Now that the basics of modeling have been covered, it’s time to discuss some of the truly powerful modeling tools for architectural visualizations. Within the Geometry tab of the Createpanel is a drop-down list (discussed in Chapter 1) that provides access to numerous object-creation tools for every different industry. Many of these groups of tools provide little or no help to visualizations, however, as they are geared more toward other industries. In fact, of the 11 groups listed, only 3 are discussed in this book. The first group, Standard Primitives, is obviously a must for all 3ds Max users. Another group, Particle Systems, is a must for anyone needing to show flowing water, snow, or other types of systems comprised of small particles. The third group of tools covered in this book, Compound Objects, provides four critical modeling tools for the visualization industry.
Compound objects, as the name implies, are object types created from two or more objects. Compound objects can be created from two splines, two primitives, or any number of object types. What makes compound objects so critical is that they each perform at least one specific task far better and faster than any other tool in 3ds Max. As I say throughout this book, there are usually numerous means to the same end. Sometimes, however, there is clearly a fastest means, and the compound objects discussed in this chapter constitute four such examples.
Creating Lofts
If somebody were to ask me what the most powerful and versatile fea- ture of 3ds Max is for creating architectural visualizations, I would say without hesitation: the Loft feature. Whether you’re creating walls, street curbs, rain gutters, or window sills, no other feature in 3ds Max can cre- ate the architectural features you will need as quickly and with as much flexibility as lofts can. In 3ds Max, there are so many ways to do the same thing, but when it comes to lofts, there’s clearly a fastest way.
The term “loft” has many definitions, but the one that applies most closely here is “to propel into space.” The Loft feature in 3ds Max requires two splines or shapes: one that defines a path, and one that defines the shape that gets “propelled into space” along the path.
To access the Loft command, select a shape or spline and click Create ➤ Geometry ➤ Compound Objects ➤ Loft. When you do, five rollouts appear, as shown in Figure 4-1. The remainder of this section explores the contents of these rollouts.
The Creation Method rollout
This rollout simply gives you the option of lofting a shape along a path, with the loft being created at the shape’s location or the path’s location.
Personally, I cannot think of a single architectural application for which the Get Path creation method would be more beneficial. Figure 4-2 shows the difference between the two options. The image on the left shows two rectangles, the larger representing the wall outline of a build- ing and the smaller representing a typical wall section. The middle image shows a loft created at the path location, and the right image shows a loft created at the shape location. The difference should be clear.
Figure 4-2. Creating lofts with Get Path (center) and Get Shape (right)
Lofts in visualizations should be created using the Get Shapeoption, in which the user creates the paths in the locations where the lofts will exist, and then creates the shapes off to the side in some arbitrary location. To create a loft using this method, select a single path (a shape or spline that rep- resents the location of the loft), click Get Shape, and then select the shape. The path must be a continuous, unbroken shape or spline for the Get Shapeoption to be selectable.
Figure 4-1. The Loft feature
The other option available in the Creation Methodrollout allows the user to move or copy the shape or path during creation or keep the default method of instance. The instance method allows you to update the loft by updating either the path or shape after creation. The Moveand Copymethods do not offer this flexibility of modification, and I therefore recommend always leaving the Instance option selected. As long as the object remains a loft, a direct link is maintained with the path and pro- file. This aspect of lofts is illustrated in a crude but easy-to-understand example in Figure 4-3, which depicts a loft used to represent the walls and fascia of a simple structure.
The top-left image in Figure 4-3 shows a path representing the perimeter walls of the structure and a small shape representing the wall section. The top-middle image shows the loft created from the two.
In the top-right image, you can see that the height of the loft is increased, which was done by simply moving individual vertices of the shape. The loft changes its structure accordingly. In the bottom-left image, two vertices of the path are moved, and again the loft changes accordingly, as shown in the bottom-right image. This link that the loft maintains with the shape and path makes the loft a power- ful and versatile tool.
Figure 4-3. The power of instanced lofts
This exercise demonstrates how to create a simple loft that represents the walls of a building using two shapes to represent a loft path and a loft shape.
1. Reset 3ds Max.
2. Change the units to US Standard.
3. In the Top view, create a rectangle with a length and width of 30'. This shape will represent the Creating a loft
4. In the Top view, create a second rectangle, with a length of 10' and a width of 8". This shape will represent the loft shape.
5. Select the smaller rectangle (representing the loft shape) and click the Hierarchytab.
6. Click Affect Pivot Only.
7. Click the Alignicon, and in the Top view, click the smaller rectangle. The Align Selectiondialog box appears.
8. Under Current Object, select Pivot Point, and under Target Object, select Minimum, as shown in the following screenshot. Select the Xand Ypositions, and deselect the Zposition. Click OKto end the command. This command moves the pivot point to one of the bottom corners of the shape.
9. Select the large rectangle representing the loft path.
10. In the Command panel, click Create ➤ Geometry ➤ Compound Objects ➤Loft.
11. Click Get Shape. The loft will be created, as shown in the following illustration:
12. Select the small rectangle (representing the loft shape) and add the Edit Splinemodifier.
13. Enter Vertex sub-object mode, and highlight the top two vertices of the loft shape.
14. In the Top view, move the selected vertices 2' upward along the y axis. The loft representing the walls of a building should increase in height by the same 2'.
