CAP 201a - Computer Animation I

Lesson 9 - Modeling Lab

Objectives:

This lesson discusses using 3DS Max to create a sample project. Objectives important to this lesson:

1. Creating an environment
2. Using modifiers
3. Building geometric objects
4. Naming objects
5. Merging objects into a scene

Concepts:

The lesson begins by jumping into an exercise about creating an underwater scene. As you will note from the objectives above, you will be reviewing several concepts we have already seen.

Exercise Notes and Questions

Work through the exercises and turn in your answers to all questions below as part of the homework for this assignment.

Exercise 1: This exercise starts with a basic scene in which you add a plane. In step 5, the instructions are incomplete about the size of the plane.
Question 1: Why is the initial size of the plane unimportant?
Question 2: Step 7 tells you to choose the Quick Align tool from the Align flyout. How can you recognize which tool this is?
Question 3: In step 18, you are told to turn on Use Soft Selection. What is this for?

Exercise 2: Exercise 2 has you create a collection of rocks for the ocean floor. You start with a series of instances of a single rock.
Question 4: In step 16, how do you make a rock different from all the other instances?
Question 5: In step 18, you make a selection set for all the rocks. How do you select all the rocks without having to click each one?

Exercise 3: This exercise introduces a torus and Free Form Deformation (FFD). Note: there is an error in the text regarding the slice parameter for the torus. You should set the slice to run from 90 to 270 not 90 to 70.
Question 6: What part of the torus does Radius 1 describe? What part does Radius 2 describe?
Question 7: What parameters are used with the Noise modifier to customize the new rock?

Exercise 4: This exercise reviews the merge command, adding several lights from a ready made file. You are told to set several parameters for the lighting of the scene.