3ds Max 2012 Bible - Kelly L. Murdock [75]
The Radius setting defines the outer edge of the RingWave, and the Ring Width defines the inner edge. This ring can also have a Height. The Radial and Height Segments and the number of Sides determine the complexity of the object.
The RingWave Timing controls set the expansion values. The Start Time is the frame where the ring begins at zero, the Grow Time is the number of frames required to reach its full size, and the End Time is the frame where the RingWave object stops expanding. The No Growth option prevents the object from expanding, and it remains the same size from the Start frame to the End frame. The Grow and Stay option causes the RingWave to expand from the Start Time until the Grow Time frame is reached and remains full grown until the End Time. The Cyclic Growth begins expanding the objects until the Grow Time is reached. It then starts again from zero and expands repeatedly until the End Time is reached.
The last two sections of the Parameters rollout define how the inner and outer edges look and are animated. If the Edge Breakup option is on, then the rest of the settings are enabled. These additional settings control the number of Major and Minor Cycles, the Width Flux for these cycles, and the Crawl Time, which is the number of frames to animate.
The Surface Parameters section includes an option for creating Texture Coordinates, which are the same as mapping coordinates for applying textures. There is also an option to Smooth the surface of the object.
Figure 5.21 shows five animated frames of a RingWave object with both Inner and Outer Edge Breakup settings. Notice that the edges change over the different frames.
FIGURE 5.21
Five frames of a rapidly expanding and turbulent RingWave object
Tutorial: Creating a pie
This tutorial provides a very different recipe for creating a pie using a RingWave object. Although the RingWave object can be animated, you also can use it to create static objects such as this pie, or moving objects such as a set of gears.
To create a pie using the RingWave object, follow these steps:
1. Select Create⇒Extended Primitives⇒RingWave, and drag in the Top viewport to create a RingWave object.
2. In the Parameters rollout, set the Radius to 115, the Ring Width to 90, and the Height to 30.
3. In the RingWave Timing section, select the No Growth option. Then enable the Outer Edge Breakup option, set the Major Cycles to 25, the Width Flux to 4.0, and the Minor Cycles to 0.
4. Enable the Inner Edge Breakup option. Set the Major Cycles to 6, the Width Flux to 15, and the Minor Cycles to 25 with a Width Flux of 10.
Figure 5.22 shows a nice pie object as good as Grandmother made. You can take this pie one step further by selecting Modifiers⇒Parametric Deformers⇒Taper to apply the Taper modifier and set the Amount to 0.1.
FIGURE 5.22
This pie object was created using the RingWave object.
Prism
The Prism primitive is essentially an extruded triangle. If you select the Base/Apex creation method, then each of the sides of the base triangle can have a different length. With this creation method, the first click in the viewport sets one edge of the base triangle, the second click sets the opposite corner of the triangle that affects the other two edges, and the final click sets the height of the object.
The other creation method is Isosceles, which doesn't let you skew the triangle before setting the height.
Torus Knot
A Torus Knot is similar to the Torus covered earlier, except that the circular cross section follows a 3D curve instead of a simple circle. The method for creating the Torus Knot primitive is the same as that for creating the Torus. The Parameters rollout even lets you specify the base curve to be a circle instead of a knot. A knot is a standard, mathematically defined 3D curve.
Below the Radius and Segment parameters are the P and Q values. These values can be used to create wildly variant Torus Knots. The P value