UK2002 Scenery Project
GMax Basics
This tutorial will
show you the power and versatility of the Move, Rotate and Scale buttons on
GMax.
Stage 1 - Create an Object
Create a simple cylinder with
four or five length sections. It doesn't matter which viewport you create
this in because we will use the rotate button to align it correctly.
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Here I have used 5 segments
and set the number of sides to 18 - a reasonable number for small
structures as GMax automatically smoothes the edges to give a
rounded appearance.
If you create the object by
dragging the mouse on screen you do not need to get the position or
dimensions exactly right as you can adjust the values in the Parameters
box shown on the right of the screenshot.
If you untick the smooth
box GMax will not attempt to smoothen the edges and you then get a true
18 sided object.
Slice allows to to create a
partial cylinder by setting the angles. A Nissan Hut could be created by
only using half a cylinder (or slightly less).
When you have finished creating the shape click on the Select button at
the top to release the Cylinder creation button. |
Stage 2 - Move an Object
In the Front viewport click on
the cylinder you created to highlight it. This will be shown in the
Perspective Box by a white outline and in the other three boxes by the
object turning white and axis arrows appearing.
Now click on the Move button.
You will see the axes arrows change colour - they become red, green and
blue).
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If you move the mouse over
either axis you will see it change shape to mimic the Move icon. This
allows you to click and drag the object along that axis.
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If you are
in front view you can move the object up/down and left/right. In top
view you are restricted to left/right and fore/aft. You may therefore
need to change viewports to align the object in the position you
require.
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Stage 3 - Rotate an Object
Rotate is similar to Move
except that you have control over all three axes in any viewport. Careful
positioning of the mouse is needed to select the right axis!
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In the
example on the left the axis facing towards the viewer is selected (the
Z axis) and the Z has changed orange to show this.
Dragging
the mouse on the Z axis will cause the object to rotate
either clockwise or anticlockwise as seen in the viewport.
Dragging on
the Y axis (Green) will cause the object to rotate around its lengthwise axis. Dragging on the X Axis (Red) will rotate the object towards or
away from the view.
Experiment to see what I mean! |
As you rotate the object the
amount is shown on the axis bar at the bottom of the screen.
Note: It can sometimes be
awkward to rotate an object exactly 90 degrees because GMax may stick on
89.5 or 90.5. If this happens rotate the object by say 60 degrees and then
drag it a second time by 30 degrees.
Stage 4 - Adjust Scale
Scale in its basic use is not
axis critical and you can select any that show on the screen. As you drag
the axis the object will shrink or expand uniformly. This is self evident if
you try it out so no need for screenshots.
When Scale is selected the axis
readouts (shown above) show the relative percentage increase/decrease from
default object size.
Stage 5 - Going down one level
Although the three buttons have
a certain limited functionality as described above they really become far
more useful when applied to specific areas of your object.
You do this by splitting your object up into editable polygons. When you
start working at sub object level creative abilities go ballistic!
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First let
us take a look at the cylinder we have already created.
RIGHT click
on the cylinder to bring up the object menu (an alternative option to
using the toolbar).
Go down to Convert To and select Editable Poly.
You won't
see any change in the object itself but you WILL see the menu's on the
right of the screen change quite a lot. This is because the object is
now Modified and the menu selection has jumped from the Create tab to
the Modify Tab on the menu bar.
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The menu
bar becomes a bit important now so I will take this chance to cover the
options.
The top
arrow shows the second tab of the right menu bar - called Modify. You
will spend some time in this so remember the name.
The first
tab (called Create) is always active when you start the program as it is
assumed you will want to create a shape as the first step in any
project.
The other
tabs are for Hierarchy, Motion, Display and Utilities but you will
probably only use Hierarchy in any FS work - and that for animations
only.
The second
arrow shows that the main panel for your object now calls it an Editable
Poly. This panel is the Stack and it is called that because many
modifications can be made to an object.
The third
arrow shows the Editable Poly's selection choices. You will have already
used this if you have followed the house tutorial because you will have
selected the Polygon icon to Extrude bits of the house.
I want you to select Vertex instead. |
Vertex
selection results in blue dots appearing on every vertex of the part.
Now go up
to the main menu and reselect the Select Object button.
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Stage 6 - Partial Selection
With the object now in Editable
Poly mode and the objects vertices highlighted we can now apply the Move,
Rotate or scale functions to a specific Vertex or group of vertices.
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To select the vertices we drag
a box around the ones we require. Care is needed here because the box will
highlight ALL the vertices in the area - not just the ones we see in a
viewport.
In the example
here the whole top row of vertices will be selected.
If we now
select Move, Rotate or Scale we will get a very different set of effects.
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Stage 7 - Move Partial Selection.
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With the
vertices still highlighted and the Move button selected we can alter the
position of the whole top section of the cylinder.
In the example
here I have put the mouse on the X axis and offset the top of the cylinder
by dragging. Had I selected the Y axis I could have dragged the cylinder
upwards - effectively making it longer.
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Stage 8 - Rotate Partial
Selection
Rotating a partial selection
can be fun but be aware of the axis you choose for rotation!
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In this example I have now selected the top two rows of
vertices. The Rotate button has then been selected and I have moved the
mouse over the Y axis and dragged.
The result is that the top
two rows have rotated around the Y axis - effectively twisting the
cylinder.
If I had chosen the X axis
things would have gone a little differently.. |
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...as you can now see.
The X axis shift rotates
the selected items again but rather more complex effect.
If we then
pick the Move tool we can further adjust the
selected parts. I'll move them right a bit so you can see that we have a more obvious
application for this method.. |
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The shift to the right now
gives us the possible beginnings of a length of bended pipe. A few
further Move and Rotate operations to other selections on the object and
we have a fairly worthwhile result. |
Step 9 - Scale partial Selection
You can see that with various
selections of vertices and a combination of Move and Rotate you have the
beginnings of more complex modelling. Scale is also quite powerful.
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Here I have selected all
the middle rows of vertices in the cylinder and used the Scale button to
drag them outwards.
This is the beginning of
many possible objects - from a jet engine to a cooling tower (scaled
inwards rather than outwards).
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We need not
restrict ourselves to such blocks of vertices either. We could select
one row and then, by holding down the CTRL key, drawn a
second box around any other row.
Rescaling
just the two rows of vertices on the left produces a very different effect.
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I need not go
any further with this tutorial because to can easily see the potential of
even these basic commands. I used very few of the actual Modifiers in GMax
because many manipulations could be carried out from these basic techniques
extremely effectively.
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