The Surface Parameters rollout
The next rollout, Surface Parameters(see Figure 4-4), contains several useful features that help the loft stand out as one of the most versatile and powerful modeling tools. Fortunately, most lofts will not require these settings to be adjusted. Smoothing Length and Smoothing Width should be left
enabled because they remove any shading imperfections, which can otherwise be quite noticeable.
Apply Mappingallows you to apply materials to a loft in a way no other tool can: along the length of a loft. If you want the image of tree bark, for example, to be repeated along the branch of a tree that twists and turns, this option makes that possible with minimal distortion to the map. Otherwise, you are left to create mapping with tools that would make this much more difficult and probably lead to significant distortion of the map. The Length Repeatand Width Repeatparameters control how often the maps are tiled in their respective directions.
Under the Materialssection is an option you may find useful: Generate Material IDs. This option applies material IDs to a loft in the same way they’re assigned to the loft’s shape. For example, in Figure 4-4, a multi/sub-object material composed of two sub-materials is applied to the wall loft.
Notice the bottom of the wall has a brick material applied, and the top is painted a light tan color. This is because the bottom segment of the shape is assigned a sub-material ID of 1(brick) and the top seg- ment of the shape is assigned a sub-material ID of 2(paint); and those two materials are occupying the material 1 and material 2 slots within the multi-object material defined in the Material Editor.
Figure 4-4. Generating material IDs for lofts
Once you select Use Shape IDsand apply a multi/sub-object material to the loft, the loft uses the material IDs of the shape to determine which parts of the loft get which sub-material. As a matter of practice, I do not use this feature much because there are usually better ways to apply materials to lofts, which will be discussed in Chapter 6. Nonetheless, it is a feature that many veteran users like and is worth some experimentation.
The Outputsection gives you the option to create the loft as a patch or a mesh. The default Mesh option should be kept because meshes allow for better editing, and your lofts will eventually be collapsed to a mesh anyway.
The Path Parameters rollout
The next rollout, Path Parameters(see Figure 4-5), allows you to apply multiple shapes along the same path. You can specify where in the path each shape begins its effect on the loft in one of three ways:
percentage down the length of the path, distance down the length of the path, and the path steps (i.e., vertices) down the length, starting with vertex 1.
The top-left image in Figure 4-6 shows a loft created with the circle shape, and the top-middle image shows the same loft modified by adding a star shape at 100% down the length of the path (i.e., the other end of the loft). To do this, type 100in the Pathfield (as shown in the top-right image of Figure 4-6), click Get Shapeagain, and pick the star shape. Notice that 3ds Max transitions the loft from the circle shape to the star shape. The bottom-left image shows the same loft with the star shape being applied 50% down the length of the path.
Figure 4-6. Lofting with multiple shapes, using percentage values
Another way to loft multiple shapes along the same path is using the loft’s steps to determine the location of each shape’s effect on the loft. The top-left image in Figure 4-7 shows the same loft in the previous example with two steps added along the loft (as shown in the Path Stepsfield of the top- right image). The bottom-left image shows the result of checking Path Steps (bottom-right image), entering 1into the Pathfield, reexecuting the Get Shape command for step 1, and repeating this process for steps 2 and 3. In short, steps 0 and 3 (the ends of the loft) get the circular shape, while steps 1 and 2 (the middle of the loft) get the star shape.
Figure 4-5. The Path Parameters rollout
Figure 4-7. Lofting with multiple shapes using Path Steps
The final way to loft multiple shapes along the same loft is by using a specific distance to determine the location of each shape’s effect on the loft. The loft in the preceding example is exactly 150 units long, and therefore, with the Distanceoption enabled, you can achieve the same result by reapplying the star shape to the loft at a distance of 50 and 100. In short, the distances of 0 and 150 units (the ends of the loft) get the circular shape, while the distances of 50 and 100 (the middle of the loft) get the star shape. The images in Figure 4-8 show the four distances for which the two shapes must be applied.
Figure 4-8. Lofting with multiple shapes using Distance values
The Skin Parameters rollout
The next rollout, Skin Parameters(see Figure 4-9), begins with options to cap the start and end of the loft. A cap simply closes or fills in the ends of the loft with faces so that the loft doesn’t appear hollow. The Cap Startand Cap Endoptions are selected by default, along with the Morphoption, and should not be changed unless there is a specific reason to justify doing oth- erwise. I have never found such a reason.
Under the Optionssection is the most critical portion of the loft rollouts, which was discussed briefly in the previous example. The Shape Steps parameter lets you increase or decrease the number of additional vertices added between the original vertices that make up the shape. The Path Steps parameter allows you to do the same thing for the path. Both have a default of 5, but they will almost always need to be based on the situation.
