3ds Max help please!

Ok so Im trying to make a shoe, the shoe part with the hole where you put your foot in , what is the best way to do that ? as I cant remove vertices eg.cut hole..

I've found the best way is to start with a cyllinder (uncapped) that you'll model to fold in on itself. One pole (the top and bottom rows scaled down to a single point but unwelded) should be inside the shoe. The other pole can be on the sole of the shoe. Start with a mesh about a quarter of the resolution you need and rough out the shape, then use a meshsmooth modifier to refine it by adjusting the control points.

[1.] Right click your object...uncheck the "Edges only" box
[2.] Right click the word "Perspective" in your Perspective view, then select "Edged Faces"
(You should now see the edges appear on your object)
[3.] Make a cylinder the size of the hole you wish to create,
[4.] In parameters Rollout) set Height Segments = 1, Cap Segments = 1, Sides = 20 (or more if you so desire)
[5.] Position cylinder where you want the hole to go, lower it into your mesh object to desired depth...
[6.] Select your mesh object
[7.] Where it says "Standard Primitives", click the rollout arrow and choose "Compound Objects"
[8.] Select "Boolean"
[9.] The Boolean panel rollout appears on the right, in "Operation" select "Subtraction (A-B)"
[10.] In "Pick Boolean" section leave "Reference" selected, then select the "Pick Operand B"
[11.] Now left click the cylinder which you lowered into your mesh
[12.] You should see the edges change on your mesh object, raise the cylinder out of your shoe, and you will now see a perfect hole.
[13.] In Modifier Window select "Editable Mesh" (a roll out appears for modiying mesh)
[14.] In the Modifier Panel, under "Selection" choose "Vertices" icon (3 dots that look like stars)
[15.] Select a vertice at base of hole you made
[16.] "Zoom Extents Selected" (lower right corner of 3dsmax), then select "Zoom All" next to it, now left click your perspective window and hold the left click down while moving mouse towards you. (this allows you to see all of the vertices at the base of the hole)
[17.] Press "Esc" key on your keyboard (This brings back your pointer)
[18.] Right click your object mesh and select "Ignore Backfacing" (This keeps you from accidentally selecting a vertice on a different location of your mesh)
[19.] Select all vertices at the base of the hole by holding down Control key and left clicking each vertice. (Mine had 20 vertices - Since i used 20 sides as stated above).
[20.] In modifier Panel , In the Weld section, choose Selected (after you change the value to .001)...A "No vertices within weld threshold" error may appear, if it does press enter or select OK fromn the error box, left click the arrow-up (next to the vaue window) to increase the weld threshold then left-click the "Selected" box again, do this until the vertices are welded to match the entrance of your hole...

Viola!

(My entrance had 10 vertices, so i welded the base of the hole to match the entrance of the hole...does wonders for texturing when the sides are all the same width, and length...

You can also use any shape (Like an "L" shape), instead of the cylinder, to do this...you can customize your "L" shape to resemble a foot, save it as "FootTemplate", import it, and boolean the foot out of any shoe mesh you make everytime.

This took me a while to type, i didnt miss a single step, and the whole process (from start to finish) took me 3 minutes...probably take you a few more to read and execute these steps...

IF AT ANY PART YOU MESS UP, PRESS "CONTROL + Z" ON YOUR KEYBOARD (This will take you back, step by step, in 3dsmax)...Alternately "Control + Y" takes you a step forward if you go back too far...The default Undo is set to 20, this number can be changed in the Cutomize-->Preferences-->General-->Scene Undo ( i set mine to 50 )...I also set my Files-->Autobackup for every 5 minutes and 9 files...

Pyrrha Magic

Pyrrha's instrustions will work fine if you not trying to make a sculpty that will work in SL, but for sculpts you can't use booleans, welds, or anything else that will alter the UV mapping. That's why you want to start with a base object that has the correct UV mapping to begin with (uncapped cyllinder, plane, sphere, or loft object) and avoid any modeling operations that will change the UV space.

Question 1: If you UVW map the shoe after using the boolean procedure, will it still keep the UVWs mapping coordinates when you export to SL?

Question 2: The texturing should come after all alterations are made to the mesh object right? (Im referring to texbaking the texture onto the shoe mesh).

