Software Trials - 3DS Max

Creating a Panzer Tank

To build a Panzer Tank I used some basic shapes such a Box and a Cylinder. However, I then used additional tools such as Symmetry, Slice and Inset in the creation of the asset.

Step 1:

First I need to create a Plane and then assign an image to it so that I can draw around the shape of the bollard in the image. I go to the Create tab on the right hand side of the interface and select plane. I draw my Plane to the size I think is required. I then reduced the amount of Polygons by lowering the number of segments.

Step 2:

With the Plane selected I then need to open up the Slate Material Editor and to do this I press the shortcut key which is M.

From the Map Material Browser Panel I select Standard and drag the Node appears to the View Port. Also from the Map Material Browser I select Bitmap and drag this Node onto the View Port. This opens a dialogue box to the image that I want to assign to the Plane, the press OK.

I then need to ‘wire’ the Bitmap (the JPEG of an image of a bollard) into the Standard Node. To do this I drag from the Bitmap’s node output socket and plug it into the Standard node Diffuse Colour input socket.

I then clicked on the Assign Material to Selection by clicking on the icon at the top of the Slate Material Editor and then further across to the right I click on the Show Material in View Port.

Step 3:

I want to have a view of the reference image on planes around the object but at the same time I don’t want them to impede my view whilst working on the model. To prevent my view from being obscured, from the Display Properties under the display tab I chose Backface Cull. What this option does is makes the view from the back of the Plane with my reference image on ‘invisible’ but as I rotate around it, when I am face on with it, ie in front, the reference image is visible.

Step 4:

Using a Box from the Create tab I created a rectangular box. Using the Edit Poly method I moved the vertices to get the length I required. I then rotated the object, using the Rotation Tool by pressing E, so that I could get a front view to enable me to get the correct width. Again I used the Edit Poly method to move the vertices to gain the required width, before rotating again to get back to the side view of the object.

Step 5:

As the front of the tank has a slight slope to it I need to mimic this in my construction of the model. To be able to do this I have to add more polygons and vertices into the object I have and to do this I used the Slice Tool.  The Slice Tool is found in the Edit Geometry section. Once I have moved the slice tool to where I want to ‘cut’ through the object I press the Slice button and the slice has been made. I sliced once near the top of the object and twice approximately in the centre of the object. The slices were made length ways through the object achieving the desired result.

Step 6:

By selecting the new vertices the slice had created I moved the vertices out to create the slope effect at the front of the tank. At the back of the tank I also moved the vertices to create a slight change of shape.

Step 7:

For the turret I followed the same steps in 4, 5 and 6, but the one difference in which I did was that I created only half of the turret. From the drop down box in the Modify tab I selected Symmetry and what this did was ‘mirror’ the shape I hade created. Then, using the Move Tool, I pulled the duplicated but mirrored object out to the required distance to match the edges so that it appeared as one object. After this I welded the vertices together so that the two objects now made up one object.

Step 8:

For the canon I created a cylinder shape and then changed the properties to get the right length and width. As the end of the canon needed to be wider I selected the polygons and using the Move Tool pulled them out to create a wider section at the end of the canon.

Step 9:

At the end of the canon I needed to give it the appearance that it is hollow and to achieve this I have to push in the polygon at the end of the canon. I select the polygon and under the Modify tab I go to Extrude and from here I am able to, with the Move Tool, push the polygon inwards.

Step 10:

To attach the canon to the turret I had to make a hole in the front of the turret. To do this I followed the procedure in Step 9, prior to inserting the canon into the turret.

Step 11:

To create the wheels, I used a Cylinder under the Create tab. I then adjusted the size of height and width under the Modify tab and the Edit Poly function. I then duplicated the number of wheels I wanted for one side of the tank by holding down the SHIFT key and left-clicking and dragging across.

Step 12:

I used the Line Tool to draw around the outside of the wheels to create a track. I then went to Modify and selected the Sweep option and from the drop down menu I selected Bar. I then made some minor adjustments, using Edit Poly, to the width and the moved it into place around the wheels.

Step 13:

I then highlighted the wheels and track that I had created, by clicking and dragging over them, and using the SHIFT and left-click drag method to duplicate them to the other side of the tank.

As the Panzer Tank is now created I then unwrapped and textured them. See the blogs on Unwrapping and Texturing on how I achieved this.

After I had textured the objects I then linked them together by selecting the wheels, tracks, turret, turret opening, canon individually then linking them to the body and clicking on the chain link icon in the top left of the interface.

In the video below are the screenshots of how I created the Panzer Tank.

 

 

Panzer Tank Annotations: