here. Because this can crash 3ds Max. So only use the number you actually need. I'm using number 10 here just for explaining the point. If I select the body part element of the teapot object. And then change the "material ID" to 10. Now, these polygons in the body part use this material. So, you know now that these ID numbers can be any numbers. As long as they match the material ID value in the polygon, they will work. If you want to delete a material ID slot. You can select the slot first by clicking on the preview box. Then click this "Delete" button. This "multi sub-object material" now only has 3 materials just like before. This "Arnold" material is now disconnected, and we can just delete it if we don't need it anymore. 80. Color models: In this lesson video and the next one, we will discuss the fundamental concepts of color models and bit depth in computer graphics. We need to discuss these concepts first as we are going to need them later in the upcoming lessons. In this video, we will focus on "color models" and how to choose colors in 3ds Max. And in the next video, we will discuss the "bit depth". So, what is a "color model"? Basically, a color model is a method of splitting color into its basic components or parameters. There are 2 types of color models, light-based color models, and pigment-based color models. Light-based color models use lights as the color producer. All devices that produce light use this color model. For example, our computer monitors, smartphone screens, televisions, projectors, etc. In the light-based category, every color can be split into 3 key colors. They are Red, Green, and Blue. Or also known as RGB. Every color that we know can be produced by mixing these 3 key colors. While, unlike the light-based model, the pigment-based color model uses inks or paints to produce color. Everything that is printed or painted uses this color model. In the pigment-based category, any color can be produced by mixing 4 key colors. They are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. Also known as CMYK. Nowadays, there are also pigment-based color models that use more than 4 colors. But unless you are working in the printing industry, you don't actually need to use the CMYK color model. You can just use the RGB color model in your workflow from end to end. If you ever need to mass print an image. Just send the RGB image file to the printing shop, and let them do the conversion. 3ds Max does not support the CMYK color model or any other pigment-based color models. This makes sense as most CG projects are targeting screens or other light-based devices. So, from this point forward we will be focusing on light-based color models. As we discussed earlier, the real light-based color model is RGB, or Red, Green, and Blue key colors. But, if we create a physical material. And then click on the base color box. In the 3ds Max color picker window, we can see RGBA and HSV. So why are there 2 color models here, and what this "Alpha" value does? Let's cover this "Alpha" value first. Basically, this "Alpha" value controls transparency. The value of 1 means it is fully opaque. And zero means it is fully transparent. Now, the base color parameter doesn't actually need transparency value. So, any "Alpha" value you set here does not matter. Let's just set this to the maximum. Now, although RGB is the true light-based color model. It is very hard to pick a specific color using only the RGB values. Yes, you can select basic colors like white, black, red, green, and blue easily using RGB sliders. But other than that, only people with years of experience can have the feel for it. Just to give you an example. If all of the colors, red, green, and blue, all maxed out. The output color will be white. And if none of the RGB colors are turned on, then the output color will be black. So basically, in the RGB color model, black means off or no lights at all. If we want to have pure Red color, we can turn off all channels except the red channel. The same principle applies to the other channels. This is green. And this is blue. Again, this is very basic. But what if you need Yellow? Well, yellow is actually a combination of red and green lights. Next, what if we want to make this color slightly orange? We can decrease the Green value almost half way. Next, what if we want to make this color darker, or more towards brown? Well, we can decrease the green and the red sliders together to the left. As you can see. Things are becoming more and more complicated. That is why another light-based color model was created called HSV. HSV, which stands for Hue, Saturation, and Value, is a derivative color model from RGB. But, instead of using key colors like RGB, HSV uses color characteristics to define the color output. Due to this approach, it is much easier to select a specific color compared to the RGB model. The Hue value controls the color type. You can see that dragging this slider is the same as dragging the pointer here left or right. The Saturation value controls how much color is present as opposed to greyscale colors. So, if we set the saturation value to zero, we only get greyscale colors. But if we set this to the maximum, we get the strongest color presence. The "Value" controls how much light is emitted from the color. If we set this to zero, we'll get black. Because, again, in the light color model, black means no light at all. In the HSV color model, if you want to pick a pure white color. You need to set the saturation all the way down. And the "value" all the way up. Now, 3ds Max also provides additional ways to get to black and white colors. If you want to move the color closer to white, you can drag the "whiteness" pointer here downward. And if you want to move the color closer to black, then you can drag this down. But you will also need to move this "whiteness" value up. 81. Bit depth and high-range images: In this lesson video, we will be discussing another fundamental concept in computer graphics and that is "bit depth". And then after that, we will discuss high-range images. Raster images, such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, etc, and also the picture data displayed by our monitor screen are actually formed by a grid of small squares called "Pixel". A full HD picture, for example, has a pixel resolution of 1920 by 1080. Meaning it has 1920 columns and 1080 rows of pixels. The higher the resolution the more pixels the image contains thus making it able to store more visual information. Pixel, which stands for "picture element" is the smallest building block of a digital graphic. A pixel can only have one color. And as we discussed earlier. Because a color needs to be defined by RGB values, a single pixel needs to store at least 3 information. How much strength is for the Red color. How much is for the Green color. And how much is for the Blue color. Different levels of Red, Green, and Blue colors will determine the color of the pixel. These 3 blocks of information inside a pixel are also known as "Channels". So we have a Red channel, Green channel, and Blue channel inside a single pixel. Now, we often need to store transparency information. For this, we can use an additional channel called the "Alpha" channel. But you need to know that not all image file formats support the "Alpha" channel. JPEG file format, for example, does not support it. Meanwhile, PNG, TIFF, and TGA file formats support the "Alpha" channel. So if you need to store an image with the transparency you don't want to use JPEG. You should be using PNG or other formats that support the "Alpha" channel. Because again, each pixel in these file formats can have 4 channels total. 3 channels for the color information or the RGB values. And 1 channel for the transparency or the "Alpha" value. Common image file formats support 8-bit per channel. This means that there are 8 memory slots allocated for each channel. So we have 8 slots for Red, 8 slots for Green, and 8 slots for Blue. And, If we have an "Alpha" channel then we also need additional 8 slots for it. For standard RGB files, each pixel will have 8 plus 8 plus 8 bits, which equals a total of 24 bits. But if we have an "Alpha" channel in that image, each pixel will have additional 8 bits of data, so the total will be 32 bits. Now, although this seems not important at the moment. But, trust me, knowing this will help you understand image file settings better in other graphic applications. Because some graphic applications have unique ways of showing image parameters. Some use the bit value per channel, but some use the total amount of bit per pixel. Such as they ask you whether to save as 24 bits image or 32 bits image. Or they ask you whether to save in RGB, or in RGB plus Alpha format. Etcetera. Now, let's discuss the range level of the standard 8-bit per channel images. Down at the machine level, computers actually only understand binary numbers which are 0 and 1. So these 8 slots will be filled in, with a bunch of 0 and 1 numbers. For example, it can be something like this. These are just random digit numbers, just to give you an example. What we can count with this setup, is that, if we have 8 probable spaces and 2 probable values, which are 0 and 1. How much are the total configurations that we can get from it? Well, that will be 2 power by 8. Equals to 256 variations. So with 8 bits per channel, each channel can have 1 to 256 probable values. But if we start from 0 instead of 1. We can have 0 to 255 values for each channel. For standard usage, 0 to 255 levels are enough to display good quality imagery. But for more demanding professional works, these 256 levels of images are just not enough. Why is that? In the real world, lightness or brightness can range from zero to ‘theoretically” an infinite value. Zero means a pitch-black dark situation where there are no lights at all. In this condition we are quote on quote “blind” as we can not see anything. And infinite brightness value is just a theory, as for us living on planet earth, the brightest thing we can see is the sun. There is no man-made light able to defeat the sun’s brightness. Now if we need to capture this high range of light information into an image. Because standard images only have 8 bits per channel, they may only capture a small range of the real-world lighting condition. We can, however, compress it like this. These kinds of techniques are known as “tone mapping”. They are very important techniques because our display devices such as computer monitor, TV, smartphone screen, etc. Even the LCD screen at the back of our digital cameras. Most of them have a standard color space called SRGB. SRGB stands for "Standard RGB" which is basically 8-bits per channel graphics. To store more lighting information, we can use special image formats that support more than 8 bits per channel. Several examples of high-range images are HDRI, open EXR, high range PNG files, camera RAW files, etc. Let's quickly discuss each of these file formats from bottom to top. The camera RAW files are actually not a single file format. Each camera manufacturer uses its own RAW file format. It contains the real visual information captured directly by the camera sensors before any processing is applied. They are mostly useless until they are converted into more standardized file formats. Most camera RAW formats can store from 10 bits to 14 bits per channel. Next is the high-range PNG file format. There are many versions of PNG file formats. The most common one is the 8-bit per channel version. The one that we're discussing now is the high range version which can store 16 bits per channel. Although it offers a lot of features, not many people are using high-range PNG file formats. Next is Open EXR or just EXR for short. EXR, which stands for "Extended Dynamic Range", is the second most widely used high-range image file format. It supports up to 32 bits per channel. The last one is the HDRI file format, which stands for "High Dynamic Range Image". This is the most widely used high-range image file format, simply because it is the oldest one. It also supports up to 32 bits per channel. And there is even a version that can hold up to 64 bits per channel, although still rarely used by the CG industry. Because high-range image files such as HDR or EXR, can store up to 32 bits per channel. Each channel can support more than 4 billion levels. We know this from powering 2 with 32. Compare this against the standard 8-bit per channel images that can only support 256 levels per channel. It's like night and day. Even our eyes cannot see the whole 4 billion levels at the same time. It seems awesome, but having a very large amount of lighting data introduces more challenges. To begin with is the challenge in capturing the data. Most camera RAW files can only store up to 14 bits per channel. So usually, to create a really high range image, you need to take several pictures with different exposure levels. These pictures, then combined inside an image editing software to create a single high-range image file. The second challenge is displaying them. Currently, when I record this video, several HDR display devices are already available in the market. But these devices only support up to 10 bits per channel. There are no display devices that support 32 bits per channel yet. And even if they do exist. They will be useless. Why? Because they will be bad for your eyes' health. The same reason why you don't want to stare at the sun for a long period. By now, you might be wondering. If it is hard to capture and impossible to display them, why do we even want to use high-range images? Well, there are at least 2 reasons for this. First, for photographers or video editors, high-range images can provide more editing flexibility. They can easily tweak the exposure and bring back visual information that would have been lost in 8-bit images. And the second reason, for 3D artists or visual effect engineers. High-range images are very useful to store the lighting condition of a certain area in the real world. We can then use the high-range images as light sources inside 3D software or compositing software. Using this technique we can easily and precisely simulate the lighting condition from the real world into a 3D scene. We will discuss how to use these high-range images in the upcoming lesson. 82. Corona Renderer basics: Starting from this lesson, we will learn the Corona Renderer. Essentially Corona is a rendering engine, which is currently available as a plugin for 3ds Max and for Cinema 4D. By the time I recorded this video, the latest version available is version 7. You can download Corona renderer at "corona-renderer.com". It’s available as a free unlimited trial version, for 45 days. Unlimited means that you can use it for commercial purposes even while in the trial period. I will assume you already know how to download it and how to install it. Just make sure you install 3ds Max first, then after that, you install the Corona renderer. Until this point, you might be wondering. Why learn Corona renderer? There are dozens of GI-rendering-engines out there other than Corona. There is "Arnold" which is now shipped with 3ds Max by default. There is also the popular "V-Ray", and then "Octane", "Maxwell", the free "Radeon ProRender", "Final-Render", "F-Storm" and so on. The list is just getting longer and longer every day. Well, based on my experience. Each of the rendering engines has its own strengths and weaknesses. The Corona renderer may or may not suit you. It really depends on your requirements for the rendering engine. In my own scenario, I love using Corona renderer because of these 4 reasons. The first reason, Corona renderer is very simple and easy to use. You don't need to fiddle with settings and the technical side of things. You just need to focus on creativity. Corona renderer just works for you, not against you. Second, Corona renderer creates the most beautiful results out of the box. It generates very clean results if compared with other rendering engines at the same time-allocation to set up and render the image. Third, compared to the other rendering engines, Corona renderer is very cheap for the features that it offers. The fourth reason, Corona renderer is CPU-based. Now, I know this is debatable. But being a CPU-based renderer gives Corona bigger access to the system memory. You will realize how important it is when you need to render large-scale scenes. So these are the 4 reasons that you may also want to consider when choosing the Corona renderer over the other renderers. If you installed Corona Renderer correctly and then open 3ds Max. You will see this toolbar called the "Corona Renderer official toolbar". You can drag this around and just let it float like that. Or you can also dock it to the top like this. Or to the left like this. Now, you need to know that this toolbar is actually just the UI shortcuts to the actual commands that are scattered around 3ds Max's user interface. For example, this light button is the same as going to the "Create" panel, "lights", then choose the "Corona" category. And then choose the "corona light" object here. I'm not against using this toolbar as this can help us to speed up the workflow. But for beginners, I think you should first learn the default locations of the commands. For now, let's just dock this toolbar to the left. If you want to close this toolbar, you can right-click on these lines. Then choose this option "Corona Renderer official toolbar". If you need to show it again, you can right-click on the lines in the main toolbar. And then click on the same option "Corona Renderer official toolbar". To test and to learn rendering, you need at least a scene with some objects, materials, and lights. So, if you want to follow along, you can just open the file I provided for this lesson. Here you will see 3 teapot objects, a backdrop object, and 2 corona light objects. Before you can use the Corona renderer in 3ds max, you need to make sure that it is turned on or appointed as the default renderer. To do that, you need to go to the "render setup" window by clicking on this button. Or you can use the shortcut F10. Then in the target pulldown list, make sure it is set to "production rendering mode". Then below it, in the "renderer" pulldown list, make sure it is set to "Corona renderer". The next important thing that you need to set is the rendering resolution. You can find the settings in the "Common" tab, inside the "output size" section. Now, these settings are not specific to Corona. These are 3ds max general settings regardless of what renderer you are using. You can type in manually the image size in pixels for the "width" and or for the "height". Or, you can also find different image size standards in the world by going to this pulldown list. For now, I'm just using the "custom" presets. And then click on this button 800 by 600 pixels resolution. After you set Corona as the active production renderer and define the image resolution, you can start rendering by clicking on this button. You can also use the shortcuts Shift + Q or Shift + F9 for this. Or if you have the render setup opened like this. You can see this big "render" button. Clicking this button is the same as clicking the button up here. Let me close this first. And just use this button to start the rendering process. When rendering you will see this window open up. The official name for this window is "Corona VFB". VFB stands for "virtual frame buffer". Basically, VFB is a container where the render results are stored. Alright. Now, you can see that after we hit the render button, Corona just keeps rendering and rendering. It renders multiple passes without ever stopping. In the first pass, you may see a very noisy image. But as time progresses, the more passes you get, the cleaner the rendering result will be. So again, by default, the Corona renderer will render your image without stopping. Until this point, you may be wondering. So "how do I know when this thing is finished"? Well, if you think the image looks good, then it is finished. So you will be the judge of that. To stop the rendering simply hit the stop button here. The denoising process will start. We'll discuss about this later. And you are done. Notice this "render" button here. Well, you can also press this button to start the rendering process. So there are many ways that you can render in 3ds Max. If you want to save the render result as an image file, you can click on this save button up here. You can name the file here. And then for the file type, you can use PNG for example, or perhaps "open EXR" if you need a high range image. Then click the save button here. Currently, I don't need to save it, so I just click the "cancel" button for now. 83. Corona IR Sun and Sky: In this lesson video and several videos after this, we will cover the different types of lights in Corona. To sum up, there are 3 different categories of light sources in Corona Renderer. First, is the "Environment lights". The second is the Corona light objects. And then the third is the mesh lights. We will focus on some of the environment lights in this video. If you want to follow along, you can download the file I provided for this lesson. Here, I created 2 teapot objects and also a plane object. Then I use a simple grey material for all of them. Before we discuss the environment lights, I want to cover a feature in Corona Renderer called the "interactive rendering" or "IR" for short. We need to discuss this feature first, because it can be useful later when we need to preview the environment lights. If you used 3ds Max "active Shade" before, the concept is very similar to IR. Basically, the IR or the "interactive rendering" will keep rendering the scene at near real-time