Turning a line into a bottle

[Razorwing]

Intro

This tutorial assumes you're familiar with the user interface of 3D Studio Max and knows where the normal buttons are and what they do. If you don't, you should first check out the free video tutorials on simplymax.com - there's no easier way to learn than to watch a person model something in real-time and hear their explanations as they go along.

The purpose is to demonstrate the magical power of the "Hinge from Edge" tool, which lets you take a shape and turn it into a full, 3-dimensional object. There's no guarantee that the procedures described in the tutorial is the absolutely best way to go about things; it's just the best way known to me. Nor can I guarantee that the glass effect can be ported to Oblivion as I don't fully know what techniques it supports.

Please start off by downloading the attached archive, which contains the tutorial max scenes and textures we'll be working with. The seven max scenes were saved during different stages of the process, so if you get stuck somewhere you can open the next scene and see how I did, which might get you through. Let me know if you have any questions (not related to the user interface or material editor, which is outside the scope of the tutorial) and I'll do my best to edit the tutorial with the answer.

Let's get started!

Fig.1: Aah, the familiar sight of having booted up 3D Studio Max v8.0. To get it out of the way right now, yep I'm downloading a file, browsing ESF, and switch over to Paintshop Pro now and then to paste in the screen caps I took from 3D Studio Max as I went along. Right then, let's get started.

Fig.2: Maximize any of the viewports and click T to get a top-down view.

Fig.3: Hit the 'Create' panel, Shapes, then Line. Left-click once to start the line, then left-click once for every time you want to change direction of the shape. As you can see from my line, accuracy doesn't really matter - you'll never be totally accurate anyway, and it's much faster to correct the vertices afterwards than trying to draw a perfect shape in one go.

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Fig.4: Now it's time to align the vertices. Depending upon the shape you created, aligning them might not be necessary, but for this model I want a certain level of symmetry. I chose the vertice in the bottom right corner as a starting point. If you click on it (in the first tutorial .max scene) and activate the Move tool (four-arrowed icon near the top of the screen) you'll see three numbers pop up near the bottom of the screen. The coordinates are X 55,025 and Y -51,005. Now click on the vertice in the top right corner and give it the same exact X coordinate, then click the two remaining vertices on the bottom and give them the same Y coordinate as the reference vertice. Don't activate both vertices at the same time when adjusting coordinates, do them one at a time. If you did it correctly the shape is now razorsharp on its right and bottom side.

As you can see I also did some other adjustments to the vertices which I felt were appropriate, like creating more symmetry in the two bulbs to the bottom left. I chose to not make them 100% symmetrical, as that would give an unnaturally perfect result, like if it was made in a factory; a certain level of unevenness adds to the handmade impression I wanted. It's certainly possible to get perfect symmetry, you just need to use a calculator a lot.

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Fig.5: Select the shape and right-click it to bring up the menu. Choose "Convert to: -> Convert to Editable Poly". This turns your shape into a true 3d object.

Fig.6: In the "Editable Poly" modifier, select Polygon. Then left-click on the one polygon your 3d object consists of, and it'll turn red to indicate it's selected.

Fig.7-8: With "Editable Poly-Polygon" still selected, scroll down the list of tools until you find the one called "Hinge From Edge". Click the box to the right of it, and you'll get a little pop-up window with options. Set the Angle to 360 and the Segments to 24. Then click the Pick Hinge button, and select the right edge of your object (the vertical line on the right side of the red poly). Click OK, and the shape has become a bottle. Magical, isn't it?

STEP 1-8 COVERED IN TUTORIAL SCENE 3

Fig.9: As you'll notice if you open up tutorial scene 3, the polygon you hinged is still active and showing up as red, which is should be right after a hinge (unless you deselect it manually). Hit the delete button to get rid of it, as seen in Fig.9.

Fig.10: Click the Vertex option under the Editable Poly modifier, and select all the vertices in the model. Make sure you don't have the "Ignore Backfacing" checkbox ticked when doing that. Then scroll down the list of options until you find the Weld button. Click the box to the right of it, make sure the Weld Threshold is at the default 0,1 and then click Ok. This welds together unnecessary vertices, which is often good for optimization, but in this case it's done to avoid problems stemming from the hinge.

Fig.11: Since the shape was drawn in Top-down mode, the bottle is lying on its side. This can make it confusing to arc around, and besides, when a modder drops the bottle into the Construction Set you don't want him to have to rotate it every time. Select the whole object, then click the "Select and Rotate" button. Enter 90 as the X value and it'll snap around.

Fig.12-13: In the Hierarchy panel, click the button "Affect Pivot Only" and then click "Center to Object". The pivot point is the point in space which the object swings around. If a modder puts the bottle on a table, and the pivot point is centered to the object, it will stay in the same place when he rotates it. If it isn't centered, it will move, which is very annoying.

Fig.14-15: Click the Move button. Notice how the three coordinate boxes fills up with numbers, just as when you moved vertices? Except this time we'll move the whole object. Just enter 0 in the three boxes and it will be centered in the imaginary universe. Again, this is an important step for modders, because if an object isn't centered in space it won't end up where a modder drops it. If it's really out of whack the bottle could end up in another room. Besides that, having it centered will make some other operations easier later on.

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Fig.16: Zoom in on the top of the bottle and select these vertices. You can left-click and hold to draw out a selection rectangle to get them all at once, just make sure the "Ignore Backfacing" checkbox is ticked. We don't want to affect vertices behind these ones, unlike when we wanted to select each and every vertice of the model above.

