This tutorial will walk you through some very basic, 3DS Max box-modeling techniques. We recommend it for people just getting started with 3DS Max. You’ll be creating a stack of 3D books.

This is a beginner-oriented tutorial so it contains quite a bit of extra steps and information. If in doubt, make sure you haven’t skipped any of the paragraphs. If still in doubt, please use the comment form to ask for more information. We’ll be happy to oblige.

The Final result

The final result also involves our Decals Tutorial and some basic knowledge of lighting which you can read about in our Interior Lighting tutorial.

1/4 The Scene

First of all, you should go to the Customize/ Units Setup menu and set the Display unit scale to Metric / Centimeters. This will help you keep true to the real-life proportions of a scene/ object.

Go to the Create {}/ Geometry {} menu and create a simple box. Set it to:

» Length: 29
» Width: 21
» Length Segs: 1
» Width Segs: 2
» Height Segments: 5 (this will help us create the book’s covers)

2/4 Modeling your first 3D book

Right click your box and click the Convert to Editable Poly button from the Convert To: menu.

We’re now going to create the base for the books covers. Click the box, go to the Modify Tab {} and enter the Edge sub-object level {}.  Click the second top edge (Height Segment), click the Loop button  and drag the edge upwards (the Z axis).

Repeat this process for the middle width segment (and drag it leftwards – x axis) and the second bottom edge (drag it downwards).

» Loop: loops your selection around a continuous line (which is composed of multiple edges). It will be your best friend for as long as you’ll be working with 3DS Max.

Go to the Polygon sub-object level {} and select the parts that will make-up the book’s pages. Right click the object and click on Extrude. Set the:

» extrusion mode to Local Normal
» the extrusion value to -0.3

Switch to the Front view by pressing the {F} key. Position the camera (pan with the middle mouse button and zoom with the mouse-wheel) so it’s centered on the book’s left side.

Go to the Vertex sub-object level {}, drag a selection box around the polygons and drag them leftwards (x axis) to curve the book’s cover a bit. Take your time to get it right.

You should now have something that looks like this:

Finally, we need to soften those straight edges. Enter the Edge sub-object level {} and using the commands you’ve learned so far, select all the edges that make up the exterior edges of the book’s cover.

Right click the object and click the Chamfer button. Set the Chamfer value to 0.08 and click ok.

Chamfering is another useful technique that you will probably use a lot. You can read about the real world term on wikipedia

Finally, we need to tell max that we want to apply 2 distinct materials on this object. We’ve already covered this in our Multiple Materials on a Single object tutorial but we’ll go over it again just to make sure.

Enter the Polygon sub-object level {} and select the polygons that make up the book’s pages. Scroll down the Modify tab’s {} settings until you find the Polygon: Material IDs section. Set the Set ID to 2 and press enter.

With the page polys still selected, go to the Edit menu and click on Select Invert. This will select all the rest of the polygons. Set these polygons to ID  1.

Pfew, the modeling part is over with.

Continue on page 2 to create some basic materials.