speed. Giving you instant feedback on the changes that happen in the scene. This feature is great when you need to tweak lights or materials. And you don't want to keep clicking the render and the stop render button back and forth. To activate the IR, you can do this in several ways. The fastest method is by clicking on this button in the Corona Toolbar. Or, if you are currently inside the "render setup" window. In the "scene" tab, you can click on this "start interactive" button. Another way, if you already have the Corona VFB opened. To activate IR, you click and hold on the "render" button. And then choose this option "Start IR". Now we are rendering in the IR mode. Although currently, you can only see black in the VFB because there is no light source in the scene. Now, while we have the IR active. Let's discuss the "environment light". "Environment light" is a type of light that is coming from every direction, from an infinite distance, surrounding the objects in the scene. To access it, you can go to the "rendering" menu. And then choose "environment". Or you can press number 8 on the keyboard for the shortcut. There are 3 ways to create the environment lighting. The first is using the background color. The second is using the Corona Sun and Sky system. And the third is by using high-range images. Let's discuss the first method which is using the background color. In the environment window, you can see the background color here which is currently black. If you change this to a brighter color. Notice as I move the color closer to white. The scene gets brighter and brighter. Now, we can see the teapot objects and the plane object clearly. If you change the background color to a bluish color, like this. As we expected, the scene becomes bluish also. Basically, the background color will affect the color tinting of the objects. Although using the background color is easy, the result is pretty dull or unrealistic. This is because the lights with the same amount of strength and color are coming uniformly from all directions. Which never happens in the real world. You can still use this type of lighting for simple tasks such as checking 3D models. But you should never use this method for the final rendering. For now, let’s set this color back to black. The next method of environment lighting is by using the Corona Sun and Sky. Both are actually 2 different things. But they work together to create the environment lighting. To make things simple, the Corona Sun is a light object suitable for simulating faraway natural light sources such as the sun or the moon. While the Corona Sky is a shader or a map that can produce a sky texture. Essentially, we use the Corona Sky to replace the background color. The Corona Sun position will then be used by the Corona Sky to determine how it generates the sky texture. To create a Corona Sun object. You can go to the create panel. "Light", "Corona", and then click on this "Corona Sun" button. While the button is active, click and drag from the location of where you want to place the sun source, to the location you want to place the target. Release the mouse. And then move the mouse up and down to define the sun source height. Then click to confirm. Right-click to exit from the sun creation mode. Another way to do this, is of course, by using the Corona toolbar. You can click on this icon that looks like a sun. And just repeat the process as before to create the sun object. Now we have 2 Corona Sun objects. We only need one, so let's just delete this one. To modify the existing Corona Sun object. You can select and move the source object around. Or you can also select and move the target object around. Before we continue. You may notice that the render result is very bright. This is actually normal as the sun in the real world is very bright. You can reduce the sun intensity from the "modify" panel. But, it is better to adjust the camera exposure instead to adapt to the sunlight brightness. Because that is how we do it in the real world. To do that, in the Corona VFB. In the "post" tab, in the "tone mapping" section. You can find the EV or the exposure value. Usually, for bright daylight scenes, I turn down this value to around minus 4 to 5. Now, the image is not overburnt anymore. Next, let's discuss the Corona Sky. To create the Corona Sky, you can do this in 2 different ways, manual or automatic. For the manual method. You need to open the "environment" window. Then click here. In the "Corona" maps category. You can find the "Corona Sky" map. Just double-click on it. So that is one way to do it. Let me right-click and choose "clear" to delete this map for now. A faster way to do this is by selecting the Corona Sun object. Notice here, you can find the "add Corona Sky environment" button. If you click on it. A new "Corona Sky" map is now assigned to replace the background color. You may not see the sky now. But if you rotate the perspective view to look up. You can see the sky color. And at the right angle, you can even see the sun sphere. If you select the sun object and then change the size to 10 for example. You'll get a bigger sun's sphere. If you rotate back to see the shadows. The larger the sun's size, the softer the shadows will be. If you right-click on the spinner, the sun size will be at the default which is one. Now, because of the sun object and the sky procedural map are connected. If you move the sun object down. The sky will become dark automatically. If you move the sun up, the sky will become bright as we expected. So, you can easily simulate the time of day using this system. 84. Viewport IR and high-range image lighting: In this lesson video, we will cover how to use the viewport interactive rendering and then how to use high-range images for the environment lighting. To get started you can open the file I provided for this lesson. Before we can use high-range images, we need to acquire them first. There are many paid websites where you can purchase high-quality high-range images. But there are also free ones. One of my favorite places to get free high-range images is "polyhaven.com". Previously it was named "hdrihaven.com". You can open the site and just pick the image that you like. For example, I want to download this one called "gamrig". This image was created by "Andreas Mischok". To download the file from this website, you need to specify the resolution. I'm just using the 2K version now. And then you need to specify the file format. You can choose between HDR or EXR. Currently, HDR is the most common file format used for high-range images. But nowadays, more and more artists are switching to EXR. Let's choose the EXR version for now. And then to download it, you need to click on this download button. Feel free to use other files from other websites if you want to. You may also use HDRI or EXR file formats as both are supported. Back in 3ds Max. Previously we learned how to use the IR or Interactive Rendering inside the Corona VFB. What we haven’t discussed is that you can also use IR right inside the viewport. But before that, let's change the viewport layout, so at least we have 3 viewports. One for the IR, one for the perspective view, and one for the top view. To do this, you can click on the third label menu. And then choose "viewport global settings". Then in the "layout" tab. Choose this layout. This one is already set to the "top" view. Click here, and change this to the perspective view. For this one, anything will do, as we will change this later to Corona IR. Then click OK. Now, we have this custom viewport layout. Next, to convert this viewport into a Corona interactive rendering. Make sure it is active by clicking or right-clicking on it. Then in the Corona toolbar, you can see this button "start interactive rendering in active viewport". If you click on it, you will get this black screen. Again, this is due to having no light sources in the scene. If you ever need to switch this viewport back to an ordinary viewport. You can click this button "switch viewport". And then choose the viewport type that you want, for example, the front view. Alright. Let's switch this viewport back to the Corona IR. Just a reminder of what we have learned so far. The light sources in Corona Renderer can be categorized into 3 types. Environment lights, light objects, and mesh lights. And for the "environment lights", there are 3 methods that you can use. "Background color", Corona sun and sky, and using high-range images. So, basically, we are now learning the last method of environment lighting. We've discussed what high-range images in the earlier lesson. So, in this lesson, we're not going to discuss those basic concepts again. So, to control the environment light, just like before, you need to open the "environment" window. Just press 8 for the shortcut. Then click here. In the material map browser, open the "Corona" category. You will find the "Corona bitmap" shader or map. Just double-click on it. Now the map is controlling the background color. But we haven’t appointed any image file for this map. To open the parameters of this map in the material editor. You can just right-click. And then choose "edit in SME". "SME" stands for "slate material editor". Right away, 3ds Max will prompt us to select the image file. Select the file we downloaded before. You can see the preview here. Then click open. The default settings are already good, so just click OK. And we have something like this. Let me close all of these windows. If you click on the top viewport. The IR viewport will render the top view. But if we rotate the perspective view, the IR immediately switches to render the perspective view. As you can see, high-range images provide the most natural or photorealistic lighting. This makes sense as they are basically photographs taken from the real world. The 3d objects look like they truly belong in the location where the photo is taken. If you want to rotate the image, you need to open the parameters again inside the material editor. Then you can change this "rotate environment" value. For example, we can rotate the image 90 degrees. And so on. If you want to swap the image with another file, you can click on this "load map" button, and then pick the image file that you want. Now, what if the image creates too much light, or perhaps not enough light? Well, there are 2 ways to approach this. We can control the exposure later when we do the final rendering using the exposure value. Let me just show you. Click the render button. Notice, we are now rendering using the ordinary method. Due to this, the IR is turned off. And just like before, if you want to make the image brighter you can increase this value to a positive value, such as 1, 2, 3, and so on. But if you want to make it darker, you need to use negative values, such as -1, -2, -3, and so on. But, the problem with this method is that this exposure value affects everything. That includes all the light objects in the scene, not just the lighting coming out from the high-range image. Let's just right-click on the spinner to zero out the value. And then close the VFB window. Then you can click this viewport to restart the IR. For the second method, we can control only the light output from the high-range image. For this, you need to use a special shader called "Corona color correct". Let's open the environment window. And also the slate material editor. Drag this to the view panel, and then choose "instance". Then, drag this output port and then release. Open the "maps" category, then "Corona", and then choose "Corona color correct". After that, you can drag the output port of this node to the environment map slot. And then choose "instance". So this is the default Corona bitmap node, where we can rotate or replace the image. And this node is processing the output from this node and then transferring it to the environment. In this node, you can see the "exposure" value. Just like before, positive values will make the image brighter, and negative values will make it darker. But unlike before, this setting will not affect other light sources in the scene. 85. Corona light and mesh light: In this lesson video, we will discuss the Corona light objects and also the mesh lights. Previously we learned about environment lights. We already know that we can create environment lighting using 3 different methods. Now, for the Corona light object, we can also divide it into 2 categories, the "standard shapes" and "IES". Standard shapes are the default shape types. They are sphere, rectangle, disk, and cylinder. While IES are custom light shapes provided by the lamp products manufacturers. Let's discuss each of them one by one and also some of the parameters related to them. For this lesson, I provided this file for you to download. Okay. To create a Corona light object. You need to go to the create panel. Then "light", make sure you are in the "Corona" category. And then click on this "corona light" button. While this button is active, click-drag in the viewport to create the light object. By default, the light uses the sphere shape. Another way to create the Corona light object, as you may already guess, is using the corona toolbar. Just click on this icon, and then click-drag on the viewport. For now, let's delete this one and just focus on this light object. To switch between shapes, you can click on this pull-down list. This is the rectangle shape. This is the disk shape. And this is the cylinder. Notice that different shapes have different parameters. Sphere, for example, has a radius parameter. While the rectangle shape has "width" and "height" parameters. I'm sure you get the idea here. One important rule that you need to remember when using light objects is that the bigger the size, the softer the shadows will be, and also the brighter it will be. Just to give you an example. If we set the light shape to "disk". And let's place it here. If we set the radius to only 1 cm. The light output becomes very weak. Even though we are still using the same light intensity, which is 50. So, this light intensity value is relative to the size of the light object. And, if the light size is small. The shadow borders will be sharp. We can see this better if we have more light intensity. Let's try 5000. You can see the shadow border is very sharp. Now, if I change the radius to 20 cm, for example. The light becomes overly bright. Let's reduce the intensity back to 50. At this size, you can see the shadow border down here becomes blurred. Next is "directionality". This option is used to make the light rays more straight. At zero the light rays are spreading at a wide angle. At 0.5, you can simulate a spotlight effect. And at the maximum value, which is 1, the light behaves like a laser beam. So, if you ever need to animate a sniper target light, for example, this is the parameter that you want to use. For now, let's zero out this value. Alright. Next, you can change the color of the light using this color box. For example, we can make it red, or yellow, etc. Or you can use the kelvin color temperature. This parameter is important if you want to simulate real-world lamp products. Because most lamp products use kelvin color temperature to measure the color. Next, if you have an image that you want to project using this light object, you can do so through this option. Just click here. Then select the "bitmap" map here. And then you need to pick the image you want to project, for example, this logo image. Now, the image is being projected by the light object. It's kind of hard to see. This is because the "directionality" is set to zero. If we increase the "directionality" value, the projected image will become clearer. For now, let's use the "direct input" option. The last parameter that we want to discuss is this "targeted" option. If you turn this on. Now the light has a target object. You can select the target object and then move it around. This way you can easily direct the light object to face a certain location. Now, if you move the target object behind other objects. And you have a hard time selecting it. You can just select the light object. Right-click, and then choose "select light target". Now the target object is selected. If you already like the light orientation, and you want to prevent the light target from any accidental changes. You can select the light object and then turn off the "targeted" option. The target object is now gone, but the light orientation still remains. If you ever need to reset the light orientation, just like with any other object, you can just activate the rotate mode. And then zero out all of these values. Next, let's discuss IES. So, what is IES? IES stands for "Illuminating Engineering Society". Essentially it is a file that contains data describing the distribution of light from a certain light source. Using an IES file we can simulate precisely how a certain lighting product would behave, spreading its light inside a 3D environment. The role of IES becomes even more important if you are doing a project that involves lighting simulation. But for most 3d artists, we use IES just to add this kind of light wash details on the walls. Alright. You can easily get IES files from the internet, as most of them are free to download. You even get several IES files when installing Corona Renderer. To use an IES file in the Corona light object. Just find the IES section. Then click on this "none" button. Then pick the IES file. I'm going to open the IES folder provided by the Corona renderer. And let's choose this "real IES bold" file. Notice the shape of the light gizmo now has changed to indicate that we are indeed using an IES file. And, as you can see, the light looks more interesting. Especially if you place it against the wall. The last light type that is supported by the Corona renderer is the mesh lights. Essentially, mesh lights are 3D objects that can emit light when rendered. This is possible because we assigned a special material to those objects. Let me just show you. Let's create a sphere object. Bring this up. Then open the material editor. Right-click in the view panel, then "material", "Corona", and then choose "Corona light material". Drag the output port to assign this material to the sphere object. And let's increase the intensity value to 50. As you can see, the sphere object now acts as a light source. If we open the modify panel. And then try to increase the radius. The bigger the size, the brighter the light output will be. Basically, all of the behaviors that exist on Corona light objects also exist in the mesh lights. This is where Corona Renderer surpasses other rendering engines. In other rendering engines, you can also create mesh lights. But there is a penalty to that. Usually, the lights and shadows quality from the mesh lights are not as good as using the ordinary light objects. You get more noises from the mesh lights. In Corona, however, there is almost zero penalty in using mesh lights. Meaning, creating a mesh light from a plane object is just as good as using a light object with a rectangle shape. This can really open up endless possibilities on how we can light our 3D scenes. Because we can have lights in any shape we like. 86. Corona physical material Part 1: In this lesson video and the video after this, we will be covering the Corona material's basic parameters. But before we start, I need to remind you again that I'm currently using Corona renderer version 7. This is important to know. Because, since version 7, Corona shifted to a new material standard called PBR. Which is a good thing. PBR has been the industry standard for years now. Almost all websites that provide textures are now using the PBR standard. So with Corona renderer version 7, we can rest assured that we can download or purchase PBR textures, and they will work as expected. To create a Corona physical material, the process is basically the same as creating any materials in 3ds Max. You can right-click in the view panel. Then choose "Materials", and then choose "Corona". Here you can see 2 Corona default materials. This is the new one called "Corona Physical material". And this is the old one called "Corona Legacy material". In this course, we will focus only on the new "Physical material". So, click on this one to create a new material. And let's assign this to the teapot object. The easiest way to get started with Corona Physical material is by using the presets here. There are presets for metal materials such as chrome, copper foil, gold yellow, and so on. You also get a lot of non-metal materials, such as different types of glasses, plastics, and even water. Experimenting with these presets is also a good way to learn the material. If you select "iron polished" for example. You learn from this example that if you want to create an iron material, you need to set the "metalness" value to metal. And then set the "roughness" values, "anisotropy", and all these colors, etc. Please note that these presets do not store the textures. They only store the material settings. If you need the textures, then you can use the "Corona material library". When you install Corona Renderer, by default, you will also get the Corona material library. To access it, in the Corona toolbar, you can click on this button. Please don't confuse this with the 3ds Max material library that we have discussed before. The material library we discussed before is a general 3ds Max library that supports all types of materials including Corona materials. But you need to create the assets yourself. While this "Corona material library" is a specific feature only available for Corona renderers and materials. And it is already filled up with assets. Here, you can browse for different types of materials. We have