[Help] new to 3ds max need modelling help

[fullkontact]

Well, being extremely intrested in the whole modelling side of things for several years with my weapon of choice being Maya I've recently been forced onto 3ds Max, which was bloody expensive.
Now I've run into a few problems which I'm hoping a few of you can help me out with.
After many hours of sitting infront of the screen ripping my hair out I am finally getting the hang of it, and I began working on a project I was creating in Maya. RFA Mounts Bay.

I started working originally with a sphere and cut it down then extruded and found that looked hideous, so I decided I'd only use the sphere as a refrence and instead went on to start modelling with a single Poly Plane. This plane has 4 verts and 4 sides. Nothing fancy, I move it into position and extrude one of the edges which goes fine. No problems there, and again and again. Great!

Then I begin to move them and problems occur. I thought as I go along I'll find a cure for this horrible affliction. Unfortunatly I still have not found what I need to fix this. So I've decided to call on you.

Please see the attached image and the sections labelled A B C

All of this model started as a single plane which was cut by adding verts, connecting them and moving as needed. Now... the final result was not what I wanted at all, gheh... so. Any advice / help would be appreciated.

[-kodiak-]

Looks like you just need to smooth it out. In your modifier panel on the right side there, select your polygon tool. It's a red square (not the element which is a 3d box) select the polys you want smoothed out and go down your modifier panel to a section called Polygon:Smoothing Groups, then hit auto smooth or find the number that the original polys are smoothed with.

for example: if those polys in your screenshot are already smooth then if you want it to be a smooth transition from the new polys and the old polys you will probably need to press the 1 or 2 button. If your new to max i'll tell you that to select multiple polys or verts or edges or something you need to hold the CTRL key

hope this helps

[motherdear]

have you remembered to smooth the model ? i remember maya using soft/hard edges which are called smoothing groups in max could be it not sure though can't really see any other explanation for it.

[fullkontact]

Yeah, the whole CTRL function was annoying. I'm so used to using shift, and then to deselect was shift alt so I thought CTRL + alt to deselect. Finally figured it's just alt. xD


Take's quite a bit of getting used to comming from another software piece, really wanted to stick with Maya but it's jsut running out of supporting groups. Like BF2 no longer accepts maya items after version 6.0.3 or something

[fullkontact]

Thank you very much, the smoothing groups option worked brilliantly. I appreciate it. I'll most likely have more questions in the future but for the time being feel free to lock this topic, it's no longer needed

[-kodiak-]

no problem, glad i could help. Sometimes it takes a few tries to get something as smooth as you need. I suggest you play around with it to get the hang of it. It comes in quite handy