Fig.17: Click the box to the right of the "Weld" button again. This time enter the value 50. (Note that the vertice count reported in the pop-up window in Fig.17 hasn't calculated yet).

Fig.18: Now we've welded all these vertices into one, and gotten rid of a bunch of unnecessary polys.

Fig.19: Hit the T button to get a top-down view, and draw out a line shape that looks like this. Convert it to an editable poly, and don't forget to align the vertices, particularly on the right side.

Fig.20: Hinge from the right edge, just as before. I chose 14 segments this time. Delete the poly inside the object.

Fig.21: Again, select all vertices and weld them with a 0,1 threshold to get rid of unnecessary vertices.

Fig.22: Rotate it 90 degrees along the X axis.

Fig.23: Click the Move button and enter 0 for the X and Y axis to get it centered to the bottle.

Fig.24: Drag it up along the Z axis to an appropriate place. I made the narrow part too long, so I moved up the bottom vertice row a bit.

Fig.25-26: In the Editable Poly modifier, select Edge. Control + left-click all the horisontal edges as shown here.

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Fig.27: Click the Chamfer button and move your cursor above one of the red-colored edges. Notice how the cursor turns into a rectange-with-two-arrows to indicate you are where you should be. Left-click and hold, and drag it until you get a smooth edge.

Fig.28: I raised the middle vertice on the top a bit along the Z axis.

Fig.29-30: Zoom out and select both meshes, then add a "MeshSmooth" modifier. I chose 0,6 as the value; you can go higher or lower depending on how much room you have for polygon density. If you don't plan to use your model in a game, you should go for 1,0 and use as many iterations as you want, but believe me when I say a model can quickly become useless for gaming purposes you smooth it too much.

Fig.31: Select the bottle and add a "UVW Mapping" modifier, Box map option.

Fig.32-33: Create a Box or a Plane and size it up a bit. Give it a "UVW Mapping" modifier and slap a texture on it. It'll only be used for rendering purposes.

Fig.34: Create the glass material in the material editor. This step is rather complex to describe, so it would probably be better if you checked out the setup of it (and that of any other texture in this tut) in the tutorial scenes instead. But I'd like to mention that I used one of Max's own bump-maps for the glass, which is why it isn't included in the archive. I'm sure you can find it, or another one, in the "maps" folder in your 3D Studio Max v8.0 install dir, or on an internet site such as NOCTUA Graphics.

Fig.35: Here's a render of the scene as it is in the start of tutorial scene 6.

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Fig.36-38: Select the cork, collapse it to an editable poly, and give it a box-type "UVW Mapping" modifier.

Fig.39: Set up and apply the cork material.

Fig.40: We don't need the box right now. Left-click to select it, then right-click and in the menu, choose "Hide Selection". Next time you want to see it, right-click again and choose "Unhide All".

Fig.41: Select the bottle, then in the Edit menu (located almost in the top left corner of the program window) choose "Clone". The object type should be "Copy". Click ok. Now drag the copy along the Y axis until it's free from the first one.

Fig.42: Click the "select and uniform scale" button and size it to 85%-90% of the original size, depending on how thick you want the glass bottle to be.

Fig.43: Select and delete these vertices.

Fig.44-45: Zoom in on the hole you caused and click the Border option. Select the rim around the hole.

Fig.46: Under the "Edit Borders" rollout, click the button "Cap" and the program will create a new poly to cover the hole.

Fig.47: Give the copy a cylindrical UVW map as in the screenshot, then set up and apply the beer texture.

Fig.48: Select the top poly. Under "Edit Geometry", click the Detach button and you've got yourself two meshes instead of one. Doing that makes mapping a whole lot easier.

Fig.49: Set up and apply the foam texture to the detached 1-poly mesh.

Fig.50: Select both the beer and foam. In the "Group" drop-down list, select Group and give it a suiting name. Now you can move the two meshes as one, without the risk of separating them. If you want to work with them independantly again, just select Ungroup from the same drop-down list.

Fig.51-52: Give the group an Y coordinate of 0 and it'll center inside the glass bottle.

Fig.53: Right-click in the main window and choose "Unhide All" to get the box back.

Fig.54: Here's a render of it.

Fig.55: For added fancyness you can create a light (in this case an Omni light). In the Modify panel for the Light object, make sure to tick the box "On" under Shadows, otherwise you probably won't see them in your render.

STEP 1-55 COVERED IN TUTORIAL SCENE 7

Thankyou for your time.

[xchaosdragon666x]

Ty for doing these tutorials razorwind

OffTopic:
the picture on step 4 reminds of the school honeycomb things where you open it and it makes a shape like a apple or what not lol

[xchaosdragon666x]

This is a verry professional Made Tutorial
Would you mind if turn it into a PDF for you to upload Here
COnsidering i did so I can burn to the back up cd with max 8.

And on The PDF the whole guide is intact I just removed the sites stuff like post buttons and what not

But at the top I wrote you were the author along with a link to silgrad.com

And if not. I will not post it ill just keep for personal use.

Edit:
I Sent to your msn email address

[rzrgenesys187]

i really want to dl 3d studio max now

[Razorwing]

xchaosdragon666x:
Thanks, I'm glad you liked my tutorial and you're free to back it up for personal use if you want to.

[dwemer lizard]

Originally posted by Razorwing

Thankyou for your time.

wow
thank you for YOUR time





wow

[rzrgenesys187]

alright made my first bottle with this, awesome tutorial

[Razorwing]

Originally posted by rzrgenesys187
alright made my first bottle with this, awesome tutorial

Please don't hesitate to post it up here in the thread =)