hairs, car paints, flooring, etc. There are just so many of them to cover one by one. You can explore and try them yourself. But before you can do that, you need to make sure that the object you want to assign has a "real-world map size" UV mapping. If not you will get strange texture scale problems. We will discuss more about UV mapping in the other lesson. For now, if you want to assign this material to the plane object, for example. Make sure this "real-world map size" option is turned on. And then just click and hold and then drag and drop it on the plane object. If this is the first time you use the material, it may take some time for the textures to be uncompressed. After that, you can see the material on the object. Before we fiddle with the parameters. Due to the limited screen space, I need to put this material first in the sample slot. Select "instance". And then switch the material editor to the compact mode. Select this slot. And, let's reset the settings by selecting "default" up here. The first important parameter in the physical material is this "metalness" value. Because this will determine all the other settings below. All materials in the world can be grouped into 2 big categories, "Metals" and non-metals or also known as "Dielectrics". Materials like gold, copper, iron, silver, aluminum, are all categorized as metals. Non-metal materials such as wood, rubber, plastic, stone, fabric, paper, glass, etcetera, are all categorized as "Dielectric" materials. So roughly 90 percent of materials in this world are dielectrics. There are no materials that sit between the two. There are many physical differences between "Metal" and "Dielectric". But, for now, as CG artists, we only care about the visual differences. The one thing that you need to know is that metal does not have a base surface color or a diffuse color. Now, this may sound a bit strange. Because you can clearly see that gold is yellow, copper is brown, and silver is white, etc. Well, the colors you see in metal materials are not actually the color of the object's surface, but they are tinted reflections. So, if you set this to metal, the base color here will act as the tinted color for the reflection. But if you set the material to "non-metal", then this base color will act as it should be, which is the object's surface color. Now, when deciding whether a material is a "Metal" or not. You need to think from a visual perspective. To understand this, let's just see an example. You might be thinking that a mirror is a "dielectric" material because it is made of glass. But in reality, a mirror is a glass with a metal sheet on one of its sides. The reflection you see in the mirror is from the metal sheet, not from the glass. So that is why, if you create a mirror, you need to set it as a metal. Not dielectric. Another example is a painted iron gate. If iron is painted, let's say red paint. You need to be aware that the paint is not metal. Well, there are some metallic paints that use metallic powder. But we are talking about ordinary paints here. So, in this scenario, if you want to create a material for that painted iron gate, you should set the material to be non-metal. I'm sure from these 2 examples you understand the basic concept and can apply this to other scenarios. As this video is getting too long, we will discuss the rest of the parameters in the next lesson. 87. Corona physical material Part 2: We will continue discussing the parameters of the Corona physical material. This is the file we have from the previous lesson. For now, let's change this material to "non-metal". As we discussed earlier, for non-metals, this color will be the diffuse color of the object. We can change this color to purple, for example. Or, green, etc. For now, let's use a strong red color so later we can see the reflection better. Next, is this "level" value. This value is the weight for the "color". Basically, the closer it is to zero, the closer the diffuse color is to black. I usually set this to one. And just rely on the base color selector here if I need to make it darker. The "roughness" value is the second most important parameter after the “metalness”. It defines the microscopic terrain of the object's surface. If you set this to one. The material will be a pure matte material. We cannot see any specular or reflection on the surface. If we set this to zero, it will be very glossy and so we can see the reflection on the object's surface clearly. For now, let's set this to 0.2. Next, is the IOR value. IOR stands for "Index of refraction" or it can also be "Index of reflection". Basically, this controls how light bends when entering the material if the material is transparent or refractive. Or how light bends when reflected if the material is not transparent. Each real-world material has its own IOR value. If you need to be scientifically precise, you can search online for the IOR values. Use the keyword "IOR index". But notice that the IOR values of the real-world materials only range between 1 to 2.5. The air has a value almost to one. Glass has around 1.4 to 1.5 value. Water has around 1.3 value. And diamonds are around 2.4. Based on my experience, even if you change this to the correct value, the difference is almost unnoticeable in the final render. You can see the difference much better if the material is refractive. Which we will discuss in a moment. For this "Edge color". This only exists on metal materials. So, let's skip it for now. Next is the "anisotropy" value. Basically, this is the stretching effect of the speculars or highlights. If we set this to 0.5, for example. You can see this highlight becomes stretched vertically. In the real world, this happens because there are parallel microscopic scratches on the object's surface. We can rotate the stretching orientation using this value. Let's say 45 degrees. Now the highlights are stretching diagonally. If we set this to 90 degrees. It will be perfectly horizontal. I'm sure you get the idea. Let's zero them out for now. Next, is the "translucency" effect. "Translucency" is a lighting phenomenon that happens on thin objects such as papers, curtains, lampshades, etc. Basically, thin objects are able to transfer the light from one to the other side. So, you can see lights and shadows from the backside or from behind it. To be able to use "Translucency", you need to activate this "thin shell" mode up here. If this is on, Corona will not consider the volume of the object. It will assume that the object is hollow and only cares about the surface. If we set this to 1. And then change this color to green for example. We get something like this. And, I think you can see the effect better if we have a light source behind the surface. So, let's create a Corona light. Make use of the "auto grid" option so we can place it at the object's surface quickly. Now, if you rotate the view, we can see bright lights from this side due to the "translucency" effect. If we turn this to zero again. The translucency effect is now off. Let's hide the light for now. And let's turn this off so the object is back to solid or being considered to have volume again. Next, is the "refraction" value. This value determines whether the light can pass through the volume of the object. At the maximum level, it looks like glass. Right now it looks blurred because the roughness value is set to 0.2. If we set this to zero. We get this nice clear glass material. Now, if we have the refraction on, the IOR value here controls how strong the light is bending when entering the surface. Notice if we set this to 1, which is the IOR value of air, there will be no light bending. Therefore, the object seems to disappear. At this state, if you reduce the refraction amount, you can create a holographic effect, or ghost, or a balloon. If we set the IOR value to 1.3, which is the value of water. We get something like this. Let's increase the refraction amount to 1 again. If we set the IOR to 2.4, which is a diamond value. We get a more light-bending effect. At maximum, you can only set the IOR value to 3. This is because there is no real-world object with an IOR value higher than this value. Let's change this to 1.4, which is a glass value. We can also combine the refraction effect with the "thin shell" effect. If this is on, again corona will ignore the volume. The object looks hollow. So, with this, we can create material for bubbles or plastic balls, for example. And if the "thin shell" is on, you can also set the "thin absorption" color here. For example, we can set it slightly to green. Alright. Let's turn this off again. The next 2 options here are considered expensive. What expensive means is that it requires a lot more processing thus making the rendering time longer. So use these 2 only if you really need them. Currently, Corona provides a special feature called "caustic solver" to help speed up rendering caustic effects. To turn this feature on, you need to open the "render setup" window. So, press F10. Then open the "performance" tab. You can turn this "enable" option on. And let's just close this window. Now, we can try turning on this "caustics" option. Rotate the view so we can see the backside. And just wait for it. Again, caustic effects take a long time to render. Alright. We can see better shadows of the object and also this nice-looking light here on the floor. This is what we call "caustics". If you are doing a pool rendering, you need a lot of this thing in your rendering. Now, if you turn on dispersion, you will get these rainbow-colored caustics here and there. Just wait for it. You can see these lights with rainbow colors. This is what we call the "dispersion" effect. Alright. Let's turn off the "refraction" by setting this back to zero. If there is no refraction, then these options will be turned off automatically. Because they are impossible to exist without any refraction. Next, is the "opacity" value. Unlike the other parameters, this one is a non-physical property. This is like controlling the transparency of the layers inside Photoshop. It will not cause refraction nor translucency effects on the object. You can use this "level" value to control the opacity. Or you can also use the "color" here. The closer the color to black, the more transparent the object will become. Let's return this to white. For the "displacement", we need to skip this for now as we haven’t discussed texture and UV mapping. Next is "clearcoat". Basically, "clearcoat" is like adding an additional layer of thin material on top of the existing material. In the real world, this is a very common practice for car finishes. And also for wood varnish for example. To use it, just increase the "amount" value here. The "clearcoat layer" has its own roughness value, IOR, color, and bump map slot. Let's turn off the "clearcoat layer" for now. Next, is the "sheen layer". "Sheen" effects can be seen on fabrics, or any surfaces with microscopic furs. They are these bright colors on the edges or at glazing-angle surfaces. To see the effect better, let's set the main roughness value all the way to one. And then increase the sheen "amount" to 1, so we can really see the effect. The "roughness" value here determines the area of the sheen effects. A higher value means more areas will get affected. Let's just set this to 0.2. And as you may already guess, you can set the color of the sheen here. For example, we can set it to yellow. Let's bring everything back to the default. Finally, let's discuss the metal parameters. This will be a short one, as we already discussed most of the settings. If we set the material to "metal". And let's set the roughness value to zero. Several settings have changed. Now we cannot use the "thin shell" mode. And the IOR value is now also inaccessible. But, we can now access the "edge" color. This is like the "sheen" effect, meaning the color will be visible at surface areas whose normal direction is perpendicular to our view. We can set this to "green", just for example. Notice these outer areas become a bit greenish. Then, in the real world, there are no transparent or refractive metal materials. That is why the "refraction" parameters are disabled. For the rest, they are basically the same as non-metal material. 88. Rendering limits and Denoising: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss 2 features of the Corona renderer. First, we will discuss how to limit the time when rendering. And second, we will discuss the denoising feature. Although by default, Corona will render your scene continuously without stopping. You can actually make it stop when it reaches certain pass numbers or certain times. Because sometimes we just want to leave the rendering process and go have dinner with our family or other things. We don’t want the computer to keep rendering for too many hours and wasting energy. To limit the rendering, you can go to the "render setup" window. Then, in the "scene" tab, you can find the "progressive rendering limit" section. If you set this "pass limit" value to 100, for example. The next time Corona Renderer renders your scene, it will stop after it finishes the 100 passes. Besides using passes, you can also limit the rendering using time. If you set this "hour" value to 3, for example. The next time Corona Renderer renders the scene, it will stop after 3 hours. Next, is the "denoising" feature. "Denoising" is an image processing executed after the main rendering process. Basically, it will study the image and then try to remove the noises from it. Denoising can greatly reduce the need for render passes. But if you do it on a very noisy image, the final result will look too artificial. My own rule for denoising is a 10-7 ratio. Meaning, if I need 10 passes before to get a clean result. I can get away with just rendering it in 7 passes and then use denoising after it. In the end, the results will be very identical, but you can save a lot of time in the rendering process. In the render setup window. Under the "scene" tab. You can see here the list of the denoisers. This one is created by NVIDIA. This one is created by Intel. And the others are actually just the modes for Corona's own denoiser. So in total, there are 3 denoiser engines. There are some advantages and disadvantages between these denoisers. You can read the details online on Corona's website. To sum up. For final rendering, you always want to use the "Corona high quality" mode. These values work well for most scenarios, so you don't need to change anything. But if you think the image is still too noisy, you can try increasing the amount value here. Just be aware that setting the amount value too high can blur out the texture details in your rendering. And if you are doing preview renderings, then you have 2 options. If you have a fast NVIDIA GPU, then you should use the NVIDIA denoiser. But if you don't have any NVIDIA GPU then you can use the Intel denoiser. Note that this denoiser works well both on Intel and AMD CPUs. So, although it was developed by Intel, it will also work for AMD Ryzen processors for example. Personally, I just leave this setting to the "Corona high quality" denoiser for both preview rendering or for final rendering purposes. After we set the denoiser, we can now try rendering the scene by clicking the render button. Corona will render the scene as usual, and it will denoise the image when you stop the rendering. Please note that you need to render at least 2 passes for the denoiser to work. If you only render for 1 pass, it will just throw a warning message. Let's render this again for about 3 passes. And then stop it. The denoising process now kicks in. And here is the result. If you want to compare the original result versus the denoised one, you can click on this "denoising" checkbox here. This is the original image. And this is the denoised version. 89. Material override, Render elements, and Masking: In this lesson video, we will discuss the "material override" feature and then the "Render elements" feature. After that, we will focus on how to create image "masks". If you open the render setup window. In the "scene" tab. You can find the settings for the "material override" here. Basically, this feature will replace all of the materials in the scene temporarily with a material that you specify. This can be helpful when you need to only study the lighting in your scene, without the distractions from colors or textures. If you turn this on, you can assign the material here. If you click on this map slot that says "none", then you can create a new material. But if you already have the material, you can just drag it here from the material editor. For now, let's open the compact material editor. Let's pick this unused slot. Currently, it uses 3ds Max default physical material. Let's click here and change this to the Corona physical material. Although Corona supports the default 3ds Max physical material. It is always better to use the native Corona material. Next, you can click-drag from the sample slot to this map slot. Choose "instance", then click OK. Now, if we hit the render button. Notice that all of the objects in the scene are now using the new grey material. To turn off this feature, simply uncheck this option. If you render the scene again, all of the original materials are back. The next thing we want to discuss is the "render elements''. We can find the "render elements'' settings in this tab. Render elements are special images extracted from the scene rendering data that can be useful later in the post-processing stage. Corona provides many types of render elements. For example, I’m adding this "C essential reflect" render element. If we render again, it looks like nothing has changed. But notice when we click this drop-down list that says "beauty". We can see the render element we added before. As you can tell, the "C essential reflect" image only contains the reflection part of the image. So you can use this image later in Photoshop or After Effects, etcetera, to tweak the reflection areas. You can try and experiment with all the render elements provided by Corona. Now, I just want to focus on one render element that I think is very important in 3D visualization called "C masking mask". This render element can help us to quickly create selections later in Photoshop. For now, let's remove the reflection render element. And to access the parameters of this render element. Make sure it is selected in this list. If you do that, you can see the parameters down here. Let's say, we want to create a black and white color that shows the pixel region of this cylinder object. For black and white color, you need to select the "monochromatic" mode. Here, you can see the options for the object ID, or the material ID. We'll discuss these 2 in a moment. For now, just use this option "manual selection". Then click on this plus button. Now, you need to click on the cylinder object. If you do that correctly, and then open the object list by clicking on this button. As you can see, the cylinder object is already included in this list. We don't need to change anything here, so just click cancel for now. Before we render the image, we can rename the render element to something more meaningful. In our case, we can name this "cylinder". Now, if we hit the render button. In the Corona VFB, you can see this "cylinder" render element. Basically, it is just a black and white image. Where the cylinder pixel areas are colored in white, and the other areas are black. Now, let's discuss how to use the object ID and the material ID for creating the masks. These methods can be very helpful if you have hundreds of objects that you need to mask. If you select an object, for example, this chamfer box object. And then open the "object properties" window. Here you will find the "object ID" parameter. You can set this value to any number you like. Just remember to use the same number later in the render elements window. Let's say we want to set this to 5. Then click OK to close the window. Next, to access the material ID, you need to open the material editor. Let's say we want to use this material. Before we continue, please note that you need to select a native Corona material if you want to use the material ID feature using the Corona Renderer. It will not work if you use 3ds Max default physical material. While the material is selected, notice there is a button here that shows number zero. This is the material ID selector. If you click and hold on it, you can select a number from 0 to 15. Let's select 10 for now. Alright. Next, we can open the "render setup" window again. And in the "render elements" tab. Let's turn off the manual selection method for now. And then turn on both the object ID and the material ID options. Set this to 5. And set this to 10. And because now this mask is not exclusive for the cylinder object anymore. It would be wiser if we rename this to "masks", or any name that makes sense to you. Now, if we hit the render button. And then open the "masks" render element. This is the result. The object with object ID number 5 and all the surfaces that use the material with ID number 10 will be rendered as white. While the other areas are just black. 