Max for all: 3ds max from scratch lesson

Max for all presents

3ds max from scratch at http://maxtutrs.blogspot.com/

Now you know a little bit about the interface so let’s go ahead and bring a file.

You can bring a max scene file using file menu (3d max Icon) – open.

and that allows you to bring a dot max file which is the standard default max scene.

If you want you can also import files

and that will be for other types of files for example a dot 3ds files - .obj files – adobe illustrator files ………etc.

there’s also a couple other ways to bring objects to your scene.

One of them is to merge a scene or an object from another scene to your open scene by choosing file – merge.

and from the merge file window you can choose an existing max file and hit open.

when you hit open a window will popup.

From this window you can choose the whole geometries from the file or you can choose a specific item to merge to your scene such as shapes – lights – cameras ….etc

At the top of this window you can type the item name which you want to merge and as you notice once you type the first character of your item the items which start with the same character filtered out and sorted and highlighted at the top.

and you can also choose a specific item from the list.

you can also choose a list type to be displayed from the left side checking boxes that makes you able to choose a specific category.

another way to open an existing file is to go to command panel and go over to Utilities and choose asset browser.

Asset browser is basically like windows explorer browser that allows you to explore all of the files and directories on your hard disk.

Now if you didn’t download the project files attached to this topic go ahead and download it from HERE and from asset browser select the max file called Room_001.max and just drag that to the scene.

Once you drag it to the scene and left the mouse button you’ll be asking if you want to open the file or merge the file or xref the file.

Open file : will open the file and replace the opened one because 3ds max opens only one file in a time and couldn’t open multiple files.

Merge file : will take you to the merge window which we explained before.

Xref file : is an option allows you to you to work on a scene or an object will someone else work on the same object – for example you may work on animating character while someone else work on shading or modeling the environment.

Let’s go and choose open file and then close your asset browser.

and you see we have a scene ready to work with.

Now we’ll go ahead to navigate throw our scene using the view ports.

As you see 3ds max starts with 4 different view ports by default, we have top, front, left and perspective.

Also it’s the default but you can change it as you want.

Just click on the name of the view port and you can change the direction and the way you look at your scene for example you can click on front and change it to right.