Month: January 2007

A post from alt.3d.studio where a user wanted to know about soft selections in 3ds Max 8

I think you said you have the 3ds max bible? Take a look at page 314
for a step-by-step tutorial as good as any I’d write. While that
tutorial is for a plane, you can apply a soft modifier to just about
anything that a normal modifier can be applied to.
For a coat hook as you described, it might actually be a lot
faster/easier to do it with a spline. But as your question was about
soft selection… With soft selection you’d be able to make the turns,
etc. but with “softer” turns, like a real hook _might_ have.
OK, I can’t resist a small tut:
1. In any window, make a cylinder.
2. Go to modify, and make it .1″ radius, and 3′ length.
3. Make Height Segments 10.
4. The Sides don’t matter that much, as long as they are over 8 or so.
This depends on how closely it will be inspected, of course.
5. Right click and convert to editable mesh/poly.
6. Go to vertex selection mode.
7. Under Soft Selection, select “Use Soft Selection”.
8. Change Falloff to 1’6″ (1/2 the length).
9. Select a vertex on one of the ends. Notice how the colors of the
vertices change from red (most affected) to blue (least affected).
10. Move the vertex around with move and rotate controls to see the
effects.
11. Select different points along the cylinder to see how they are
affected as well.
Some things are easier with the “Bend” and/or “Twist” modifiers. Try making a box primitive and messing with it using the “Bend” modifier.

Note: By default there are just a few segments to the box. In order to see the
bending easily, add some segments to some of the dimensions to see the
effects easier.

All this is is the intersection of 2 half pipes (1/2 a cylinder)
So simply:
1. Make a cylinder of like 5′ radius and 15′ length.
2. Clone a copy by rotating 90 degrees. To make things easy, re-align
the pivot point to the center of the object using the hierarchy tab,
then rotate.
3. Join the 2 together with boolean (create -> compound -> …). Use
Union…
4. Copy this object, and move it to the side. You’ll need it later.
5. Apply the Slice modifier to chop off the bottom 1/2.
6. This is where there are a couple ways to do this, but I’d suggest
the lazy way of converting the object into an editable mesh/poly and
removing the end caps now before using the shell modifier. Doing this
later might not allow the boolean subtraction to be smooth.
7. Now use the handy-dandy “Shell” modifier, and add outer shell, with
no inner shell. You’ll see why in a sec…
8. Create another boolean object from the object you’re working on by
subtracting that object you set aside in step 4 from the one you just
applied the shell modifier to. Obviously place the “to be subtracted”
operand B right under the “shelled” one. Use the “Align” tool on the
toolbar for more precise results.
9. Add a few pillars, and thats it.