90. Nonphysical light properties: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss several light parameters that are categorized as nonphysical properties. If you want to follow along, just use the file I provided for this lesson. First is the excluding or including feature. You can make a Corona light object to ignore certain objects in the scene. For example, we can make this light to exclude this teapot object. To do that, we can open the "nonphysical properties" section. And then click on this plus button. And while the plus button is active, you need to click on the teapot object. As you can see, the teapot object now looks strangely dark. But it is still receiving lights that are bouncing off of the floor. Right-click or just click on the plus button again to turn it off. Besides using this plus button, you can click on this larger button. This will open the "exclude include" window. The way this works is like this. On the left side, you can see all the objects in the scene. And on the right side is the "exclude" list. You can actually decide whether this list is an "exclude" list or an "include" list. If we set this as an "include" list. Then only the object in this list will receive light. The other objects will be excluded. You can see this if you click the OK button. You can see how the teapot object is bright while the others are dark. Let's open the list again. Set this back to an "exclude" list. And to move this teapot object out from the exclude list. You can click on it and then click on this left transfer button. You can also do it the other way if you want to put an object into the exclude list. If you have hundreds of objects in this list. To clear them all at once, you can use this "Clear" button. Okay. Next, let's discuss all of these settings inside the "visibility" group. The "visible directly" option will make the light object visible in the rendering. Turning this off will make it invisible. Please note that the light rays generated by the light object still exist and affect the scene. It is just that you cannot see the shape of it. By default, Corona lights are visible. Because, in the real world, light sources are always visible. Next is "visible in reflections". Before you turn this off. Notice the white speculars or highlights on the teapot surface. These are actually the reflection of the light object. If you turn this off. Now, the light object disappears from any reflection. Again, just like before, the light object is still emitting lights into the scene. It is just that, visually, you cannot see the shape of it from any reflected surfaces. Next is "visible in refractions". The concept is similar to the previous one but works on refractive material. If we rotate the view so we are seeing the light object through a refractive material. We can still see the light object now. But, if we turn this off. Notice how the light object becomes invisible. If we rotate the view again so only half of the light shape is covered. We get something like this. I'm sure you get the idea. The next one is the "generates caustics" option. We've discussed what caustics and how to create caustics before. So, we don't need to discuss all the basics again in this lesson. To keep things simple. If you turn this off, then the light will not generate any caustics. The last setting is the "occlude other lights" option. By default, a light object is actually blocking the light of the other light objects. Just like how the light sources work in the real world. For example, if you shine a light on a light bulb. If the light bulb is turned on, it's kind of hard to see the effect. But if you turn off the light bulb. You will see that the light bulb is actually blocking the light and generating shadows. So, to see the effect clearly, we need at least 2 light objects. Let's just copy this light and place it down here. Currently, we cannot see the effect as both are emitting equally strong lights. But if you select the bottom one. And then reduce the intensity to 0.5, for example. You can see this shadow on the floor. Again, this is the shadow of the light object. If you don't want this to happen. Then you can turn off the "occlude other lights" option of this light object. Due to this, although this light object is very weak, it will not cause any shadows in the scene. 91. Reviewing the changes: In this video, I just want to explain some of the changes that I've made off the record to our interior project. This is the file we currently have. As you can see it is a bit different from the last project lesson video. Let's review the changes from left to right. The first 2 objects are the crown molding and the plinth. We can see this better from the front view. You can see that I changed the Bevel profile spline to a more classic style. And then for the plinth profile. I added this slit just to make it look more interesting. Next, is the loudspeakers. After I look up more references. Turns out that the gap here is not going sideways but straight to the bottom. So, to fix the gap I just remove the bottom part. Select the vertices here and move them down. And then duplicate this part to the bottom. Lastly move the bottom polygon of the inner part downward. And when I place this loudspeaker into the room, it looks massive. It was this high. So, I scaled it down to about 80 percent. The next change is on the TV shelves. The doors now have this C shape detail. I think the previous one is just too plain and contrasts the overall room style. And then I pull this part a bit to the right. And then, for the carpet. I scaled it up uniformly but only on the X and Y axes. Next, you can see the armchair and ottoman set. These 2 objects are actually modeled from the main sofa object. I just duplicated the sofa and used a symmetry modifier and also an FFD modifier to create the armchair. And for the ottoman, I modeled the cushions from scratch. But I took the feet from the armchair model. All of these are based on the real product's dimensions. I'm not recording these 2 models because there is no new technique to discuss. I used the exact same techniques as I made the sofa. And then I put this vase and then these teacups. And finally, I added this cable object. Which is basically just a spline object with the rendering options turned on. As you can see it is just an editable spline object. Okay guys. I think, I just reviewed all of the changes. In the future, I may tweak the models again here and there. If it involves a new technique, then I will record and explain it to you. If not, I will just do it off the record. 92. Project: Adding the camera: In this project lesson video, we will add a Corona camera object and then learn to set up different things in the scene that are related to the camera. 3ds Max provides different types of cameras. Although the Corona renderer supports these cameras, as usual, it is recommended that you use the native Corona camera object. Let's go to the top view. Press Z to zoom extent. To create a camera, you need to open the "create" panel. Then choose "camera" here. In the "standard" category, you can see the "Corona camera" button. Click on it and then click-drag from here to here. Then right-click to exit the creation mode. Notice that the location where we click is used for the camera position. And the location where we release the mouse is used for the target location. Now, in this condition, sometimes when we want to select the camera or the target object, we accidentally select other objects instead. To help with certain object type selection, you can use this selection filter. If you set this to "cameras". Now, you can not select anything except camera objects. Which is nice. You can do this method for other object types if you want to. For now, let's leave it to "cameras". Next, let's set up the viewport. To convert this left viewport to a camera view, you can press C for the shortcut. Or if you forget the shortcut, you can open this menu. Then choose "camera", and then choose the camera you want to use. Currently, we only have one camera in the scene called "Corona camera 001". Press F3 and then change the view mode to "performance". Now, if you select and move the camera object and or the target object, you can see the changes right away in the camera viewport. One thing that you need to know when working with cameras is that the rendering output size will determine the camera size ratio. Notice that if you select the camera object. The frame shows a 4 by 3 size ratio. Let's open the "render setup" window. And then in the "common" tab, in the "output size" section. Use the "HDTV" presets. For now, we use this HD preset. Later for the final rendering, we will use the full HD preset. We are using a lower version now, as we will be doing a lot of test or preview renderings. What is important is that they are all using the same size ratio, that is 16 by 9, or 1.77 in decimal form. Let's close this window. Sometimes you experience this bug. you need to deselect and re-select the camera object again to see the frame size updated. Now, as you can see, the camera frame is now a widescreen or 16 by 9 ratio to be exact. But, what about the camera viewport here? It doesn’t really show the render output size ratio. Well, to force the viewport to see what we see in the rendering result, we can click here, and then activate this option "show safe frames", or Shift + F for the shortcut. I think we can see this better if we resize the viewport. As you can see. 3ds Max will maintain the image ratio by adding these blank areas at the sides, or at the top and bottom depending on your viewport size. Let me right-click at the center and reset the viewport. The next thing that we need to do is control the camera "field of view" or FOV for short. If you select the camera object. You can see the "field of view" value here. Basically, it is an angle value in degrees to control how wide the view is open. Real-world cameras don't actually use these angle values. They use lens focal length values which are measured in mm. You can use this value instead if you are familiar with photography. I prefer to use the FOV mode. As for me, using angle degrees is a more straightforward approach. Essentially, if it is set to 45 degrees, it means that this line and this line form a 45 degrees angle. For architectural renderings, I usually use between 60 to 65 degrees FOV. For now, let's use 65 degrees. Next, let's discuss different techniques to select and move the camera objects. If you are in a normal viewport. You can select both the camera and the target object by clicking on the line. With the 2 selected, you can move them together. Now, if you have the camera object selected. And you want to switch quickly to the target object, you can do so by right-clicking. And then choose "select camera target" here. And vice versa, to switch back to the camera object. You can right-click and then choose "select camera". Now, if you are inside a camera viewport, you can select the camera via the menu. Just click on the second label menu. Then choose "select camera" to select the camera object. Or, you can choose "select camera target" to select the target object. And, if you are inside a camera view, be aware that if you pan the viewport using the middle mouse button, you are actually moving the camera and the target object around. So, this is one way to adjust the camera position. Just remember not to accidentally pan the view if you already like the camera position. For our interior project, I already experiment with different camera positions of the record and finally settle with these numbers. For the camera object coordinate. I use 90 for the X-axis, then -545 for the Y-axis, and then 110 for the z-axis. Then for the target object coordinate. I use -95 for the X-axis, then 400 for the Y-axis, and finally 160 for the Z-axis. Feel free to experiment and use different coordinates. But I will be using this camera position until the end. The Corona camera uses physical properties. This gives people with a photography background an edge when setting the Corona camera. But for people with no experience in photography, the camera settings can be a bit daunting. In this course, we are not going to cover all the settings in the camera as that will also mean we need to discuss basic photography. For beginners, there is one checkbox, which is already on by default, called "use global exposure". If this is on. The camera settings will just follow the exposure control that we set in the Corona VFB and the "render setup" window. So, if we open the VFB. If we change any of the parameters here, the parameters that you see in the "camera" tab inside the render setup window will also be changed automatically. And these global settings will also change the camera settings because we set it to "use global exposure". With this, we can just focus on tweaking the exposure settings inside the Corona VFB window. The last setting that I want to discuss is the "vertical tilt". Because we set the camera object to be lower than the target object. We can see the lines of the furniture and the room become slightly tilted due to the perspective effect. This is totally normal. But if you want perfect vertical lines, you can do so by going to the "tilt and shift" section. And then turn on this option "automatic vertical tilt". As you can see, the vertical lines are now perfectly straight. After you are done, you can just hide the camera object to reduce the scene clutters. Even if a camera object is hidden, you can still use it as a view. And don't forget to turn the "selection filter" back to "All". Otherwise, you won't be able to select any object in the scene. 93. Project: Basic lights: In this project lesson video, we will be adding basic light sources to our interior project. But first, there are several things that we need to prepare. Notice this window glass at the front. You will need this glass object if you want to see the reflection of the room. For example, for night-view rendering. But in the case of daylight renderings. Physically it is impossible to see a reflection here as the light outside is way brighter than the inside. Also, having an object refracting the environment light before it enters the room only adds unnecessary steps in the rendering process. Basically, in this case, it is better to hide the glass object. Alright. Next, go to the perspective view by pressing P. And rotate the view. Select this back wall object. And open the "object properties" window. Make sure that this "visible to camera" option is turned off. This will make the wall object invisible from the camera view. But it will still be visible in reflection and refraction. And also interact with lights and shadows normally. Click OK to close the window. Next, open the compact material editor. You may also use the slate material editor if you want to. I'm using the compact mode because I have limited screen space to work with. Select the default material that we've been using in the modeling process. Currently all of the objects in the scene use this material. If not, just select all by pressing Ctrl + A, and then click on this assign button. Now, we are going to use this material as a starting point for the lighting process also. But notice that it is not a Corona material. So click here and change the material type to "Corona physical material". Set the "roughness" value all the way to 1. Later, most of the materials will have dark colors. So, to better represent the final materials, let's darken the color to around 50 value. And then name this material "default". For this step, alternatively, you can also use the "material override" feature. But because all the objects already using the same material, I think this is enough. The first light we want to add is the environment light. As we discussed earlier, for environment lighting, we can use the Corona Sun and Sky system or use a high-range image. We will use a high-range image for this project as this gives the most photorealistic results. So press 8 to open the "environment" window. And then click here, and then choose "maps", "corona", and then choose this "Corona bitmap". Make sure the compact material editor is opened. Drag this to a slot in the material editor. And then choose "instance". 3ds Max will ask for the high-range image that we want to use. For this project, I will be using the same EXR file we downloaded before called "gamrig". But feel free to experiment with other files if you want to. Let's name this map "light environment". Alright. Now, if we press C to open the camera view. And then render the scene. We are starting to see our room model lit only by the environment. It's kind of dark. Earlier, we learned to control the image exposure using the "color correct" map. I'm going to show you another way. Just scroll down and open the "output" section. Here you can find the "output amount". Let's set this to 2. This will make the image twice brighter than before. Next, if you remember the earlier lesson, in this EXR file, there is actually a sun shining and casting strong shadows from the front side or minus Y-axis direction. Basically, to see the sun light, we need to rotate the image 180 degrees. So, type here 180. And let's try rendering the scene again. And here the result so far. Next, let's add the downlights. For this, we are going to rely on the Corona light material. Go to the perspective view. To select all the downlight objects, we can press H on the keyboard. This will open up the selection by name window. Type here "down". As you can see only the downlight objects are now visible or filtered. Press Enter, and we have all the downlight models selected. This is the reason why a good naming convention is important. Without it, you may need to select the objects manually one-by-one. Alright. Let's isolate the selection. In the material editor, change the material slot's zoom level by right-clicking and choose "5 x 3". This is so we can see more slots at once. Now, I want to dedicate these top material slots for the light sources. This is so we can easily tweak them later if needed. Let's use this slot for creating a metal material. Convert this into a Corona Physical material. Use the "brass foil" preset. And just name the material with the same name, "brass foil". Because the downlight objects are instances of each other, we can just focus on one of them. Assign the brass material to this object. If you want to see the material preview, you might want to switch to the "standard" view mode. Next, select this top slot. And then convert this into a Corona light material. As we discussed before, this material is able to generate light making the objects assigned to it behave like the Corona light object. For the intensity, let's set this to 50. We can tweak this later if needed. Name this material "light downlight". Then go to the polygon sub-object mode. Make sure only the center polygon is selected. And then assign the material. Go back to the top-level mode. And let's select this slot. Use the pick material tool, and then click on the object. So this is the multi-sub-object material created by 3ds max automatically. Let's rename this to "MSO downlights". MSO stands for "multi sub-object". Now, select all the objects. Then assign the multi sub-object material to all of them. Let's exit the isolation mode. If you hit the render button again, now we are starting to see the interior lighting. After we have a rendering result with some lights in the VFB. We can now start tweaking the tone mapping parameters. For the exposure value, I think it will be better if we increase this 2. Next, for the "highlight compress" value. We can use this to reduce the burnouts or the super-bright areas in the image. Let's just increase this to 10. Finally, notice how yellowish the image looks now. We can fix this by tweaking the "white balance" value. The lower the value, the colder the colors will be. The higher the value, the warmer the colors will be. I think 5700 should do it. Please note that all of the numbers we put are not set in stone. You may change them later if you see fit. I may also change some of them off the record. You can check the final values later in the file I provided. 