3DS MAX Modeling 1951 Mercedes Benz Bus in 3ds Max (continous)

If you have not seen the earlier parts of tutorials you can find it in the following links: Part One and Part Two. Now that our bus is really starting to take shape, we need to focus on the details. First though, let’s finish the front.

Step One

Go into edge mode and CRTL select the three edges shown here. SHIFT move them a little and then target weld the top vertex.

Figure 1.

Step Two

Straighten the new edges with the scale tool, but be careful not to move the top vertex.

Figure 2.

Step Three

SHIFT move the same edges twice more and don’t forget to target weld the vertices.

Figure 2.

Step Four Press ‘4’ on the keyboard to go into polygon mode and CRTL select the new polys. Extrude them three times then delete these polys.   Figure 4.   Step Five You should end up with something like this. Now let’s concentrate on finishing the inside of the bus.   Figure 5.   Step Six What we basically have to do is pretty much the same as before. First, hide everything except the bus. Rotate the viewport to get a good view, and CRTL select the edges next to the front door. SHIFT drag to extrude them and target weld the upper vertex.   Figure 6.   Step Seven The wheel arch can be a bit tricky. Select all the edges and extrude them twice. Now position them as close to the new edges as possible.   Figure 7.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Eight Ok, that’s the inside of the bus modeled. Before we start on the seats, let me show you how to add materials to the bus.   Figure 8.   Step Nine As we will be using Vray to render the bus, we have to first change the default scan line renderer before we can take advantage of Vray materials. Click the Render scene dialogue button and when the screen pops up scroll down until you see ‘Assign Renderer’. To the right of ‘Production’ you will find a little grey square with three dots on it. Click it and choose ‘Vray’ from the list.   Figure 9.   Step Ten Go to the modifier list and choose ‘Lathe’. Increase the number of segments to 64 and position the support correctly.   Figure 10.   Step Eleven In the front viewport, hold down SHIFT and move it to the left, making a copy of it. Position that one correctly too.   Figure 11.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Twelve Our last job before the real fun begins is to add a light to the scene. Go to the Create panel, then click the lights button and finally choose ‘Omni’ from the list of possible lights. Click in the top viewport to add the Omni light and then in the front and left viewports to position correctly.   Figure 12.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Thirteen It’s time to make our glass globe. Go create>Standard Primitives>Sphere. Drag it out in the front viewport. If you look under the Sphere options you will find ‘Hemisphere’. This is very useful when you only want part of the sphere. Change the value in the spinner and watch as the sphere in the top viewport changes.   Figure 13.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Fourteen The problem now is that the sphere is not hollow. To remedy that, hold the SHIFT key and move it a little in the top viewport. This will make a copy. Now in the front viewport scale both the Y and X axis.   Figure 14.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Fifteen Now we do a Boolean operation to make the sphere hollow. Go Create > Compound > Boolean. Select the copy and check ‘Subtract (B-A)', then click ‘Pick Operand B’ and click the other sphere. You should now have a hollow sphere like this:   Figure 15.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Sixteen Now we have to create two tubes. One for the balls to enter and one for the balls to exit. Create a cylinder and place it like in the image below. Select the top cylinder and rotate 45º along the X axis.   Figure 16.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Seventeen Now before we do the Booleans operations to make the holes in the glass sphere, we need to copy the two cylinders as we will be using these again to make the tubes for the balls to fall down. CRTl select the cylinders and hit CRTL+V to clone them. Make the that when the pop up screen appears you select ‘copy’ and not ‘instance’.   Figure 17.   Step Eighteen Hide the two selected cylinders. Now we can perform the Boolean operation. Go Create>Compound>Boolean. Select the sphere then click ‘pick Operand B’. Make sure you have ‘Subtraction A-B’ selected and click on the bottom cylinder. You will see that it disappears and a hole is in its place. Right click anywhere in the scene to deselect the sphere and repeat for the top cylinder.   Figure 18.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Nineteen Unhide the two copied cylinders. Now we are going to copy them again to hollow out the cylinders and make them into tubes. The top one first. Select it and copy it. Now right click it and choose ‘Scale’ from the menu. Change the Reference coordinate system to ‘Local’. You’ll see that the pivot point changes. Now scale the cylinder along the Z axis to make it longer. It has to go completely through the blue cylinder. Now scale it down a little bit along the Y and X axis.   Figure 19.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Twenty Perform another Boolean operation on it. You should now have a tube. Repeat the process with the bottom cylinder. Next we will edit the ends of the tubes to make them flush with the inside of the sphere.   Figure 20.   Step Twenty One Right click the bottom tube and select ‘Convert to..Editable Poly’. Change to the left viewport and zoom in on the top of the tube. Move it down so that the top of the tube is just under the sphere. Change the viewport to ‘wireframe’. If you look carefully you will see the lines in the sphere where we did the Boolean operation. In the tube sub-object panel hit ‘1’ to enter vertex mode. Now area select one of the top vertices and move it straight up so that it just touches the line in the sphere. Repeat for all the vertices.   Figure 21.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Twenty Two It’s not perfect but we won’t see this much in the final animation. Now do the same for the top tube. That done, make both tubes shorter by using the same method.   