Setting up a studio in 3DSMax?

[grover1]

Hi all!

I've finally got the basics of modelling down and now I'm ready to start building my first airplane! Special thanks goes to Milton Shupe for his tutorial and answering my many questions and of course everyone here at SOH for their help and guidance! I really appreciate everyone's help.

But, I have a small issue that anyone who's familiar with 3DSMax might have encountered. When I set up a background on a plane, instead of getting one large image, I get thousands of small images at precise intervals between each other.

I've attached a picture so you can see what I mean. Does anyone know of a fix to this? My photo-editing software is Paintshop Pro 9. I got it for like 20 bucks a while back.

Anyways, hope someone can help me out!

Thanks again for everyone's help!

Chris

[krazycolin]

that's your mapping coordinates. You will need to adjust them. You can either use unwrapuv or use the uv adjustment on the plane (not the AIRPLANE) that you created. You need to make sure that the plane (again, not the airplane) is the same EXACT size as the image you are placing on it. A good way to do that is to make it using the pixels x and y for the image. Then you can scale it up and down depending... making sure that you are scaling it the same in both x and y.

hope this helps.

Good luck

[X_eidos2]

Looks like 3dsMax is tiling the image across your plane. The plane needs a UVW map modifier applied to it to get the image to show up properly.
With the plane selected, under the modifier menu, under UV coordinates, select UVW map. Then go over to the modifier menu and click on the needed buttons to set up the proper UV map. I selected "planar" and selected Y axis in the alignment section, and then clicked the "fit" button to get the UVW gizmo to fit the shape of the plane object. You should be seeing a yellow gizmo around your plane object.

[mjahn]

Variations on a theme ...

Make your bitmap square, say 1024, 1024.

Make a square "plane" (not an airplane ...) in approximately correct dimensions. Tick "generate mapping co-ordinates".

Apply your texture to the plane. (Should come out perfectly mapped, but check carefully.)

Uniformly scale the plane so that the airplane on it gets the right dimensions.

(Convert to editable poly, use Slice and cut off excess areas of the plane -- if necessary.)

Voila

[roger-wilco-66]

When I set up a background reference for dimensions I go a different way. I prepare a background texture (part of a 3 view usually) in photoshop, make a 2d plane object and map the texture onto it. The plane has the right dimensions of course, and you have to be careful that it's not distorted. I therefore check the the tape measure known x-y dimensions on the reference plane to make sure it is in the right size. Probably a method similar to mjahn's.
Good thing about this is that you can easily hide it, move it or tilt the scene to look behind the 3d model if it covers some detail on the reference image. You can't do that with a fixed background.
Another nice thing is that you can set up your texture maps the same way. E.g. map it onto a 2d plane and adjust it for the known real world dimensions of an object that is depicted on the texture map to get the right shape and size when I make a 3d object.

Hope that makes sense, see picture below of a current project:

https://dl.dropbox.com/sh/x0skkam7xu8zz8r/K1RxGJJCrD/Scenery-Objects/ms-lcm3-6.JPG

[Milton Shupe]

Lots of good helps coming at you here :-)

Here's a graphic tutorial I did about 8 years ago that may be helpful.

http://www.flightsimonline.com/gmax/calbox.htm

EDIT: I forgot I also did this tutorial a few years ago:

http://www.flightsimonline.com/tutorials/calbox/index.htm

[roger-wilco-66]

Sorry, I misread the OP question when I wrote the answer above. Chris is already doing what I described.

@ Milton: I like those tutorials, never saw them before.
Are there more? :-)


Cheers,
Mark

[grover1]

It's fantastic! I really appreciate it all! I'll keep trying and come back with further problems

[Milton Shupe]

Sorry, I misread the OP question when I wrote the answer above. Chris is already doing what I described.

@ Milton: I like those tutorials, never saw them before.
Are there more? :-)


Cheers,
Mark

Hi Mark,

Yes, there are a whole series of tutes I did back in '07 I think.

Most are down in the Design forum under this thread:

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showthread.php?93-Gmax-Tutorials

There are also a few more in that sticky list there.

I have done many more graphic and video tutorials for people needing them but have deleted most of them.

Tankerguy72 may have many I did for him but I did not keep my original versions.

[roger-wilco-66]

Ahhh Milton, a big :ernae::ernae: here, great stuff. I like your concise style.
I wish I had known these a few months ago.
The VC tutorial is extremely handy!

Thanks a lot,
Mark