94. Project: Decorative lights and backlight: In this project lesson video, we are going to add more lights into our interior scene. First, we are going to create the lights behind the backdrop. And then the lights inside the drop ceiling. And finally, we will create the backlight which is a light coming from the back wall. For the backdrop lighting, we will be using regular Corona light objects. Let's first select the backdrop object and then use the isolate selection command. Go to the top viewport. Open the create panel, "lights" and then "corona". Choose the "corona light" and then click-drag like this in the viewport. What we need now is a long tube-like light source. So change the light type to "Cylinder". Set the radius to 2 cm. And then set the height to 280 cm. Place the light so it is behind the 3d pattern panel, at the side closer to the center. Let's rename the light object to "light backdrop 001". And then, Hold Shift and drag this down. Choose "instance". And just move this so it is also right behind the panel. Alright. We can go to the camera view. Exit the isolation mode. And then render the scene. I think the light is too bright and also too white. Select the light object again. Let's change the intensity to 30. And then for the color, we want the color to be as realistic as possible. It will be easier to achieve that if we use the "kelvin temperature" value. Let's input 3000 degrees. It is an orange color. Let's render again. I think this is already looking nice, at least for a starting point. We may need to change these again later after we add colors and textures into the room. Next, let's add lighting to the drop ceiling area. For this, we will be using the Corona light material. Select the ceiling object. Isolate the selection. We need to create the polygons that will generate the light. Go to the edge mode. Select this one. And then press "ring". Right-click and then "connect". Create 2 segments, and then click OK. Let's first assign the material for the white ceiling parts. Go to the top-level mode. Open the material editor. Let's pick this slot. Convert the material to a Corona physical material. Let's name this material "gypsum matte". And then for the albedo color, you want to avoid using pure white color when using the Corona Renderer. You can read about this online. But in short, a pure white albedo color will cause unrealistic and slow rendering. I usually go between 200 to 230 for the value level if I need a white color. For now, let's set it to 230. And finally, set the "roughness" to 0.9. After you are done, you can assign this material to the ceiling object. Next, we need to create the light material. Select this slot. And convert the material to the Corona light material. Rename this to "light ceiling". Set the intensity to 20. Now, for the light color. Just like before, I prefer to use the kelvin temperature. But, we don't have any kelvin temperature here. How can we solve this? Well, you can click on this "no map" button here. And then choose a map called "Corona color". Now, we are inside the "Corona color" map. As you can see, there is a kelvin-temperature option here. Just drag this spinner up or down to find the color you like. For now, I'm setting this to 3000. Then, to go back to the parent material. You need to click on this "go to parent" button. Now we are back in the main light material. If you ever need to adjust the color again, you can click here. Make the changes that you want. And then like before, click on this "go to parent" button to go back to the main material. After we have the material set up, let's select the center polygon loop. And then apply this light material to these polygons. Now, we can go back to the top-level mode. And then exit the isolation mode. Let's render the scene again. And this is what we have so far. Notice that this area and this area are dark. This is because there is only a wall behind the camera. This lighting condition is correct if, based on the floor plan, there is a wall behind the camera. But if there is actually another room behind this camera. Then there should be lights coming from behind the camera towards the room. Of course, it will be time consuming to create all the models and materials just for this purpose alone. The easiest way to achieve this is to use a high-range image that can mimic the condition of the next room. And then assign that to the back wall object as a light source. Again, this technique is optional, depending on the floor plan condition. To do this, we need to create a corona light material. And then let's rename it to "light back". Next, for the light color, we want to override it with a high-range image. So click on this "no map" button. And then select the "Corona bitmap" map. Select the high-range image that you want to use. For this wall, I'll be using this high-range image called "wooden lounge". You can download this image for free from "polyhaven.com". Then click OK. Go to the perspective view. And then assign the material to the back wall object. To preview the texture in the viewport, you can click on this toggle button "show shaded material in viewport". You can see that the image is stretched because it was actually designed for a sphere. Let's set the U tiling value to around 0.7 to reduce the horizontal stretching effect. You can also use these offset values to pan the image around. For now, I'm just using the default values. I may tweak these settings later off the record. After you are done, you can go back to the main material. Now, if you imagine this wall as a giant light panel, it will be very bright using the standard intensity. So let's decrease this to 0.3. Go back to the camera view. And then render the scene. This is the result we have so far. As you can see, now the surfaces facing towards the camera are a bit brighter. 95. Project: Basic materials: Let's start adding basic materials to our interior scene. We already have the gypsum material. Let's apply this material to the crown molding object. Next, for the door, window, and plinth, we want to use a white painted varnished material. Select this slot. And convert it into a Corona material. Rename this to "white varnish". Of course, this will be non-metal material. For the color, use 230 value just like the gypsum material. And then set the roughness to 0.7. This will be for the base layer. We need to add a clear coat layer. Set it to 1. And for the roughness, set it to "0.2". Select the door and the frame, the plinth object, and also the window. And then assign this material to them. Next, for the door, we want the handle to have a different material. Let's isolate the door object. And then select the handle element. Use this slot and convert it into a Corona material. For the settings, just use the available "chrome polished" preset. And let's name the material to just that "chrome polished". Assign this to the object. Go back to top-level, and exit the isolation mode. Let's render the scene and see what we currently have. I think the materials are working nicely. Next, let's create the materials for the teacups and the vase. Select a slot in the material editor. Now, besides clicking on this button. If you just want to use a new corona material, you can just press O on the keyboard. This will open the material map browser. Then double click on the Corona physical material. Let's name this material "ceramic white". Set the color value to 220. And then set the roughness to 0.15. One tip when working with material settings. If you want a bigger preview, you can double-click on the sample slot. This will open a larger preview window. You can resize this window as you like. Just be aware though, the larger the preview window, the longer the time needed to render the material preview. After you are done tweaking the material, you can close this window again. Assign this ceramic material to the teacup objects. And also to the vase object. Now, select the vase. Isolate selection. Select only the leg element. For the leg, we want to use a brass material. Let's create a new corona material. And just use the "brass satin" preset. As before, we can name this material the same name as the preset. Just to make our life easier. Assign this material to the object. And then go back to the top-level mode. And exit the isolation mode. Let's move on to a more complex material assignment task. And that will be the ceiling ornament. Select the object. And then isolate the selection. Let's select this slot. And then convert it into a corona material. Name this material "white clearcoat". Change the color to 230 value. Set the roughness to 0.8. And for the clearcoat parameters. Set this to 1. And set the roughness to 0.1. This will give the material a glossy or reflective layer. Assign this material to the whole object. Next, we want to assign the existing "brass satin" material to these grout lines. If you go to the polygon mode. You may notice that all of the diamond-shaped polygons are already selected, which makes our life a bit easier because we can just invert the selection. But, let's just assume that they are not selected by default. How can we select these grout polygons then? Well, we can use the "select similar" feature. First, we need to select one diamond polygon and also one triangle polygon. This is so 3ds Max has samples to work with. Then open the ribbon menu. In the "modify selection" menu. Click on this "select similar" button. As you can see. Now, all of the top polygons are selected. With this, we can press Ctrl + I to invert the selection. And assign the existing "brass satin" material to the object. Alright. Go to top-level mode. Exit the isolation mode. Let's try rendering the scene. And this is what we have so far. Finally, let's add materials to the loudspeaker objects. Select this one and then isolate the selection. Let's first create the material for the metallic surfaces. We can use the "aluminium rough" preset. And name the material with the same name "aluminium rough". Assign the material to the whole object for now. Next, let's select only the top fabric part of the model. Create a new Corona material again. Let's name this one "fabric black rough". Change the color to pure black. Set the roughness to 1. And then, in the sheen section, set the amount to 1. And the roughness to 0.2. For the color, set the value to 50. Assign this material to the object. Until this point, you might be wondering. How do I know all of these numbers? Well, honestly, I don't. It's because I did a lot of trial and error before recording the video. After I have all the correct settings, only then I start recording. I do this because I don't want to waste your time seeing me trying different numbers that don't work. Okay. Let's continue with the inner part material. Select the inner part element. Select this slot and then convert the material. For the inner part, I want to use black plastic. We can just use the "plastic PVC opaque" preset. But then change the color to black. Name this material "plastic black gloss". And then assign this to the object. Lastly, we want to create the rubber foot material. Select the bottom polygon. And then grow the selection. Now, create a new corona material. And name this material "rubber black". Change the color to black. And that’s it. I think the roughness value is fine. And let's assign this to the object. After you are done. Remember that we are working only on one of the loudspeaker objects. And assigning multi sub-object material of an object, will only change the material ID assignment in the polygon level for the other instances. Basically, we haven’t assigned the material to the other loudspeaker. And this will be a good time to discuss a feature in 3ds Max material editor called "Propagate materials to instances". But first, let's select this slot, and then pick the multi sub-object material from the loudspeaker. Name this material "MSO loudspeaker". Now, normally, you need to select the other instances, and then assign the multi sub-object material manually like so. But, if you go to the "options" menu. And then turn on this option "Propagate materials to instances". Every time we assign a material to an object. All the instances of that object will be assigned to the same material. Just for example. If I assign this brass material to the left loudspeaker. The right loudspeaker automatically uses the same brass material. This can help us to save time if we need to assign material to a massive amount of instances in the scene. For now, let's assign the loudspeaker material to one of the objects. As you can see the other object just follows automatically. I will leave this option on for now. Later we will need to turn this off when working on the picture frame models. Let's render the scene. And here is the result so far. 96. Procedural vs Image textures: In this concept lesson video, we're going to discuss the categories of textures. As we discussed earlier the term "texture" is basically an image that we put on a 3d object. But, besides in the form of a file, images can also be generated dynamically via computer programs. That is why we can divide textures into 2 big categories, procedural textures, and image textures. There are at least 6 differences between ordinary textures and "Procedural textures". The first difference. Unlike ordinary texture which is just an image file, "Procedural textures" are generated dynamically by programs. So, again, they are actually "shaders", not image files. The second difference. Because it is a program, you can control the image using parameters. And because any parameters in 3ds Max can be animated, you can animate "Procedural textures". This is something you cannot do using ordinary textures. However, you can use a video as a texture if you want to create an animated effect. But a video is basically a series of images stored in a single file. So, it does not offer as much interactivity as "Procedural textures". And also, video files are huge. This leads us to the next difference. A shader is stored just like any code, which basically texts data. While an image is stored in a form of a grid of pixels. Each pixel stores RGB or RGBA channels. So generally, saving a file that contains "Procedural textures" requires less storage space compared to saving an image or even a video file. The next difference is how they are processed. Generally, image textures require more memory to store the pixel information, but less processing power as the image already exists. On the other hand, "Procedural textures" require less memory consumption, but it is more taxing on the processing side. This is because the computer needs to execute the program continuously to generate the image. Again, this is the general condition. There are always some exceptions. Such as a bug or a bad practice in the shader programming that can cause memory leaks. In these scenarios, a "procedural texture" can consume way more memory than it should be. The next difference is the dimension. We all know that an image is basically a 2D object or 2D data. It only has 2 axes, X and Y. What is so great about "Procedural textures" is that, besides 2D, it is possible to generate 3D textures. Because they have 3 axes, X, Y, and Z, or in other words, they have volume. For this type, you don't need to assign UV mapping to be able to put them on 3d models. I know we haven’t discussed "UV mapping" yet. In short, "UV mapping" are methods of placing 2D images onto the surface of 3D objects. More about "UV mapping" in later lessons. The last difference is the shareability. You can easily use or share image textures across different 3D applications or game engines. This is not the case with "Procedural textures". Most of them can only work inside their native application. So if you use a "Procedural texture" inside 3ds Max. It will only work inside 3ds Max. You cannot export that to other software. To address this issue, at least Autodesk is moving in the right direction by using OSL or "Open shading language". It is an open standard for writing "shaders" created by "Sony pictures". A shader written in OSL can be transferred easily to other 3D software that also supports OSL. 97. Applying textures: In this lesson video, we will learn how to apply different textures to the Corona physical material. You can use the file that I provided for this lesson, or you may also use your own. Just a reminder. To create a new corona material in the slate material editor, you can just right-click, choose "materials", "Corona", and then "Corona physical material". And to assign the material to an object, we can click-drag this output port to the object in the viewport. Or if the object is already selected, and the material node is also selected, you can press this button instead. Alright. If you look at the "Corona Physical material" node. You will see these input ports. These are the map slots. In the "parameters" panel, map slots are indicated by these small empty squares. Or, if you scroll down. The map slots are also represented by these larger buttons that say, "no map". So, again, this "no map" button beside the "base color" text, is the same as this small button up here besides the "color" text, which is the same as this "base color" input port. Okay. Basically, we can plug textures or maps into these map slots to have greater control over the material. The most common property to apply a texture to is the "base color". Why? Because it has the biggest impact on the material’s appearance. There are several ways to assign a map to a map slot. Let's discuss each of these methods, while also exploring several procedural textures that exist in 3ds Max. The first method is by creating the map or the node first and then connecting it to the input port. So for example, we can right-click here, then choose "Maps". Remember that in 3ds Max shaders are called "Maps". If you want to use an image texture, you need to use a special shader or map that can load the image file. The default 3ds Max's shader for loading image textures is this "bitmap" shader. But, because we are using Corona, it is better to use the "Corona bitmap" shader. If we do that, the file browser will open, and we need to select the image file. I'm going to use this image that I downloaded from "ambientcg.com" called "bricks 070". Just double-click on this file. And we just created a "Corona bitmap" node. But we haven’t connected this node to any of the map slots. So, click drag from this output port to the input port that says, "base color". Now we can see the brick texture on the teapot object. Currently, the brick image texture is overriding this grey color. You can see this "M" letter on this small button. This indicates that the "base color" is now using a map, which is this node. If you click on the M button. The node here is selected. And that node's parameters are shown here. Let's delete this node for now. Click to select it and then press Delete on the keyboard. Alright. The next method is to drag from the input port and then release. You then need to choose a map. For now, let's try a procedural texture. You can select "general" and then let's pick this "checker" map. This is the result. Now, unlike static image textures, you can control procedural textures using parameters. For example, we can change this color to green. And then this one to yellow. Or you can soften the edges. Etcetera. Different procedural textures provide different parameters. Let's delete this node for now. The third method is by clicking on this small button. Or if you scroll down, by clicking on this larger button that says, "no map". The material map browser will open. Here you can find the map that you want to use. For now, let's pick the "cellular" map. As you can see, the node here was created automatically. If you set this to the "chips" mode. You can create a stone-like pattern. Perhaps we can turn down this "spread" value to 0.2. Now, what is so great about the map nodes is that you can combine them or link them together to form a shader network. Just for example, if you click on this "no map" button. And then choose "Corona bitmap". And then select the brick texture again. As you can see, the brick texture replaces the area where the white cellular colors existed before. I know this is just a simple example. But, believe it or not, we just combined an image texture with a procedural texture in a single material. I hope this example gives you an insight of how powerful these map nodes can be for composing visually complex materials. Feel free to try and experiment with other maps and or other image textures. 