Figure 4-10 shows an example of modifying both the shape steps and path steps. The image on the left shows a small circle, which represents the shape, lofted along a larger circle that represents the path. The loft is cre- ated using all of the default values for each rollout, to include five path and shape steps. Notice in the middle image what happens when only Shape
Stepsis reduced to 0, thus retaining only the original four vertices to define the look of the shape. The result is a loft with a diamond-shaped cross-section. In the image on the right, Shape Stepsis put back to its default value of 5, and this time Path Stepsis reduced to 0, leaving only the original four vertices to define the path. The result is a diamond-shaped path with a circular cross-section.
Figure 4-10. Using Shape Steps and Path Steps
The Optimize Shapesand Optimize Path options remove any unnecessary vertices in the shape or path, such as multiple vertices in a straight section of the shape. The Adaptive Path Stepsoption auto- matically places vertices in the location necessary to produce a smooth look to all curved sections of the shape. Figure 4-11 shows one example of these options, in which a loft representing a street curb is lofted with and without the Optimize Pathoption enabled. Notice that when enabled (as in the left image), all unnecessary steps are removed from the straight segments of the path.
Figure 4-9. The Skin Parameters rollout
Figure 4-11. The Optimize Path option enabled (left) and disabled (right)
There are several other options in this rollout, but the only others you will likely have to modify within architectural projects are the Banking and Flip Normals options. I highly recommend turning off Banking unless you specifically need it to correctly model something like a roller coaster, for which you want the shape to be banked at curves in the path. Leaving Bankingchecked often causes slight but often noticeable imperfections in the modeling process where corners exist in the path.
Additionally, you may encounter rare occasions when your loft appears to be inside out. This occurs when, for whatever reason, the program doesn’t know which way the loft should be viewed. When this happens, try selecting the Flip Normalsoption to correct the problem.
Additionally, you may find it visually helpful to disable the Transform Degradeoption so that you can see changes to the loft while you are applying transforms. Otherwise, you have to finish applying the transform before you get to see what the result is.
The last section within the Skin Parametersrollout, Display, needs no modification.
This exercise demonstrates how to modify the shape steps and path steps of a loft to provide an ade- quate number of vertices for smooth curves.
1. Reset 3ds Max.
2. Change the units to US Standard.
3. In the Top view, create a circle with a radius of 10', and a second circle with a radius of 2'.
4. Select the larger circle.
5. In the Command panel, click Create ➤Geometry ➤Compound Objects ➤Loft ➤Get Shape.
6. Click the smaller circle. The loft is created with default settings, as shown in the left image in the following illustration.
7. In the Command panel, click the Modifytab.
Modifying the shape steps and path steps of a loft
8. Open the Skin Parametersrollout and change Path Stepsto 0. The loft becomes diamond- shaped because there are no longer any path steps, as shown in the middle image.
9. Change Path Stepsback to its default value of 5, and then change Shape Stepsto 0. The loft is now circular again but has a diamond-shaped cross-section, as shown in the right image.
The Deformations rollout
The last rollout for lofts, Deformations, appears only within the Modify panel. It contains some powerful tools, but their practicality is very limited in architectural visualizations. I do not use them at all because I simply never have the need to deform lofts in these ways. In other fields of work, however, these tools can be invaluable. I will not cover deformations in this book.
Creating Booleans
The Boolean feature in 3ds Max is another immensely powerful tool in the creation of architectural visualizations, and in my opinion, second only to the Loft feature in terms of usefulness. A Boolean is an object created from the combination of two separate objects. How the objects combine to form a Boolean depends on the type of Boolean operation performed. Some examples include adding the geometry of one object to another, or using one object’s volume to subtract from another object’s volume. With Booleans, you can easily create window and door openings within a wall;
you can create streets, parking symbols, and sidewalks out of a terrain sur- face; you can cut ornate designs out of simple primitives; and much more.
One of the best things about Booleans is how simple they are to create.
Now we’ll focus on the procedures used to create each of the different types of Booleans.
To access the Boolean feature (shown in Figure 4-12), select Create ➤ Compound Objects ➤Boolean. Each type of Boolean operation requires two objects; the first object is operand A and the second object is operand B. There are four rollouts that make up the Boolean feature. The first, Name and Color, requires no explanation, and the last rollout, Display/Update, is of little importance, and a rollout I have never found necessary. With the Pick Booleanrollout, the only feature you will probably ever use is the Pick Operandbutton, which actually executes the Boolean command. The point is, the Boolean feature is a very simple feature with only a few important options.
Figure 4-12. The Boolean feature
Union
The Unionoperation (Figure 4-13) combines two objects into one, regardless of whether they overlap.
To perform a union, select an object (A), select Boolean ➤Union, and then select a second object (B), which you’ll add to A. Which object is A and which is B is irrelevant.
Figure 4-13. An example of a union
Subtraction
The Subtractionoperation (see Figure 4-14) subtracts one object’s volume from another. To perform the operation, select the object that you want to subtract from (A), and then select the second object whose volume you want subtract from the first (B). The result is that object B’s volume is subtracted from object A. With the Subtractionoperation, you have the option of subtracting B from A (default) or A from B. It makes no difference which method you use as long as you select the objects in the order required to achieve the result you need. This is one of countless examples in 3ds Max where there are more ways than one to accomplish a task.
Figure 4-14. An example of a subtraction