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covered in Chapter 23, “Rendering a Scene and Enabling Quicksilver.” The Animation Preferences panel is covered in Chapter 21, “Understanding Animation and Keyframes.” To learn more about Applied IK and Interactive IK, see Chapter 38, “Understanding Rigging, Kinematics, and Working with Bones.” See Chapter 7, “Transforming Objects, Pivoting, Aligning, and Snapping” for more detail on Gizmo preferences. Check out Bonus Chapter 21, “Automating with MAXScript” for more on MAXScript commands and preferences. Swing over to Chapter 45, “Working with Advanced Lighting, Light Tracing, and Radiosity,” for greater detail on Radiosity preferences. Look to Chapter 47, “Rendering with mental ray and iray,” for more detail on the mental ray renderer. Chapter 9, “Grouping, Linking, and Parenting Objects,” covers the container preferences. •

Summary

You can customize the Max interface in many ways. Most of these customization options are included under the Customize menu. In this chapter, you learned how to use this menu and its commands to customize many aspects of the interface. Customizing makes the Max interface more efficient and comfortable for you.

Specifically, this chapter covered the following topics:

• Handling system units

• Setting general preferences

• Changing viewport and gamma preferences

Part II, “Working with Objects,” is next. The first chapter covers the primitive objects and gets some objects into a scene for you to work with.

Part II: Working with Objects

IN THIS PART

Chapter 5

Creating and Editing Primitive Objects

Chapter 6

Selecting Objects and Setting Object Properties

Chapter 7

Transforming Objects, Pivoting, Aligning, and Snapping

Chapter 8

Cloning Objects and Creating Object Arrays

Chapter 9

Grouping, Linking, and Parenting Objects

Chapter 5: Creating and Editing Primitive Objects

IN THIS CHAPTER

Creating primitive objects

Naming objects and setting object colors

Using creation methods

Setting object parameters

Exploring the various primitive types

Using the AEC Objects

So what exactly did the Romans use to build their civilization? The answer is lots and lots of basic blocks. The basic building blocks in Max are called primitives. You can use these primitives to start any modeling job. After you create a primitive, you can then bend it, stretch it, smash it, or cut it to create new objects, but for now, you'll focus on using primitives in their default shape.

This chapter covers the basics of primitive object types and introduces the various primitive objects, including how to accurately create and configure them. You also use these base objects in the coming chapters to learn about selecting, cloning, grouping, and transforming.

Modeling is covered in depth in Part III, but first you need to learn how to create some basic blocks and move them around. Later, you can work on building a civilization. I'm sure workers in Rome would be jealous.

Creating Primitive Objects

Max is all about creating objects and scenes, so it's appropriate that one of the first things to learn is how to create objects. Although you can create complex models and objects, Max includes many simple, default geometric objects, called primitives, that you can use as a starting point. Creating these primitive objects can be as easy as clicking and dragging in a viewport.

Using the Create menu

The Create menu offers quick access to the buttons in the Create panel. All the objects that you can create using the Create panel you can access using the Create menu. Selecting an object from the Create menu automatically opens the Create panel in the Command Panel and selects the correct category, subcategory, and button needed to create the object. After selecting the menu option, you simply need to click in one of the viewports to create the object.

Using the Create panel

The creation of all default Max objects, such as primitive spheres, shapes, lights, and cameras, starts with the Create panel (or the Create menu, which leads to the Create panel). This panel is