[dr22]

Hi All; Well I've downloaded Blender and the text manual and am trying to learn how to use it. But, Man, there is no delete button to undo the mistakes I make. Thats hard. I even went out and got a five button mouse so as to be able to use MMB. I want to try and make a new ship for FS2. But I'm having problems learning this program. Even after reading the manual it seems weird. especially the way the headings are laid out. Most programs have File,Edit,etc and under Edit there is an undo button, not so with Blender. Help!

[BlackDove]

Nobody who has Max here is saying it, but why the **** would you buy any program when you can download the full version for free.

Just some food for thought in that direction. After all, you're not going to be publishing anything you create in it for personal profit, so it's not like you _need_ the licenced official bought version.

Bleh.

[Turey]

Nobody who has Max here is saying it, but why the **** would you buy any program when you can download the full version for free.

BlackDove's right. While the version of max that you download has a 30-day trial period it's the full version.When you install it, don't delete the installer, because if you run out of days, you can just reinstall and you get 30 more days.

[dr22]

Hi Blackdove; I am not going to buy the 3dsMax. I did not open it yet, as I was trying to figure out how to use it first before opening it so I could actually make something with it before the 30 days. I did not know about the re-installing thing.  Thanks for the info. So far the tutorials I have found have been greatly lacking in guidiance for the beginner like me. I how ever, will endeavor to persevere. Hopefully I can find some help along this road. Have a great day all. :-)

[Nuke]

im having good luck in max. i think im gonna just use it from now on. my pyro is looking great.



still working on the wings. ive put in some bevels which arent shown here, im thinking about grebeling the inlay surface but im not sure about it. i like to avoid grebeling at all costs. i might break with cannon and put missile bays on here, and a pair of gatling guns

[Scooby_Doo]

Hope your doing symertry modifer and not mirror on the hull (it'll save you time and effort latter one)
Also check the vertices on the center, their not all at X=0 (you can see a sliver lines).

Other than that, looks great Nuke.

PS don't forget to do apply a smoothing modifier (can use values much lower than 45) that'll hide a lot of the unwanted shade lines (like on the gun barrels), makes things look nicer 

[Nuke]

i only used mirror for the screenie. im just building half a ship right now. thats how i did the new phoenix in truespace. finish the half and mirror last. the gun barres  (and anything else in that shade of blue) are yet to be overhauled, so no smoothing has been applied to them yet. though your advice is apreciated. learning max is no easy task. ive been trying to understand the ins and outs of this proggie for quite some time, but im only recently using it to model.

i think i am going to break with cannon, sence the ship is already way off in terms of proportions to most of the schematics out there. for example the tails are too low and at too shalow an angle. i like it better that way so im not gonna change it. it would make this just another pyro model. i think well call in the pyro ix, a next generation experimental prototype, with gatling guns

[Scooby_Doo]

Heheh I like your style... it's a newer pyro model 

btw try not to use the mirror unless you attach the two meshes together.  When you export it to 3ds, you'll get flipped normals.  (You'll have to collapse the stack, apply a xform-reset, flip the normals and then recollapse) Also there will be a crease line on the shine.  Apply the symertry modifier instead.  It creates a flipped mesh and keeps it attached to the original.

Btw if symtery doesn't come out the way you like.  Click the "+" in front of the modifier and you can activate modifer-modifer (It'll turn yellow) [also pressing '1' will activate it]. You can rotate and move where the line of symtery is.  Note: this works on a lot of other modifiers too.

Note the yellow plane line on the teapot, thats the symmetry slicing plane.

