3DS Max Bomb

Towards the end of my animation I wanted to have on of my models be shot by another one and explode. The way that I researched how to do this within 3DS was to create a bomb object.

This object uses a space time link to another object, and then creates a wave from its position towards the linked object, taking it apart poly by poly and firing them off in different directions. The strength of the explosion, the speed at which the exploded polygons fall and the frame in which the explosion happens can all be controlled.

This meant that I could link the bomb to the model I wanted to explode, choose the frame I wanted the explosion to go off and how strong I wanted the explosion to be, test to make sure that it had created the desired effect and easily change the parameters to if I wasn't happy with the way it looked.

Animation - Key Framing

In order to create the actual animation I needed to use 3DS Max's time line and key framing.

Because the project must be 30fps and last 30 seconds a good place to start was to make the time line 900 frames long, this meant that if I used up all 900 frames the animation would be exactly 30 seconds long.

In order to make a object move all that I needed to do was to select the object, create a keyframe, which makes the programme store the location, rotation and size of the object at the moment in the time line, and then progress the time line by the amount of frames that I wanted and move the object to a new location, rotation or size and create a new keyframe. Then, if I pressed play on the animation, the object would over the course of the time between the keyframes change to the new location, rotation or size.

I was then able to simplify this process even more using the 'Auto Key' button which made the programme automatically create a new keyframe when the selected object had changed any of its information in a new frame, meaning that I didn't have to press the keyframe button everytime I had changed something. This of course has its drawbacks in that sometimes when moving an object that you didn't want to keyframe and you had forgotten to untick the auto keyframe it would create one anyway.

The red bars are keyframes and the red at the top is showing auto key is active.

Re-texture TIE Fighter

After the models had been imported one thing that needed to be done was to re-texture the TIE fighter as the colours that were applied to it while creating the model were clearly not correct for how a TIE fighter should actually look. To do this I used the 'compact material editor' and created a few colours to apply to the model which seemed in keeping with how it should look.

It was then a simple job of dragging the colours from the material editor onto the parts of the model that were supposed to be those colours.

Import Models into 1 project

The first thing that I needed to do in order to start the actual animation part of this project was to import all of the models into the same project.

To do this I created a new project and clicked File -> Import -> Merge. This then let me choose another project I had created and import the models from there. I was able to choose which specific parts of the project I wanted to import and was therefore able to choose not to import the planes which I had used to show the schematics while building the models as these would have no use in the actual modelling process.

I then repeated this process twice more for the other two models. The TIE Bomber and the X-Wing were of the same size, but when I had created the TIE fighter I had evidently made it much larger than the other two models and therefore had to scale it down to be the same size as the other two.

TIE Bomber #4 - Complete

Once i had mirrored the wing and its connector over to the other side of the ship, the model was complete.

This model is not as detailed as my X-Wing but i am still pleased with the way it came out, especially after spending so much time trying to get the angles on the wings correct.

TIE bomber #3 - Wing

I decided to create this wing the same way that i created the wings on the TIE Fighter, by creating a rectangle and making two copies, one slightly larger than the other. This then let me use a boolean to cut out the smaller shape from the other creating this border effect.

The main problem which i faced while creating this wing was the fact that two of the rectangles concave over the main body. In order to make sure that they had the same angle i created the top one first and then mirrored it over and placed it on the bottom half.

TIE Bomber #2 - Wing Connector

Like with both of my other models i decided to create just one wing and mirror it over to the other side. I started by creating the connection between the main body and the wing.

TIE Bomber #1

For my last model i will be creating a TIE bomber. This model should be relatively easy to make as it is a slightly different shaped version of the TIE fighter i have already created.

I started using two 2 cylinders for the main body and put cone caps on all 4 ends. To make the cockpit i used the same method as with the TIE figher - creating both rings with a single strut, changing the rotation poiint to the centre and shift rotating round creating copies of the original.

I then used a series of cubes to create the connection between the cylinders and a few more cubes for detail. I also used two cubes for the part sticking out of the bottom but turned them into editable poly's so i could warp their shape to fit how they should be.

X-Wing #6 - Complete Model

Once i had copied the wing to the other four corners the model was complete. I added a few touches including a very basic astromech droid just behind the cockpit.

All that needs to be done now is to clean up the hierarchy a little, as can been seen in the image towards the end of the project it became a little messy as i had stopped keeping on top of it.

Overall i am very pleased with the way the model came out in the end. I feel it is much more detailed than my TIE fighter was and that i have become much more proficient at using max as a program than i was when i first started the TIE fighter.