Schematics

"A Cut out section"

As mentioned in the first post for my TIE Fighter, i will be creating planes in each of my models workspace to which i will then attach schematics (found online) in order to have a basic guideline to work around.

In order for this to work i have to find the schematics that i want to use, and then in photoshop cut exactly around the edges of each of the different views. These normally include a front view, a side view and a top view. Once i have cut around the edges of each then, i make a note of the dimensions of one of them, and resize the others so that they are all almost exactly the same. This can cause some problems with stretching some of the images but because they are only being used as a guideline and not an exact size this isn't too much of a problem. Once they are all of the correct size i save them as bitmap files. I will be using the .TIFF file format.

Then in 3ds Max i create a plane with only 1 poly and add each image in as a texture using the compact material editor. Each of the planes are then resized to fit the image and the texture is then applied. Using the Allign tool i then make sure they are all connected to each other to make what is almost half a box. This then gives me plenty of space to work while being able to see exactly what it should look like.