[Nuke]

yea i was playing with the symetry modifyer, i noticed it automatically welds. the mirror one looks like it does to, but probibly not as well. im still not comfortable working with the stack so i tend to collapse it every time i make a major change. from what i understand the stack can be made as big as you want and whole models can be made that way. though some of the modifiers tend to get *****y when you change something below them.

yea i put the first missile bay on the pyro. i neverliked that it carried external ordinace according to cannon, yet there was only enough room for 4 missiles anyway. come to think of it that game never made sence, the pyro is a tiny ship yet it could cary a warhouse worth of ordinance, 10 kinds of guns, and several passengers. total tardis syndrom

btw is there a way to make a face planar while only moving the verts on a single axis? i modeled out a 15 tube launch pod and i want to make the face of the thing flat while maintaing the perfect hexagonal apearance. just flattening it out right tends to distort the holes. i got it pretty close to flat though.

i just recently learned that you need to draw your polies counter clockwise for them th come out right. once i had that down as well as how to bevel, i decided to stop playing with truespace. my truespace stuff was pretty good, so my max stuff should kick ass

holy ****, its amazing how many loose vertices can weasel there way into a model. duplicates and isolated vertices, i think i removed over a hundred of the suchers thanks to the weld vertices feature, set your threshold and let her rip. that woulda been 3 hours worth of troubleshooting in truespace, and you probibly couldnt find them all.

[Nuke]

just a small update 


the first set of rocket bays, extra guns. tow of them are gonna get replaced with proper gatling guns, just as to which pair i dont know. either the inner pair or the outermost pair. i really need to clean up those tails and put in the other 2 rocket pods as well.

[Colonol Dekker]

Descent yes? (for shame i have never played any of em)

[dr22]

Nuke you rule; I'm just starting out with trueSpace. I have the 3.2 and am just trying to get to the starting point. The tutorials have no sound and move way to fast for me to follow. So I guess it will take me a while to get started. I like your ship, good job, keep it up man. :-)

[BlackDove]

Ehhhhhh, when I said "full version for free" I didn't exactly mean installing and reinstalling the trial over and over.

I meant... using BitTorrent.... uhh..... in a... creative way?

[Turey]

Ehhhhhh, when I said "full version for free" I didn't exactly mean installing and reinstalling the trial over and over.

I meant... using BitTorrent.... uhh..... in a... creative way?

well, if you want to be fishy about it....

3ds max 8 DOES have an activate by phone option, so there're probably many keygens for it out there.

[Scooby_Doo]

Dont' forget, whenever you do a boolean intersection/cut or a polygon slice, remember to target weld the extra vertices afterwards. 

For this example:
A simple rectangle slice into half, you went from 2 to 6 polys
Slice one side again and you'll get 12
slice again 20
repeat 30
repeat 42...

optimized and it's down to 14

[Nuke]

i havent had to do any booleans at all. i just selected all the polys from one gun, held down shift as i dragged it over. moved the instanced copy into position. then i took the faces off of the leading edge and underide of the wing. and re-created them to connect to both guns. ive also used the attach feature a couple times. good for when you want to put a new primitive  or piece of a primitive into the model.

[Scooby_Doo]

Booleans can make an unpredicatable random number of polys, but poly slicing seems to have a formula... it grows quite fast.

[dr22]

Hey there; Well I installed the 3dsMax8 Demo and am going to try to use it. It looks better than trueSpace because it has the header just like regular windows. To me that makes it seem easier at least. Got to read all the tutorials to start with. I hate that part. Have a great day all. :-)

[Vengence]

Nobody who has Max here is saying it, but why the **** would you buy any program when you can download the full version for free.

Just some food for thought in that direction. After all, you're not going to be publishing anything you create in it for personal profit, so it's not like you _need_ the licenced official bought version.

Bleh.

You dare desecrate my honesty ?! (jk) I bought it fair and square without bit torrents at all. It may have been pricey at $600 but it was well worth it. Not just because I can make stuff without repercussions, but I got my monet back x25 in scholarship money thanks to it , though its all for my college tutuition .

Good luck on your modeling 22.

[dr22]

Hey there; Not doing so good right now as the tutorials all seem to start out as though I have been to 3dsMax school already and know all the stuff. aaaah, will there ever be a tut that starts out like kindagarden for me? You guys rule and I'm glad you are all in schools that help you get there. I'm to old for that. you guys keep up the good work. I'm looking forward to seeing all your great games and pics. Have a great day all :-)