I mentioned in my first 3dsmax post the 3 principles that really opened my eyes about the false difficulty of 3D modeling ‘complexe’ shapes (read with a bunch of curvature and shit) in 3dsmax.

That’s a lot of 3s.

My three 3dsmax modeling principles

For anyone interested who might be starting on this software too, those principles are :

• Edit poly modifier stacks
• Turbosmooth
• The show result toggle shortcut

It’s the combination of those 3 principles that made me realize how much more I could model from now on, and go from the iconic 3dsmax teapot to shapes like these :

1. Edit poly and Modifier stacks

Edit poly is a modifier that is extremely ambivalent and useful when it comes to 3D modeling. According to me, it’s the most useful one by far. Make sure to add the Edit Poly button on your modifiers shortcuts to save time for each use.

Besides the basics of the tool (controlling vertices, edges, faces, etc), it also allows to work with the principle of layering modifications. By adding edit poly upon edit poly, you can make your shape evolve bit by bit, and always go back by deleting one of them if you need to if you made a mistake.

A non destructive workflow

It changes everything in the way I used to work, which is moving on and on until I did something wrong, realizing there’s not enough Ctrl+Z in the world to undo the crap I ended up with.

Now, with this modifier system, whenever I’m happy with the shape, and want to add something but be cautious about it, I add a modifier. When the end result is okay I can collapse everything, even if I don’t even need to to do that to render.

NOTE : stacking modifiers works the same with any kind of modifier and not only the Edit poly one, that’s the beauty of it. Just add as many as you need exactly like you would pile up those Photoshop layers.

2. Turbosmoothing everything

The main thing in the Arrimus 3D videos (3dsmax tutorial channel) that struck me is the power of the turbosmooth modifier, and how it could be channeled well when you really understood what it does.

I didn’t.

Basically, turbosmooth (also works with open subdiv) takes your 3d geometry, and breaks it down in 4, 16 or higher. The very simple geometric shapes formed with straight lines are made of polygons and turbosmooth divides each one of those polygons in 4.

This very powerful modifier allows to go from straight to curved in a very rational and predictable way. How many edged you need and how you need to space them is what controls the strength of the curve after turbosmooth.

3. Show Result Toogle shortcut : the Secret Sauce

Result toggle power

If the turbosmoothing of the polygons wasn’t that much of a discovery, the fact that you could switch on anf off from the polygon straight to the one smoothed, while modeling, is the real step up.

Even more, you can start off modifying the base polygon, like by grabbing one of the vertices, and switch on “Show result” mode. You’ll then see the smooth curved shape after the turbosmooth effect, all while you’re still controlling the vertices, until you get the satisfying end result you’re looking for.

It allows you to be very precise in the complexe curved final shape while working on the base polygon topology.

Create the shortcut

Plus, when you assign a simple shortcut to that “Show result” toggle, say the space bar, the switching on and off is super easy and fast.

It is essential that this toggle works with a keyboard shortcut. That’s the whole point of this kind of switch button.

This principle of back and forth from base geometry to final complexe shape works the same for any type of modifier (symmetry, bend, path deform, etc.) in 3dsmax. The perfect example of its potential remains with the edit poly modifier.

In this tutorial video from Arrimus this point is very well shown throught this video. Once again, the best channel to learn 3dsmax that I can recommend.

Conclusion

A lot of the points illustrated above are well illustrated in my Gaudi models breakdown, that you can find here : Rediscovering 3dsmax with 3d models of Gaudi

I just thought about sharing this because it really changed the way I approached 3dsmax modeling.

I really enjoyed using 3dsmax, for the first time, to model and recreate things I like. All those tools were there under my nose for so long but I never got around to really know about them.

If you ever found that a tiny bit useful that’d be great, let me know in the comments.

Until next time,