Figure 22.   Step Twenty Three Before we continue modeling the inside of the sphere, let’s give it a sample glass material. Press ‘M’ on the keyboard to open up the material editor. In the first free slot, change the diffuse color to black. Then lower the Opacity to around 24. Scroll down until you see maps. Click the empty grey rectangle next to Opacity and from the new screen that pops up choose ‘Falloff’. Make the sure the sphere and tubes are selected and click the ‘Assign material to selection’ button.   Figure 23.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Twenty Four Make a new cylinder in the front viewport. It doesn’t need to be too big, but make sure it is centered.   Figure 24.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Twenty Five Remember how you made the supports? Same thing here. Create a rectangle shape, modify one end so that it’s curved, and add a lathe modifier.   Figure 25.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Twenty Six Make another new cylinder in the left viewport. Make sure it doesn’t touch the inside of the sphere and align it to the center bar.   Figure 26.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Twenty Seven In the top viewport go Create>Shape>Line. Here we are going to make a piece of the machine that hits the balls and keeps them moving.   Figure 27.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Twenty Eight In the top viewport go Create>Shape>Line. Here we are going to make a piece of the machine that hits the balls and keeps them moving.   Figure 28.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Twenty Nine When you are happy with the new shape (let’s call it a bat), convert it to an editable poly and click the ‘Attach’ button. Click the bar to connect them. Now we need to reposition the pivot point, as we are going to make two more copies of this object and they have to be exactly in the correct place. Click the ‘Hierarchy’ panel and make sure you have the ‘Affect Pivot Only’ button selected. Click ‘Center to Object’ then click the object we need from a rectangle. You can see here that the object is still selected. Now the pivot is placed correctly we can copy the bat by SHIFT rotating it.   Figure 29.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Thirty In the front viewport, SHIFT and rotate the arm and bat 110º. When the Clone Options screen appears, change the number of copies to 2.   Figure 30.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Thirty One Click the ‘Attach’ button again and click all the pieces.   Figure 31.   Step Thirty Two All that is left now is to make the balls. Very simple, this one. Unhide everything and create a sphere in the front viewport. Make sure it is positioned correctly then SHIFT move up and make about 8 copies. Just make sure the balls aren’t touching either the tube or themselves.   Figure 32.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Thirty Three Right, well that’s all the modeling done. Now we need to set up the scene for Reactor. Basically what we are going to do is as follows. The arms will rotate using traditional key framing animation. The balls will be able to fall freely, get hit by the arms, and hopefully one will fall into the hole at the bottom. Everything else in the scene will not move. Go reactor > Create Object > Rigid Body collection. Click anywhere in the scene to place it. It doesn’t matter where as this will not be seen in the final animation. In the panel on the right click the ‘Add’ button. When the pop up screen appears, select everything. Now all the objects in the scene are part of the collection.   Figure 33.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Thirty Four Let’s focus now on the arms. Right click the front viewport to activate it. Zoom out until you see all the arms. Now, before we can animate we need to change the length of the total animation sequence. To do this, click the button in the lower right hand corner (circled red). A new screen pops up with lots of options. We just need to change two. First, change the time display to ‘minutes, seconds, ticks. Then in the end time box, type 1. So we are going for a total of a one minute animation.   Figure 34.   Step Thirty Five Now to animate. This part is really easy. Right click the arms and choose ‘Rotate’. Next, make sure the ‘Angle Snap Toggle’ is turned on. Click the Auto Key button to turn on the animation, and drag the slider to the end of the animation sequence. Rotate the arms 1,440º. This gives it four complete rotations in the one minute animation.   Figure 35.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Thirty Six In order for Reactor to know this animation shouldn’t be part of the reactor process, we need to tell it. To do this, go to Utilities > Reactor > Properties. Make sure the arm is still selected and check the ‘Unyielding’ box.   Figure 36.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Thirty Seven Ok, let’s see what it looks like in the preview window. In the Utilities panel scroll down to reactor>Preview & Animation. Click the ‘Preview in Window’ button and we get a new screen popping up. This doesn’t show textures so we can’t see inside the globe. Click Display > Wireframe, then press ‘P’ to play. The arms rotate as they should, but there is a problem. The balls aren’t falling down. This is due to the Simulation Geometry. In reactor, every object needs to be surrounded by an invisible box to calculate the collisions. The problem here is that this bounding box in the globe is blocking the holes in the tubes. Also, the balls have the same problem. We could give the balls a ‘Concave Mesh’ like the globe, but that would increase performance dramatically, and might even crash Max.   Figure 37.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Thirty Eight Select the globe and go into Vertex sub object mode. Now select all the vertices in the top tube. Carefully scale them so the tube gets wider. Now the balls should be able to fall freely into the lottery machine.   Figure 38.  Click here to view larger image.   Step Thirty Nine Run the preview again and the balls fall perfectly into the globe.   Figure 39.  Click here to view larger image.