98. Using PBR textures: In this lesson video, we're going to learn to use PBR textures with the Corona physical material. Nowadays almost all texture providers use the PBR standard. For example, the texture "bricks 070" that I've downloaded from "ambientcg.com" is not just a single image texture but a set of textures. It consists of 5 different image textures inside it. Let's quickly review them. This is the ambient occlusion texture. Basically, it provides additional soft shadows. This is the color texture that we used before. This is the displacement texture. We use this to create displacement effects or bump effects. This is the normal bump texture. Its function is to add bumpiness effects to the surface. We will discuss the difference between the normal and displacement effect later in this video. And finally, we have the "roughness" texture. As the name implies, it is used to control the roughness of the material. We learned how to apply color textures before. So, let's start with that. Drag out from the "base color" input port. Then choose "Corona", then "Corona bitmap". Now, before we select the color texture. Pay attention to this "gamma" value. This will be very important later when we add non-color maps. If you use the image for controlling color, then leave the setting to "automatic". If it is not for color, then you need to set it to "override" 1.0. Currently, we do want to use this texture for color so just leave the gamma setting to "automatic". Click open, or just double-click on the image file. This is the result just like in the previous lesson. Next, we want to add the ambient occlusion texture or AO for short. Please note that typically you don’t need to use the AO texture if you are using Corona renderer. Why? Because Corona renderer already takes care of all the shadows for us including the soft shadows. Adding AO textures will just overly darken the models and make them physically incorrect. Now, you might be wondering. If it is not physically correct, why then are AO textures provided as part of the PBR texture set? Well, it is because AO textures are heavily used in real-time renderings such as for games or VR applications to fake the environment lighting. In Corona, however, we have real environment lighting and don't need to fake the shadows. But, anyway, you can still use the AO texture to exaggerate the shadows if you want to. To do that, we need a special map that can combine the color and the AO texture together using the "multiply" blending mode. 3ds Max provides several of these maps, such as the "Composite" map and the "RGB Multiply" map. But let's use the Corona version of this map called the "Corona mix". In this map, you can see 2 input nodes, the bottom layer, and the top layer. We need to put the color texture at the bottom. And the AO texture at the top. So drag this color texture output port to the bottom node. Plug the mix node output into the base color map slot. And for the AO, we can drag the top layer input port, choose "Corona bitmap" and then pick the AO texture. Because we are using this AO texture for the color map slot, just leave the gamma setting to "automatic". Then click open. It looks all white because we haven’t changed the blending mode. So, select the mix node. And change this "mix operation" to "multiply". It may not be obvious. But if you look closely, you can see subtle dark areas on the crevasses. Let me select all of these nodes and move them up a bit. Next, let's add the "roughness" texture. Currently, the roughness value is uniform across the material. And this value controls it. If I set this to 0, the material will be very glossy. With the "roughness" texture, we can have different variations of roughness levels across the material. Bright colors that exist in the texture will make the surface rough, while dark colors will make it glossy. Let's drag out the base roughness port. Choose the "Corona bitmap" shader. And then select the "roughness" texture. Now, this is important. Because we are not using this texture for color output, we need to select the "override" 1.0 option. Then click open. Until this point, you might be wondering. How can we tell which image texture is for color and which one is not? Well, it is not actually about the texture file, but it is all about the map slot types. Just remember this simple rule, if you find the word "color" in the map slot, such as "edge color", "translucency color'', "opacity color", etc. Then the image texture should use the "automatic" gamma setting. Other than that, then you should use the override 1.0 gamma setting. Alright. Next, let's add bump effects to the material. For this, we need to use this map slot called "base bump". You need to plug a monochrome or a greyscale image into this map slot. Brighter colors will make the surface go up, while darker colors will make it go down. We can use the displacement texture for this. Drag out from the port. Choose "Corona bitmap", and then pick the displacement texture. Because we are not using this for color, use the "override" gamma option. Then click open. And here is the result. I think we can see this better if we unplug the color and also the roughness maps. And let's zoom in a bit. If you want to increase the effect. You can open the main material, and then change this bump value. For example, 10. You can see the bump effect becomes even more prominent. If you input a negative number, for example, minus 10. The bump effect is now reversed. The bricks are now going into the surface while the mortars are coming out of the surface. Let's return this to the default by right-clicking on the spinner. Another way to create a bump effect is by using the normal texture. But, for this to work inside an ordinary bump map slot, you need to convert the texture first using a special shader called "Corona normal". So, let's create a corona bitmap node, and pick the normal texture file. Choose the "override" gamma option here. Then click open. Let me place it here. And move this down. Just to make things easier to read. Next, create the Corona normal map. Plug the image into the "normal" input port. And then plug this into the "base bump" input port. In general, normal textures create better-looking bump effects. This is because they utilize 3 channels, red, green, and blue, to simulate surface sloping. That is why normal textures are used heavily in games or other real-time applications. But the biggest problem with normal textures is that they only work in their default orientations. They will break once you rotate them. Just to prove this. If you select the normal texture node. Here you can find the W rotation. If we rotate this to 180 degrees. Notice how the bump effect is now reversed. It is like using a negative value for the bump strength. The bricks are down, while the mortars are up. This can be a problem in architectural visualization because, a lot of time, we need to rotate the texture for different parts of the model. That is why I prefer not to use the normal texture and just use the displacement texture for architectural projects. The more advanced usage of the displacement texture is to use it for the displacement effect. The bump effect that we've been using is a fake effect. Meaning, it only alters the shading of the surface. If you look closely at the object's silhouette. The surface is actually flat. Displacement, on the other hand, is a real effect. Displacement generates real geometry at rendering time. So, yes, it is more expensive than the bump effect. To use displacement, simply plug the displacement texture into the "displacement" map slot. And this is the result. Let's zoom in even more. Okay. Now, if you look closely again at the object's silhouette. The surface is actually going up and down. You can control the effect in the main material node. For example, if I increase this to 2. We get something like this. If we set this to 10, just to exaggerate. We get something like this. I'm sure you get the idea. Let's set this back to one. And let's plug in the color map and also the roughness map. So, this is the result if we use all the textures except the normal texture. As you can see, using PBR textures is not that hard once you nail down the basics. And you can get beautiful or realistic materials with minimum effort. 99. Basic UV mapping: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss UV mapping. Essentially, UV mapping is a method of placing a 2D image onto the surface of a 3D object. You don't actually need UV mapping if you only use basic material parameters without any textures. But if you use image textures or 2D procedural textures inside the material, then you need to apply UV mapping on the 3D model. Otherwise, the texture will not look correct. There are at least 3 types of UV mapping in 3ds Max. The first is the standard or the "default UV mapping". The second is the "Projection UV mapping". And the third is "Unwrap UV mapping". Let's discuss each of them one by one. The "default UV mapping" is basically the built-in UV mapping that exists on primitive objects. If you select a primitive object, for example, a teapot object. You will see this checkbox "generate mapping coordinates". If you turn this off, the object will have no UV mapping thus making the textures look wrong. This option is on by default and there is no reason why you want to turn it off. The problem with the standard UV mapping is that it will be broken once you start modeling. For example, if we convert this teapot into an "editable poly" object. Go to the polygon mode. And let's select this polygon. If we pull this out. Or perform an extrude, for example. As you can see, the UV mapping is now broken. Due to this, you always want to assign UV mapping after you finish modeling. Let me undo all of these. Of course, for editable poly objects, you cannot use the default UV mapping. You need to use projection mapping or UV unwrapping methods. Next, is the projection UV mapping. Imagine you use an LCD projector and then shoot an image onto a wall. That is basically how UV projection works. In 3ds Max, you can do this using a modifier called "UVW map". By default, it uses the planar type. You can see clearly how the image is projected from top to bottom, perpendicular to this rectangle gizmo. You can set the length of the gizmo and also the width of it. You can also set the tiling here. If, for example, we input 2 in the U-tile field. There will be 2 repetitions of the texture along the U-axis or the horizontal direction. Let me set this back to 1. We can also specify the projection direction here. Whether be from the Z-axis, Y-axis, or X-axis. Now, besides planar, you can also use other types of projection mapping such as "Cylinder". This type will project the texture surrounding the side. And if you turn on this "cap" option. The top and bottom will also get additional planar projections. Feel free to try each of these UV mapping types. The box type is like the planar type. But it projects from 6 different directions at once. Front, back, right, left, top, and bottom. The box type is perhaps the most important of all. Why? Because almost 90 % of the texturing needs in architectural projects can be done with this box type. As we all know, most architectural objects are basically boxes. But you can also get away using just the box type for complex furniture. That is if they are far away from the camera. The last thing that I want to mention is tweaking the UV gizmo. As with almost all modifiers in 3ds Max, the UVW map modifier also provides a sub-object called "gizmo". Basically, if this mode is on, we can move the UV gizmo, rotate it, and scale it. The object itself will not be affected by the transformation. Only the UV mapping and the textures er affected. Now, if you want to reset the UV gizmo, just click on this "reset" button down here. Alright. We will see more techniques of using this UVW map modifier in the upcoming project lessons. So those are the first 2 methods of UV mapping. We will discuss the Unwrapping method in the next lesson. 100. Unwrap UV mapping: In this lesson video, we are going to continue discussing UV mapping. Previously we discussed the "default" and "projection" methods. Now, we will focus on the "Unwrap UV mapping" method. So what is exactly UV unwrapping? The easiest way to describe this method is to observe how a stuffed doll is created. A doll maker needs to think about how to convert 2D fabrics into 3D objects by carefully designing the shape of the cutouts. Well, UV unwrapping is just like that but the other way around. We need to think about how we can convert 3D objects into 2D cutouts. We need to define where the seams are so the cutouts are optimal. For UV unwrapping, in 3ds Max, we use a modifier called "Unwrap UVW". Now, before we start, you need to know that UV unwrapping consists of many different techniques. There is just too much to cover in this course alone. I do have another course that covers UV unwrapping in more depth. For this lesson, we will be using a technique called "peel seams". Let's create a box object. Turn on the cube option here. And then just click-drag in the viewport. For now, the size is not important. Let's say we want to apply this Rubik's cube texture to the object. Let's first create a Corona material. I'm using the compact material editor for now. Then click on the base color map slot. Choose "Corona bitmap". And then choose the file. Assign this material to the object. As you can see, the standard UV or box projection mapping won't help in this scenario. Next, apply the "Unwrap UVW" modifier. As you can see, this modifier has so many tools and parameters. And this is actually not all. If you click on this button. The "Edit UVW" window will open. Here, you can even see more tools that you don't see in the modifier panel. Let's close this window for now. What we need to do now is to determine which edges to cut so that the cube will be flat out and form a T shape when unwrapped. Now, notice these green lines. These are the "map seams". They are the existing texture seams. We need to hide them for now. Scroll down, until you see this "map seams" checkbox. Click on it to hide the map seams. What we want to see now are the "peel seams". Basically, peel seams are the future map seams. They are the seams that we are currently working on. To tag edges as peel seams, you can use this tool. Click to tag an edge as a peel seam. Alt + click to untag it. Edges that are tagged as peel seams will have a light blue color. Just click on these edges. In this process, you need to use your imagination. If you want a T shape layout, where are the seams should be. After you have all the edges tagged. You can start unwrapping using this button "reset peel". If you do this, the UV editor window will open. And you can see a T-shaped UV layout here. Now, what you see here is actually the cube object but in a 2D version. We can activate the polygon mode here. This is the top polygon. You can see the corresponding polygon in the 3D viewport is also selected. This is the front polygon, this is the side polygon, etcetera. You get the idea. If I go to vertex mode. And select this vertex. And move it around, like so. The texture becomes distorted. Let me undo this. Now, to show the color texture here in the UV editor, you can click here and then choose this option. With this, we can now align the UV layout to the existing texture. Select all of the vertices. For UV transformation, you can use these buttons up here. This is for moving, rotating, and scaling. The last tool is basically a combination of the move, rotate, and scale tools. This is like the "free transform" tool inside Photoshop. So, with this tool active, you can move the UV around with the arrows. You can scale with the corner handles. And you can rotate using the middle handles. But to quickly rotate the UV 90 degrees clockwise, you can just click on this button. And then to align them, just drag the top-right corner so that the top border and the right border match the image. You can do the same with the bottom-left corner. And we are done. We can go back to the top-level mode and close the UV editor window. So here is the final result. You can collapse the unwrap modifier or convert the object into an editable poly. The UV mapping will not be broken as it is baked in the 3D model. 101. Real-world map size: In this lesson video, we are going to discuss one of the UV mapping features in 3ds Max called the "Real-world map size". If you apply a "UVW Map" modifier to an object. We can control the texture tiling here. But, notice that the tiling values are relative. 1 means there will be 1 repetition for a single UV tile. Now, what if we know exactly that a texture is 2 meters by 2 meters in the real world? How can we use these real-world numbers to control the UV mapping size? Well, this is what the "Real-world map size" feature is all about. Instead of inputting generic relative values for the texture size, we can input real-world measurement units. For this feature to work, you need to turn it on in the material parameter and also in the UV mapping parameter. Please note that not all UV mapping techniques are supported. You can use the default UV mapping and certain types of projection UV mapping. Let's see how we can use this feature. In this file, I have 2 box-like objects. Just assume that they are walls. This one is still a primitive object. To use the "Real-world map size" feature you need to turn on this checkbox here. Next, this object is already converted into an editable poly. To use the feature you need to apply a "UVW map" modifier first. And then turn on this option "Real-world map size". Notice that if you turn this on, the tiling and the size parameters become inactive. Also, now you can only select 4 mapping types, planar, cylindrical, spherical, and box. Let's set this to box for now. Next, let's assign a material and then use a texture. I already have this material from the previous lesson. I removed all the other textures except the color texture to make the preview rendering much faster. Now, this is very important. For all the textures you have in the material. You need to go in. And then turn on this option "use real-world scale". With this turned on, the tiling values are now in cm. Let's say that this brick texture is 150 cm in width and 150 cm in height. And then assign the material to the objects in the scene. So again, this feature only works, if you turn on the option both in the texture in the material and the UV mapping on the object. If you turn off one of them. Let's say the texture. And have all the tiling values back to the default. It won't work. Let me undo this. Or if you turn off the option in the default UV mapping. Or in the UVW map modifier. It won't work either. Although this feature looks great, there is a limitation. If for example, you duplicate this box object and then convert it into an editable poly object. The UV mapping is now baked or embedded inside the geometry. In this condition, this object will still be able to use real-world size textures without any problem as long as the system unit does not change. This file is in cm. If you perform a merge import from another file that uses cm also. It will work without any problem. But, if you try to import the model from a file that uses a meter as the system unit, then the UV mapping will be broken. Just to prove this. I'm going to save this file as "walls cm". Then I reset 3ds Max. Go to the customize menu, "units setup", "system units setup". And change this to "meters". Now, this file is officially in meters. If we try to merge the objects from the "walls cm" file. Select all of them, and then click OK. This is the result. The primitive object survives. The texture looks correct. The one with UVW map modifier also survives. Although sometimes you need to turn this option off and then on again to force 3ds Max to refresh the texture. And the third one does not survive. Now, if the UV mapping is simple, you can just re-assign a UVW map modifier onto this object and then turn on the "real-world map size" option. Let me remove this modifier first. But if the object already has a complex UV layout. What you need to do now is to scale the UV layout as big or as small as the unit ratio. From centimeters to meters, the difference in value is 100 times. To do this, we can assign an Unwrap UVW modifier. Then open the UV editor window. You can press Ctrl + E for the shortcut. If you press Z to zoom extent. You can see how large the UV layout is compared to a single UV tile size. So select all of the vertices. Activate the scale tool. The default scale value is 100. Because we want to scale the UV layout 100 times smaller, we can type in one. Then Enter. Now, we can see the texture scale looks correct on this object. 102. Project: Using Corona library materials: In this project lesson video, we will continue working on our interior scene. Now, we are going to use the materials provided in the Corona material library. I mentioned before that the materials in the Corona material library use the "real-world scale" feature. So, we need to apply UVW map modifiers and turn on the "real-world map size" option. But, instead of applying the UVW map modifier one by one, we can just apply it to all of the objects at once. Later we can adjust each object individually as needed. But you need to be aware that not all object types support UVW map modifier. For example, the lamp objects, camera objects, etc. We also don't need to apply UVW map modifiers on bevel profile splines. So, to play safe, let's set the "selection filter" to "geometry" first. And then press Ctrl + A. This will select only the geometry objects and ignore the rest. And while these objects are selected, we can assign the UVW map modifier. Use the box type. And then turn on the "real-world map size" option. Before we continue, let's discuss the basic concept of modifier instances in 3ds Max. Because we select multiple objects and then apply a modifier. That modifier will be instantiated across multiple objects. So in this condition. If, for example, I select this curtain object. Then I make changes to the UVW map modifier here. The UVW map modifiers that exist on other objects, for example, on this wall object will also be changed. We can easily tell if a modifier is instantiated by the italic letters. Okay. So that is something that you need to remember. Next. You can see the texture in the back wall is now broken. Previously, because it was created from a box, the back wall object already has UV mapping embedded similar to a planar projection mapping. Now it is overridden by the UVW map modifier. To fix this, we can simply delete the modifier. You can see the texture mapping is now back to where it was. Alright. Now, we can start adding the materials. First, let's select this wall object. Open the compact material editor. Let's first set the zoom level of the material slots. Right-click and then select the 6 by 4 size. This does not change the maximum number of the sample slots. We only make the previews smaller. This way we don't need to scroll vertically or horizontally as everything is visible at once. Next, we can open the Corona material library. Let's make this smaller. In this current version of Corona renderer, I experienced several crashes when dragging the material directly onto an object. I hope this does not happen in your version of Corona Renderer. But, to play safe, we are going to place the materials in the material editor first. And then apply them to the objects afterward. For the right wall section, I want it to be a black painted wall. Somehow mouse scrolling is very slow in this window, the scroll bar is much faster. Let's use this one "wall paint black matte". Drag this to this empty slot. You need to wait for a few seconds as it needs to uncompress all the texture files. After it shows up, we can assign this material to the right wall. Because it is already selected we can just click on this assign button. Next, let's select a material for the other wall sections. Let's find a white painted wall. Drag this material to a slot in the material editor. We can close this window for now. Select the front wall and also the left wall. Then assign the white wall material. Next, let's focus on the floor lamp object. For a start, we can assign the existing "brass foil" material. We can create new material for this. But it is faster to work if we can reuse existing materials. Not only that, but the rendering time will also be faster as the rendering engine have fewer materials to process. Now, for the foot. As you can see in the product photo, the foot is black marble. We can open the Corona material library again. Go to the "stone" category. And find the "Marble black" material. Drag this to this slot. But, I think the marble material is too glossy. Notice that this material is still using the old legacy material. Instead of "roughness", it uses "glossiness" value. Essentially it is the