Pyrrha Magic

Theoretically you could remap the object after doing a boolean, but to get a clean and correct UV space would likely take you as long as modeling the shoe did in the first place. You're better off working with base objects that have the correct mapping to begin with.

For your second question, yes, texturing is best done after modeling. For that I find it works best to do planar UV projections, each on its own UV channel, then bake them back to the original UV mapping and blend them together in your paint program. Texturing sculpties can be tricky because of the way they have to be UV mapped. The texture map ends up rather convoluted and it's not easy to figure out what should go where.

Here's a little trick you can use to make it easier. Once you've modeled your shoe, go to the left or right side viewport. Add a planar UV map modifier set to UV channel 2. Align it to the viewport. Maximize the side viewport and use PrtScn to take a screenshot. Paste the screenshot into a new document in photoshop and crop it to the UV modifier rectangle. You now have a template you can use for painting that side of the shoe. Paint your texture and then use it as a diffuse map (set to use UV channel 2) in a new texture with 100% self illumination. Use Render to Texture to bake a Complete Map from UV channel 1. That will convert your projected texture to UV channel 1. Repeat the procedure for the top, bottom, front, and back views. Take all the resulting baked textures and blend them together in Photoshop, then clean up the result as needed.

For simple textures that don't require hand painting, just texture the shoe in Max and bake out a complete map.

UVW Mapping/Unwrapping/tex baking doesnt me take as long as it does to model a shoe...I've been modeling terrains and objects for another game for the last 5 years. Im nearly finished with my BS in Game Programming. I also Do LODs, Edit sounds, make Waterfall IFLs, Stream IFLs, PondWater IFLs, and script AI to be as good as the human players in game...Im simply providing more solutions to common problems. If you feel your way is better, thats cool...no problemo dude...ill stick with my method, because its working well for me currently.



I have been texbaking for a while...your suggestions are right on track...excellent information for those who havent done this. Your impressive Chip, it nice to have another 3dsmax modeler who knows their program well...Would be nice to combine our efforts into some interesting models for SL. Currently im working on animations...

Pyrrha

Thank Pyrrha. Everything you suggested is perfectly workable. My objection was just that it's a difficult way to go about it for a Max novice - easier on the modeling end but harder to end up with a valid sculpt map.

Glad to see another seasoned Max vet around. I still consider myself a bit of a novice when it comes to creating game assets. I do product visualization mainly (taking stuff from Pro-E and doing photoreal Vray renders) so making stuff for SL has been a good incentive to get into parts of Max (and Photoshop) I wouldn't ordinarily need to touch.

Good grief....is it bad to say i didnt follow any of that and my brain stopped ? :/....
thanks alot for the replys , been having issues with my laptop lately but all is fine now.
Im starting to wonder if i should just use blender haha!
I did notice trying blender that it's lattice tool is the same as max's box modifier...so now im leaning towards max again.
Only issue i had in blender was when i had the crazy lattice box with all the points all over the place from modelling I didnt know how to create another 'clean' box to continue.
Otherwise its so hard to see all the points...
I can learn modelling but Im more after a program that really does good baking...

Hi there,

I came here with a problem very similar to Sandy, therefore I didn't want to start a new thread.
After struggling around with maya for a long time, i finally got something, that could be seen as a kind of shoe
The upper part consists of a sculpted nurbs sphere, as well as the sole.

Here's a little screenshot

As you can see on the picture, I did not shape out the hole to put a foot in that shoe. The reason for that simply is, that I don't know how to do that.


I tried to work it out with the cluster, lattice and soft mod tool, but the results were not acceptable at all.
So, here's my question: Does anyone have some ideas or hints for me how to get the hole shaped?
The main difference to Sandy is, that I don't work with max, but with maya, but maybe the solution is quite similar.

I would love to avoid a boolean operation, because I'm totally overstrained with creating a new UV map. So, sorry, Pyrrha, I appreciat your help very much, but
I'm too dump to do so

Chip's solution is cool, if you didn't model anything yet, but is there a chance to use the shoe base, that i've already modelled to continue?

I'm really nobody who asks for help before having tried out everything I could imagine to help myself, but in this case, I'm simply helpless.

Thanks in advance for any ideas!