Low Poly in 3DS Max 7

[Dusty]

I was wondering if anyone could post some tips with doing low-poly in 3DSMax 7? I'd also appreciate links to sites that have written tutorials for it... I'm having a hard time finding some...

And also some questions:

Right now I'm trying it out, and I'm very new to 3D modelling, but I've managed to make a NES and texture it. But I'm having a problem with the rear and front faces. Because the bottom of the NES comes inward, the front and rear polygon textures are being distorted:

See how the bottom of it starts get all distorted? The stuff on the bottom needs to be rendered straight.


Also, how can I make a gif of my model rotating?


And is there a way I can change my view(or render) to Orthographic? I'm also interested in assigning degree-specific views(say I want to view my model at a 45degree angle).

[Squiggly_P]

I don't know much about 3DS MAX (I use Blender), so I can't give you specific instructions, but I can possibly help you:

The texture issue is most likely one of two things:  it's either the way the UV is laid out or a perspective glitch.  The latter seems like an odd problem for a $3000 professional application to have, but the way the distortion is happening, it really looks like a perspective glitch.  It might just be the way the texture is mapped to that plane, tho (is the model unwrapped or did you texture it some other way?).  Seeing the wireframe and layout would be useful in solving that problem.

I can't really answer your other questions, tho I suspect Google would be pretty useful to find solutions to most of these.

[ptoing]

The problem is triangulation. All user level graphics cards usually handle tris and not quads or ngons.

I suspect that you have mapped that whole front to a rectangular bit of texture, right?



So let's say the 2nd one is how your polygon actually looks (shapewise) and the first one is how you have it on the UV, then you would expect it to look like the 2nd one, but it looks like the 3rd one. I did not get this for quite some time, but if you look at an image like that you can see where the diagonal goes and how it affects the texture.

There are 3 things you can do afaik.

1) Have the shape on the UV correspond closer to that of the actual polygon.When you UV Unwrap it select the 2 front polygons and then click planar and then reset. This makes sure that the shape is retained.

2) Add more polygons.

3) Sometimes it helps to flip the edge in the middle of the quad, tho it escapes me where you can do that in Max atm. I guess it should be possible somewhere in the UV Unwrap window or on rightclick in Edge mode.

[Kazuya Mochu]

Have the shape on the UV correspond closer to that of the actual polygon

this is definetly the best way to go.

[Dusty]

Thanks for the help, and that makes a lot of sense Ptoing, and very useful.
What I did was start out with a cube and textured it. Then I figured I should add the slants on the bottom. After I did that is when it got all distorted.

So how would I correspond the UV shape to the shape of the polygon?
Nevermind, I figured it out(I think). I selected the face of the rear/front and went to modifiers > uv coordinates > unwrap UVW. Then I click edit from the right menu's rollout, and then in the new window > mapping unfold.



Also, for future reference since this seems very useful, how do I add more polygons?

[Howard Day]

You can add more polygons to the object but using the "Cut" tool in Editable Poly. You can also use the slice modifier to add larger, precisely-oriented straight line cuts to the surface. By default it will affect the whole object, but if you have faces selected, then apply it to the object, it will affect only those faces. Kind of handy.

[ndchristie]

the best way i know to flip the edge is just to do it manually by breaking the face off and moving the vertices.  there may be a more effective way but i find that this is quick and efficient.

nevermind i thought we were talking about something entirely different...

[snader]

sort of offtopic, but the easiest way i can think of is to use 'edit triangulations' in the polygon mode

[Dusty]

I tried that... it didn't seem to have any effect.

[ndchristie]

there's also a "turn" tool in Edge mode that ptoing showed me.

as for adding polygons, you can use the cut too for quick additions, or insert vertices in edge mode and connect them by hand.