inverted version of the roughness value. Let's decrease this to 0.7. Okay. Now we need to select only the foot element. And then assign the marble material. At the bottom, there is actually a rubber padding. But I don't think no one can see or can tell the difference. So let's just move on to the next object. Let's select the cable object. Ooh sorry. I forget to turn the selection filter back to "All". The cable object is a spline. That is why we cannot select it. Now, we can select it. For this, we can just use the rubber material. It doesn’t have any texture therefore we don't need any UV mapping. Next, for the curtains. We can use the provided curtain material. Go to the "fabric" category. And we can use this material "Fabric curtain heavy". Drag this to this slot. Select the curtain object and then assign the material. Next, we need a wood material for the coffee table, the backdrop, and cabinets. Let's open the Corona material library. Go to the wood section. I think this "walnut semi gloss" will be great. Drag this to this slot. And then select the coffee table, the shelves, and the backdrop. And assign the walnut material. We'll take care of this part in another lesson. For now, let's focus on the coffee table. For the table legs, we want to use this "chrome polished" material. As usual, we need to go to the element mode. Select the top part. Currently, we are in a non-shaded selection mode. You can press F2 to switch the mode if you want to. Press Ctrl + I to invert the selection. Select this material and then assign it. Alright. Now, if you go the perspective view. And then activate the UVW map modifier again. The wood pattern is going this way. We want it to go this way. To fix this, we can rotate the UV gizmo. But, remember that this is an instance modifier. If you rotate the gizmo the other objects that use this modifier will also be affected. To solve this, we can convert the modifier into a unique modifier that only affects the coffee table object. To do that, we can right-click and then choose "make unique". As you can see the modifier name is not italic anymore. Now, we can select the gizmo. Currently, the gizmo is not centered on the object. So scroll down. And then press this "center" button. Next, we can activate the rotate tool. And make sure the angle snap mode is on. And just rotate it using the Z-axis for 90 degrees. Next, let's create a black gloss material for the TV and the picture frames. But, sorry. Turns out we already have this material from the loudspeaker lesson. Let's just reuse this one. Assign this material to the TV object. And then select all of the picture frame objects. We'll work on the details in later videos. For now, we can just assign this black glossy material. Go back to the camera view. And let's try rendering the scene. So here is the result so far. 103. Project: The shelves and backdrop textures: In this project lesson video, we will work on the textures and UV mapping for the TV shelves and the backdrop objects. For the shelves, I'll be recording the process just for the top one. Because the bottom one will use exactly the same process. I believe you'll be able to handle it yourself later. Right-click and then choose isolate selection. Then press P and then Z. For the first step. I think we can add the material for the compartments. Let's create a black semi-gloss material here. We can start by duplicating this black gloss material. But, before we do that. I think for a gloss material, 0.4 is too high. Let's change this to 1.5. Okay. Then drag this material to this slot to duplicate it. Rename this one to "plastic black semi-gloss". And let's change the roughness value to 0.7. Alright. Go to the element mode. Make sure the doors and also the back part are all selected. Then assign the material. Next, let's focus on the walnut texture orientation. For a start, we want to make the wood pattern aligned that way to the Y-axis direction. Just as we discussed in the previous lesson. Because this is an instanced modifier, we cannot change it directly. We need to make it unique first. Then center the gizmo. And go to the gizmo sub-object mode. Use the rotate tool, make sure the "angle snap" is on. And just rotate this way for 90 degrees. Then we can convert the object into an editable poly. Next, select all of these polygons. While we have the polygons selected, we can add a "UVW map" modifier. Choose the box type and turn on the "real-world map size" option. We can press F2 to change the selection shading mode. And then rotate the gizmo this way for 90 degrees. And we are done. Convert this into an editable poly again. Let me switch to the select tool and then exit the isolation mode. Again, for the bottom part, I'm going to do this off the record as there is no new technique to discuss. Let's move on to the backdrop object. As usual, we isolate the selection. And for a start, we want to make all the wood patterns vertical. Make the modifier unique. Center the gizmo. Then activate the gizmo mode. And rotate this gizmo this way for 90 degrees. Oops, sorry guys. The side pattern is going in the wrong direction. Let me undo this. Let's see. I think we should rotate it this way first for 90 degrees. And then rotate it this way for 90 degrees. Alright. We can now convert this into an editable poly object. Next, go to the polygon mode. And select these top polygons. It is okay if you mistakenly select the 3d pattern polygons as for this part we will use a metal material that won't require any UV mapping. Though I will try not to touch the 3d pattern as much as I can. Hold Ctrl and then select the other horizontal planks. So now we have something like this. You can press F2 to clearly see the selection. While these polygons are selected we can assign a UVW map modifier. As usual, use the box type, and then turn on the "real-world" option. The default orientation is okay. Although the top parts are still wrong, no one will see them. So, just convert this into an editable poly. Next, we want to focus on these panels. We can see them clearly if we press F4. We want to make the wood pattern go zig zagging. Now, we can use the same technique as before, that is selecting the polygons and then applying UVW map modifiers on them. But I want to show you another approach using the Unwrap UV modifier. So, assign an Unwrap modifier. If you have this modifier selected, you can press Ctrl + E to open the UV editor window. Let me move this first. Okay. Let's start with this panel and this panel. Select this one. You can press F2 to see the selection better. Hold Ctrl and select this one. Next, let's grow the selection. We need to do this because if you remember this model, there is a beveled area around each panel. We need to press the grow selection button, so these areas are selected also. Press F2 again so we can clearly see the texture. In the UV editor, we can press Z to zoom extent. Now, if we just move or rotate these polygons, that will stretch the connected edges. We need to press this "break" button to separate them from the others. And before we can move these, it is better to lock the selection first. Now we can move them safely. Next, rotate these UV clusters for 45 degrees. Sorry, wrong direction. Alright. Unlock the selection. Next, basically, we just need to repeat the process for the other 2 panels. Select this one and then this one also. Grow the selection. Break the UV so they are independent UV clusters. Lock the selection. And rotate the other way around for 45 degrees. And although not necessary, you can move this around if you want to find the wood pattern that you like. After you are done. Just close this window. And convert the object into an editable poly. Lastly, this will be a simple task. We want to assign a metal material to the 3D pattern part. Select the main element. And then press Ctrl + I to invert the selection. Press M. Let's just use this "chrome polished" material. And we are done. We can go back to the camera view and render the scene. Here is the result so far. 104. Project: The floor and carpet textures: In this project lesson video, we will be creating the materials and also adding the textures for the floor and then the carpet. As for the floor, I downloaded the texture from "textures.com". You can find the link inside the "PBR materials" section. Then inside the "wood planks" category. You will find this texture set "wood parquet strip". If you look inside. There are a total of 5 textures in this set. You can download them for free up to 1K resolution. Beyond that, you will need to purchase it. For this lesson, we'll be using the free 1K resolution. We will use the color texture. And then the displacement texture. If you find the name "height" or "bump" for textures. They are basically the same as displacement textures. We are not going to use the Normal texture and also the AO texture. I already explained the reason before in the earlier lesson. And finally, we will be using the "roughness" texture. Now, if you check the files I provided for this lesson. You will see this dark version. This is the original. And this is the modified version. I'm going to explain quickly how to create this dark version. Basically, I opened the original image in Photoshop. So, this is how the original looks like. Then I add an adjustment layer on top of it called "hue saturation". And then set the saturation to minus 25. Then the lightness to minus 35. So, this is before, and this is after. And then just export the file as a PNG file. Next, I also provided this carpet texture file. I downloaded this file from "DHgate.com". You can find the image file down here. I like the feather pattern on this carpet. Although unfortunately, the real carpet product is not available for sale anymore. At least that is the case when I recorded the video. Let's go back to 3ds Max. Select the floor object and then isolate the selection. Press P then Z. Now, for the floor texture, we won't be needing the "real-world size" feature. So, let's delete this modifier and just create a new one. Change the length to 150 cm and then the width also to 150 cm. Next, open the slate material editor. Create a Corona physical material. You can press Z to zoom extent. Click-drag from the base color port. And then create a Corona bitmap node. Choose the dark version. Because this is for color, just leave the gamma setting to automatic. Then click open. Assign this material to the floor object. We can see the pattern is going this way, not this way. Just as before, we can fix this easily by rotating the UV gizmo. I have the angle snap turned on. Rotate the gizmo using the Z-axis for 90 degrees. Next, click-drag from the "base roughness" port. Create a Corona bitmap node. Choose the roughness texture file. Because this is not for color, we need to set this to "override 1.0". Click open. If you need to see a bigger preview, you can double-click here. Alright. Finally, for the bump, we can click-drag from the "base bump" port. Choose Corona bitmap. And then select the bump texture file. Choose "override". And then click open. We can see the preview here. Let's name this material "floor wood". Close this window. And then exit the isolation mode. Next, let's focus on the carpet. For the base material, we will be using the material from the Corona material library. We can find carpet materials inside the "fabrics" category and also in the "carpets" category. Let's just use this one. For now, I'm dragging it directly to the object. I hope it doesn’t crash. Okay. We can close this window. Open the slate material editor. And let's delete the floor material for now. We can always access it again from the scene materials. Use the pick tool and then click on the carpet object. As you can see, the material already provides a displacement texture. The only thing that we need to change is the color texture. So, unplug this connector. And then drag this port out. Choose Corona bitmap. Find the carpet texture that I provided called "carpet color". Because this is for color, just use the automatic gamma setting. Click open. Alright. Now, the problem with this setup is that the object uses a "real-world size" UV mapping. Which is correct for the other textures except for the color texture. That is why we cannot see the color texture correctly. We can turn on the "real-world scale" option on the color texture and just tweak the size. But the easier way to do this is to use multiple UV map channels. We haven’t discussed this before. But yes, you can have multiple UV maps in a single object. So, all these textures will use UV map channel 1 which uses a "real-world scale". And this texture alone will use UV map channel 2. You can see that this texture uses map channel number 1. If you select the color texture node. You can change this map channel value to 2. Currently, the carpet object does not have UV map channel 2. So, we need to create it. Simply add another UVW map modifier. As you can see, the planar projection UV gizmo automatically fits the carpet object. So, we don't need to change anything. But currently, this UV map is overriding the previous UV map. We need to scroll down. And then change this map channel value to 2. Now we can see the color texture correctly. So again, just to recap. This UVW map is on channel 1. It uses real-world scale and is used by textures other than the color texture. While this UVW map is on channel 2. It does not use the "real-world scale". And it is used by the color texture. This is the result we have so far. From this render preview, I think I want to increase the floor UV size to 180 cm. But I will do this off the record. 105. Project: The TV and picture frame textures: In this project lesson video, we will work on the textures for the TV screen and the picture frames. For the TV, we will be using a very common image that often shows up on pioneer TV products. So even though I am on the "bestbuy.com" website, I believe the image copyright belongs to the pioneer electronics company. Next, for the picture frames. I downloaded the texture from "amazon.com". The product itself belongs to this brand. I'm not sure how to spell it though. Select the TV object. Isolate the selection. Press P then Z. For this object, we don't need the real-world size UV map. So, let's just delete it. Next, go to polygon mode and then select the center polygon. We already applied the black gloss material before. Now, we only need to focus on the center screen. While the polygon is selected. Apply a UVW map modifier. It is already set to the planar type. But the default direction is the Z-axis. So, the image is projected from top to bottom. Now, besides changing the axis manually, I want to show you another way. If you want to align the projection quickly to a certain surface. You can activate this "normal align" mode. And then click-drag the mouse on the surface that you want to align to. And then click the fit button. After you are done, you can turn this off. And just convert this object into an editable poly. Go to the polygon mode again. Press F2 so later we can see the texture. Then open the slate material editor. This is the previous carpet material. I forgot to name it. Let's just name this "carpet". And then we can delete them from the view panel. Now, for the TV screen. Because it produces light, we need to use the Corona light material. And, before we forget, let's name this "TV screen". Zoom in, and drag the color port. Choose Corona bitmap. And then select the texture file. As usual, because this is for color, we use the automatic gamma setting. Okay. And then we can assign the material to the object. The TV screen is actually done, and it will show the texture correctly when we render it. But, if you need to see the preview in the viewport, you can right-click on the texture node. Then choose "show shaded material in viewport". And then choose the TV screen material. And now we can see the texture in the viewport. Again, this is only for previewing and will not affect the rendering result. Let's move on to the picture frame objects. Until this point, you should already know how to isolate selection. So, I'm skipping that part to save time. Just like before, we don't need this UVW map modifier. The outer materials do not use any textures. And the center picture will use a planar projection mapping. So, let's just delete it. Remember that previously we turned on the option "propagate materials to instances". With this option, any material changes that happen to an object will also affect its instances. For now, create a polygon loop selection. You can press F2 to clearly see the selection. Basically, for this part, I want to assign a goldish material. Open the compact material editor. And let's just use the existing "brass foil" material. You can see how the "propagate materials" option is working behind the scenes. Then select the center polygon. And then grow it once. I want to assign a white canvas-like material. But we already have a white matte material before. Here it is, called the "gypsum matte". Let's just reuse this material. Next, select only the center polygon. Let's close this for now. Then apply a UVW map modifier. The planar mapping already fits the selected polygon. Now, to collapse the modifier. If you just convert this object into an editable poly, like this. This will make the object unique and not an instance of the other 2 objects anymore. To keep them as instances, you need to right-click on the modifier and then choose "collapse to". Now, the modifier has collapsed. But the objects are still instances to each other. Just, to prove it. I can move this polygon around. You can see the others follow. Alright. Now, let's open the slate material editor. We want to create a material for the center picture. Right-click and create a Corona physical material. Then drag the base color port. Choose corona bitmap. And then select the first image in the picture set. Let's name this material "picture 001". Then assign this material to the object. Due to the propagate option, now all of the objects are using the same picture image. We will fix this in a moment. Exit the sub-object mode. Now, we need to turn off the "propagate materials" option. And then, we can delete these nodes for now. Use the pick material tool. And then click on any of the 3 objects. And here is the multi sub-object material generated by 3ds Max for the picture frame objects. You can see here we have the black gloss material, brass foil, gypsum, and finally the center picture. To make things easier to see, we can click on the minus buttons to minimize the nodes. And just move them closer. Okay. Now, select this node. And rename it to "picture frame 001". And then hold the Shift key and then drag the node down. We just duplicated the node. Hold Shift and drag this down again. Let's copy the first name. Select this one, paste the text. And then change the number to "002". Do the same with the third material node. Change the number to "003". Now we have 3 unique multi sub-object materials. The children's materials are all instances to each other. This is great, because reusing assets like this means faster rendering time. What we need to duplicate next, is the picture material and also its texture. So, select both. Hold Shift and then drag down. Do this again, so we have 3 of them. Just like before, we can copy the first name. And then use it to rename the other 2 nodes. Now the names are unique, but the textures are not. The first one is already correct. But for the second one, we need to retarget the file to the second image. The third is also the same. Click the "load map" button and select the third image. Then drag this to the second material. And this one to the third material. I know this may be a bit confusing for beginners. Just to recap. We now have 3 multi sub-object materials that are using the same material instances from slot 1 to slot 3. But use a unique material for slot number 4. This is one of the benefits of using the slate material editor over the compact material editor. That is, it makes composing complex materials like these easier. The final step is to assign the multi sub-object materials to the corresponding objects. So this one goes to this object. And this one goes to the second object. And this one goes to the last object. After you are done, you can go back to the camera view and render the scene. Here is the result so far. 106. Project: Importing free assets: In this project lesson video, we are going to learn how to prepare free assets from the internet and use it in our interior project. This is the first free asset that we are going to use. You can find this asset in "cgtrader.com" provided by the user "Breton 32". Then for the second asset. You can find this at "turbosquid.com". It is a collection of multiple 3d models and textures. There are books, vases, flowers, and frames. For our project, we will be using only the books and also the vases. The user who provided these models is "adelhaid". The best way to use 3d assets in our project is not to import them directly. But you should open them first individually, and make all the necessary changes. Only then do we merge the objects into our main project file. Let's start with the plant model. Notice that the original file is using V-Ray as the rendering engine. For the gamma setting, just click ok. Usually, 3ds Max will offer to convert the scene for us. I don't recommend you to use this feature if you are using the Corona renderer. Because Corona has its own scene converter that works better. To access it, you can click on this icon. The default settings are already good, so just click this "convert" button. After you see the words "conversion finished", you can close all of these windows. Now the scene is fully converted