3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [16]
Breaking the Walls—Planning the Production
For this Quick Start, you use lots of primitives to create a fortress wall and then you use the new MassFX physics engine to break it all down. This gives you a chance to set up a scene, create a wall of primitives, apply materials to it, and work with MassFX system to animate the destruction.
The first thing to consider is setting up the scene. For this sequence, we need lots of blocks that are easy to create using primitives, and with the Array system, we can quickly build them into a solid wall. But a wall by itself is somewhat boring, so we dress up the scene with some palm trees and maybe a turret or two. Building walls from primitives is easy, but palm trees and turrets can take some time, so we're going to cheat. Yes, that is allowed, because it saves us some time. If you can locate some models that fit your needs without having to model them, you're ahead of the game. The book's CD includes a large number of models created by professionals to get you started, including conveniently a turret and some palm trees. Finally, we need a large cannonball to throw at the wall.
After the models are in place, we can use the new Substance textures to add variety and details to the objects without lots of overhead.
We also want a background and a ground plane for this scene. For the background, we use a Daylight system, which not only gives us nice outdoor lighting but also a horizon effect that works for this scene. For the ground plane, we use a flat plane object with a noise modifier applied to it to give it some subtle hills. Because both of these scene elements are generated by Max, we don't need to locate a background texture.
For the animation phase, we define all the bricks and the cannonball as rigid body objects, give the cannonball some initial velocity, and let the MassFX system do its magic.
On the CD-ROM
After each of the following tutorials, I saved the scene file. You can find these files in the Quick Start directory on the book's CD. •
Setting Up the Scene
This section on setting up is divided into several simple tutorials. The first step in the production is to pull in all the models we need. Then we can position them where we need them, with the cannonball initially off-screen. We also want to position our camera in a good spot.
After the models are in place, we can create the ground plane, and then we're ready to add some materials and lights.
Tutorial: Building a wall
Your first step begins with the task of building a wall. Because this is the main element of the scene, we want it to be added to the scene first.
To build a wall, follow these steps:
1. Reset the interface with the Application Button⇒Reset menu command. Answer Yes in the warning box that appears.
2. In the Command Panel, click the Box button and drag in the Front viewport to create a rectangular block.
Note
This chapter uses Generic Units. You can change the units using the Units Setup dialog box, which you open using the Customize⇒Units Setup menu command. •
3. Press and hold the Shift key and drag the block in the Front viewport to create another block that is positioned on top of the first and offset half the width of the first block.
4. Drag over both blocks to select them, and choose the Tools⇒Array menu. In the Array dialog box that opens, set the 1D Count to 24 and the 2D Count to 8. Then enable the Preview button to see the changes, and drag the spinner next to the Incremental X value until the blocks are horizontally positioned next to each other. Then do the same for the Incremental Row Z value, and click OK.
The castle wall is complete and ready to go, as shown in Figure QS.1.
FIGURE QS.1
The wall was quickly created using the Array dialog box.
Tutorial: Gathering models
The wall looks great, but we need to dress up the scene a little. Using the Merge command, we can pull some models into the current scene. This also involves scaling them so they are the right size relative to each other.
To load the models, follow these steps:
1.