to the Corona standards. Just to prove this, you can see the renderer is now set to Corona. And then if you open the compact material editor. All of these materials are already converted to Corona physical materials. You may notice that they are a bit dark. This is because it uses a different gamma setting than we usually use. This is not a problem at all. Because later when we import the 3d models they will adapt to our file's gamma setting. Now, if you see a dark viewport like this. Typically, this is because of a missing environment texture file. If you press 8, you can see here the words "missing texture map". Just right-click on it and then choose "clear" to remove it. Somehow the opacity maps are all inverted. But this is only the viewport preview problem. It will be fine when we render it later. What we want to do now is to remove all of these small leaves as we're not going to see them in the camera view. Just select each of them and then press delete. Next, we can combine them all into a single object. Select the bottom part. And then use the "attach" window. Press Ctrl + A, and then click the "attach" button. The multi sub-object options will open. Just click OK. Rename the object to "plant". And change the object color to black. Next, let's work on the materials. To clear all of the materials at once, we can go to the "options" menu. Oh sorry. It should be the "utilities" menu. And then choose "reset material editor slots". Select the first slot and then pick the material from the model. Let's rename the material to "MSO plant". We have 3 sub-materials here, "stem 1", "leaf 2", and "stem 2". Now, what we want to focus on is the leaf material. Because the leaf is a translucent object. We need to activate the "thin shell" option. Then we can increase the "translucency" slightly to 0.1. And for the color, we can try a light green color. After you are done you can save the scene to a new file. You can name it with any name you like. Back in our interior project file. We can go to the "File" menu, "import", and then "merge". Double-click on the file. Choose the "plant" object. And then click OK. Again, if you see this "scene converter" window, just close it. Now, the plant object is inside our interior scene. From this point forward, it is all about moving and scaling the object. I believe you already know how to do this, so I'll just speed up the video. After you are done, you can do a test render to see how the plant looks. I think it looks okay. The translucent effect on the leaves works well. Next, let's open the file that contains the books and the vases. If you see this window, just choose the "adopt file unit" option and click okay. And if you see the default scene converter window, just close the window. After the file is open. Use the Corona converter to convert the scene to the Corona standards. After it is done. Just close all of these windows. If you select the objects, notice that they are all grouped together. We need to ungroup them. Now, we can select and delete the objects that we don't need. For these left vases, we are going to use the existing materials in our interior scene. For now, we can just apply a dummy or temporary material. Let's just name this "temp". Then assign this to the objects. For these 2 vases on top of the books, we want to create a new ceramic material. Let's use this slot. Because we converted the scene from the old version of the corona renderer, you can see that the material is using "glossiness" instead of the "roughness" parameter. If you want to use roughness, you can scroll down until you find the "advanced options". And then change the "roughness mode" to "roughness". Or, I found that clicking here and selecting Corona physical material is faster to perform. Let's name this material "ceramic blue". Change the color to a navy-blue color. Set the roughness to 0.4. And assign the material to the objects. Next, we can adjust the position and also the rotation of the objects. I'm speeding up the video as there is no new technique to discuss. Alright. We can select all of these objects. And then group them. Let's name this group "book set". Or let's make it "book vase set". Then click okay. Now, notice how the pivot point of the group object is not at the ground. Later we will learn how to place objects using this tool called "select and place". For this to work, you need the object's local z-axis to point upward. And the pivot point is located at the ground. To really see the local axis orientation, we don't want to use the view coordinate system as this always shows the viewport axes. What we want to use is the local coordinate system. Alright. The group's z-axis is already pointing up which is great. Then to move the pivot point down, activate the "affect pivot only" mode. Now, with the "local" coordinate system, we cannot really see the coordinate values. So, let's switch this back to the "view" coordinate system. And then zero out the Z-axis coordinate. Then we can turn this off. Let's check the other vase objects. To check the axis orientation, again, we need to use the local coordinate system. Now, you can see that the Z-axis is pointing at the wrong direction. But the location of the pivot is already at the ground. Basically, we only need to rotate the pivot points so all of the z-axes are pointing up. Next, for the names, each of these vases already has a unique name. So we don't need to change anything. Save this to a new file. Open the interior project file again. I skipped the import process as you should already know how to do that by now. Activate the "select and place" tool. And then click and hold on the book set group object. While holding the mouse, drag it to the top of the table object. Just find the spot that you like, and then release the mouse. Let me rotate this a bit. Alright. For the other vase objects, we can use the same technique. Activate the "select and place" tool, and drag each of them to the top shelf. Just make sure your mouse cursor is on the correct surface location. You can see how easy it is to use this tool, although at first, you need to make sure that the local z-axis is pointing upward. After you are done, you can start applying existing materials to these vases. For this vase, I think I want to use the “brass foil” material. And for this vase, let's use this aluminium material. Finally, for the top vase, let's reuse the "ceramic white" material. After this, you can go back to the camera view and do a render preview. And this is what we have so far. 107. Project: The armchair UV unwrapping: In this project lesson video, we are going to add textures to the armchair 3D model. We will be using the unwrap method for the UV mapping. The model has 2 materials, wood and fabric. As for the fabric, I downloaded the texture from "ambientcg.com". If you search for "fabric". And then scroll down. You will find this fabric texture called "fabric 037". For this lesson, I'll be using the 1K version. But feel free to use the larger versions if you want to. Now, if you open the textures that I provided. You will see the original green-colored texture here. What we are going to use is this modified version that has a cyan color tone. If you are wondering how I did this. Basically, you can just open the original file in Photoshop. And then add an adjustment layer called "hue saturation". You can drag the "hue" slider to change the color. You can also play around with the "saturation" and the "lightness" values. After you are done, you can save the file to a PNG or JPG format. Alright. Let's open our interior project file. The techniques we will be discussing apply to the sofa, the armchair, and the ottoman. I will be recording the process only for the armchair. As I believe you will be able to apply the same workflow for the ottoman and the sofa. Okay. Select the armchair object. Isolate the selection. Press P and then Z. To make things easier, we need to detach the object into 3 parts. But first, let's remove this UVW map modifier. Go to the element mode. Select all of the wooden legs. And then detach them. Just leave the generic name as we're going to attach it later. Then select the seams at the cushion. Sorry, it should be this one. Detach them. Then click OK. Now, we can focus only on the fabric part. Let's isolate the selection again. Next, we need to apply the material and the texture. This is so we can see the texture preview later in the unwrapping process. Open the compact material editor. As you can see we have used all of the available slots. Let's just reuse this slot which is currently used by the loudspeaker objects. Press O to open the material map browser. And then double-click on the corona physical material. Name this material "fabric sofa". Click the color map slot. Choose corona bitmap. And then select the modified color texture. You can double-click on the slot to see a bigger preview. Okay. Let's add the texture for the "roughness". Choose Corona bitmap. And select this file. Set the gamma setting to "override". Then click open. Go back to the top material. And let's add the texture for the bump effect. Choose Corona bitmap again. And then select this "displacement" texture file. Select the "override" option. And then click open. Now the textures are done. The last thing that we need to do is adding the "sheen" effect. For the sheen "amount", let's input 0.2. And use 0.2 also for the "roughness" value. And for the color, let's make it a bit towards the cyan color. I think the sheen effect is too strong. Let's reduce this to 0.15. Okay. Now, we can assign the material to the object. To perform unwrap, we need to apply the "Unwrap UVW" modifier. Let's hide all of these green map seams. Now to define where the peel seams are. It is actually easy for real-world products like this armchair. You just need to follow all the existing seams. So, go to the edge mode. Double click here. Hold Ctrl and then double click here also. To convert or tag this edge selection to peel seams, you can click on this button. Now the edges are tagged as peel seams. Let's zoom in on the armrest area. Then find the edges where the seam is centered. Double click here. And then hold Ctrl, double-click on this edge. Oops. Let me undo this. It should be this one. Just be careful not to select the wrong edges as I did. And then select this edge at the side seam. Convert them into peel seams. For the other parts, the process is basically the same. So I'm speeding up the video. And this is what we have so far. For the center area of the cushion, we need to break the loop. Now, for this corner area, I want to show you another tool called the "point to point" tool. Basically, you just need to click on the first edge and then the last edge. 3ds Max will select the edges in between by finding the shortest path for us automatically. We can do the same with the right corner. Now that all the peel seams are created. To unwrap, we need to go to the polygon mode and then select all of the polygons we want to unwrap. And then click on this "reset peel" button. And here is the result. The UV layout is quite big compared to the UV tile size. You can pack and rescale all of them automatically by clicking on this "pack normalize" button. Now they all fit inside a single UV tile. Of course, this is too small for our texture. But let's display the color texture first. I think a single texture is only about this size. Or perhaps about this size. Let's scale the whole UV layout. Now, when scaling like this, you can hold the Ctrl key to make it uniform. And hold the Alt key to make the scaling happen at the center. You can hold both the Ctrl key and the Alt key together. Just keep doing this until the texture size is about this square area between the buttons. In the 3D viewport, you can press F2 if you want to check the texture size. I think it looks okay. Let's close the UV editor window. And then convert the object into an editable poly. And exit the isolation mode. Next, for this seam object. It should be using the same fabric material. But we're not going to unwrap this object as it is too small to be noticeable. We can just apply a UVW map modifier. And use the box projection type. For the size, let's input 20 cm for each of the axes. And it is done. Select the main object and then use the attach command. Then click on the seam object. Now they are a single object. Next, for the legs. You can find a wood material online and then unwrap the model. But, for now, I'll just use the provided wood material in the corona material library. You can open the "wood" category. At the top, you will find this "Cherry high gloss" material. Open the compact material editor. Let's reuse this slot. Click-drag the cherry wood material to this slot. Close this for now. And assign the material. You cannot see the texture because the material needs a real-world scale UV mapping. So, let's add a UVW map modifier. Set this to the box type. And turn on the real-world scale option. It is not as good as using the unwrap technique, but it is okay for our purpose. Select the main object, and choose the "attach" command. Then click on the leg object. For the material sub-object options, the default setting is already good, so just click OK. And we are done. Again, for the sofa and the ottoman, the techniques will be exactly the same. So I'm going to work on them off the record. Here is the render preview. Basically, our interior scene is complete. But after tweaking and trying different material combinations, I finally settled with this version. I just changed all the wall sections to black. And then change the curtain drop ceiling to wood. Feel free to try different combinations or even create your own version for the final rendering. 108. Project: rendering and post processing: In this project lesson video, we will render the interior scene and then do post-processing in Photoshop. For the final rendering, there are several things that we need to change. Press F10 to open the "render setup" window. In the "common" tab, change the image resolution to full HD. Then open the "scene" tab. Make sure the "denoising" option is set to "Corona high quality". Then, limit the number of passes to 70. This is so we can leave the computer unattended. After that, you can render the scene. After the rendering or even while rendering, you can experiment with the post-processing effects provided by Corona. Currently, my PC is actually still rendering the scene. It is still at pass number 11 out of 70. The first setting we are going to discuss is the "LUT". LUT stands for "Lookup table". It is a general term in computer science. To keep things simple, in computer graphics, "LUT" is a color grading preset that you can save to a file. To use a LUT in Corona, simply turn this option on. You can see how it affects the image. If you want to see more options, you can expand this section. In this pull-down list, you can see all the available presets. You can try each of these presets and see which of them that you like. Now, the presets here are actually files that are contained inside this folder. So, if you need to load your own LUT files, just click here and find the folder that you want to open. By default, it opens this folder called "LUT". So, again, the files that you see here are the same as the items in this pull-down list. Next, is the "bloom and glare" option. If you turn this on. Corona will detect and calculate all the areas in the image that emit lights. And then it will add this kind of glow or lens flare effects. And, just as before, you can expand the section if you want more control. Here you can tweak the intensity, the size, etc. I believe the best way to understand these settings is to try them yourself. Alright. Next is the "sharpening or blurring". As the name implies, this will add additional blurriness or sharpness to the rendering result. You can see the effects better if the rendering is already finished. But basically, you can increase this "sharpen amount" value to make the image look sharper. Or you can increase this "blur radius" value to make it more blurry. We're not going to add any of these post effects in our project. But at least, you know now what these features can do. I'm going to turn off the recording and let the computer render again. After the rendering is done. You can click on the "save" button. And then name the file to any name you like. For example, "render 001". For the file type, you can use a high-range format if you want to tweak the exposure again later. I'm already happy with the exposure and don't really need to tweak it again in Photoshop. So PNG is good enough for me. Click "save". And then make sure you have the "alpha channel" option turned on. Otherwise, the background will not be transparent. Then click OK. Here is the rendering result inside Photoshop already with some additional composition layers. As mentioned from the beginning, this course is not about Photoshop. It will be too long if we need to discuss Photoshop from the ground up. I'm just going to explain what each of these layers does. The bottom layer is where I put the background image. I believe I downloaded the images from "textures.com". This landscape is one image, and this tree is another image. I merge them all with a white background layer. On top of it I added a fog layer. Essentially, this is just a layer filled with a solid light cyan color. I turned down the opacity to 20%. Then I set the blending mode to "screen". Next, this is where I put the rendering result from 3ds Max. On top of it, I added the "vignette" effect. Before, this was just an empty layer with a "multiply" blending mode. Then I use the brush tool with a soft round brush tip. Use a dark color such as this dark blue color. And then increase the size of the brush. And just add some brush strokes to the corner areas to make them darker. Next, because I think the color tone is too reddish. I added a "hue saturation" adjustment layer. For this composition, for the "master" channel, I reduced the saturation to -10. For the reds, I set this to -20. For the magentas, I also set this to -20. But for the greens and the blues, I set the saturation to positive 10. So, this is before, and this is after. This is what we have so far. It looks nice, but it still has a flaw. And that is you don't see the tree reflection in this floor. We're going to fix this in the next lesson video. 109. Project: Fixing the floor reflection: In this last project lesson video, we are going to fix the floor reflection. If you look carefully at this area. Notice that we have this large tree in the background. But we don't really see it on the floor's reflection. It is like the tree does not exist at all. To fix this, let's go back to 3ds Max first. Basically, we need to render this area only without the lighting from the environment. Or at least a very weak environment lighting. So, press 8. Right-click here and then choose "edit in SME". Scroll down until you see the "output" section. Set the output amount to a very low number, such as "0.1". Then open the Corona VFB. We don't need to render the whole image as that will be a waste of time. We only want to render this area. So, zoom in. And then click on this "region" button. Click-drag to create the region area. Then click the render button. You can see that only the area defined by the region gets rendered. While the others are just black. Wait for it until it finishes all the 70 passes. So, this is the rendering result opened in Photoshop. Press Ctrl + A to select all, and then Ctrl + C to copy the image. Go back to our composition file. Select the render layer and paste the image. Next, we need to create a mask for this image. I still have the original tree image in this layer. We're going to use this to create the selection. But we need to flip it first. So, press Ctrl + T to activate the freeform tool. Then right-click and then choose "flip vertical". Move it while holding the Shift key, and just find the best position for it. Then press Enter. To create a selection from the tree layer, hold the Ctrl key and then click on the layer's thumbnail. After we have the selection, we can select this layer again. And then click on this button to create a mask from the active selection. Let's rename this layer "leaf reflection". Next, what we want to edit now is the mask image, not the original image. This is so, if anything bad happens, we still have the original image. The mask image in Photoshop works like the opacity map in 3ds Max. If we put black, it will be transparent. If we put white, it will be opaque. Let's create a rectangular selection. And then press Ctrl + Delete to fill it with the background color which is currently set to black. This will make the pixels transparent. Let's do this also for this area. Next, to make the shadow gradually disappear, we can use the brush tool. Make sure we use the soft brush tip. Set the color to black. Hold Alt and drag with the right mouse button to resize the brush. And for the brush opacity, press 3 on the keyboard to set it to 30%. And just brush out the outer area like so. You might notice that the floor is not too glossy. Basically, it should not show this kind of sharp shadows. We can fix this easily by creating a selection. And then go to the "filter" menu, "blur", and then use the "gaussian blur". You can see the shadow is now blurred. Just find the best value for this. I think 5 will be fine. And the last step, we can decrease the opacity to 50%. And we are done. Here is the final result of our project. It's been a long journey to get to this point. And I hope you can apply all that you've learned in this course to create better-looking and or more complex interior projects. Thank you for taking this course. Wassalamualaikum.