In my spare time I'm putting tutorials together. Since I have no forums on my site, I'll direct the comments here. Let me know if you notice any typos or errors, or perhaps information that isn't clear. I'm sure there is lots.

Enjoy.

http://maprookie.com/tutorials.html

why not put them here?

looks neat to them rookie mappers. Thumbs Up

Wow, this is easily the most detailed/comprehensive 3ds Max tutorial for Half-life I've ever seen, period.

Plus, you're writing a HL UVW Unwrap tutorial... awsome.

For a situation like this, there is only one correct, appropriate choice of action:

The Epic Badge Of Win.GOOD DAY TO YOU SIR, CARRY ON THEN. = >

To avoid spamming the thread with win images, i shall merely nod my head in approval.
*nods

Wow, you're fast, Rim (it was me who told him yesterday to work on that tutorial)!

u rox omg

Site doesn't validate, learn to HTML and CSS.
Nice tutorials, though.

<table>Think I'll try that modelling tutorial. I have allways wanted to know how to model.</table>

Rim you're me hero. I'm starting the MAX one right now!

Understand the beast before you tame it. So lets tame it already. Make it our bitch.

Glad to hear you like it, i thought it was going to flop cuz i did it too quickly.

And yes, it was muzz who changed my mind about it when I was bored.

hehehe. i made a crate!
ahh i have to thank you again rimrook.

someone want to find me a crack generator for Autodesk 3DS Studio Max 2008? PM me only.

If you guys want to, post the models you make. If there is something you always wanted to make, a gun or something, I'll do some 1on1 and help you guys out.

All though I'll write more tutorials.

i want to make a guitar as a crowbar replacement. Should i start first by just modeling it?
And then wait for the animation tuts?

I got thru the box and the pipe tutorials fairly quickly, and i must say your tuts helped me get started faster than anything i could google.

of course the promise of seeing a pipe textured with the shipment of win in a half life map composed strictly of AAAtriggers was a very good goal to work towards.

Didn't someone already model a guitar replacement for the crowbar?

Either way, yes. Always start by modelling it. Grab reference material or sketches if you need to. The crowbar is the easiest and perhaps the most fun object to replace. I'll cover a tutorial on how to properly replace weapons.

A guitar would not be hard to model either. You could make it but starting with a box and slicing edges into to, then vertex manipulating the shape. Texturing is easy, a guitar is mostly flat.

Well i don't want any old guitar, i want a Jackson Kelly Ke2. I already have the neck and headstock basically done. Ahh this is so much fun.
I figured out how to make the top viewport background an image. So that's helping me a WHOLE lot

Really? I found the background thing by accident 4 weeks ago by pressing Alt+B. Lucky you.

Express all that fun with screenshots. I want to see what people can make or need help on.

Here's what i have so far. I'm having trouble with the slice plane. I'm selecting the edges i want to slice, but it seems to cut through the entire model. And my polygons look quite sloppy to me..

http://brettpcg.googlepages.com/kellymodel.JPG

damn, Tetsu0 got into that fast. I've tried a bit of everything.
I suck at modeling, cause I haven't learned properly.
And I suck at guitar, for the same reason above.

/

Lol. I've had my experience at modeling before. I was pretty decent at blender but didn't do much because i could never figure out how to export to half life. Rimrook made this so stupidly easy that it gives me a nice goal to work towards. And i now know how to do most of the stuff i need to. The rest comes with time in the editor. Same thing with guitar. Once you know the basics, just keep playing and you'll get faster and better and yadda yadda.
Sooner or later you have 5 guitars, 4 amps, and a maxxed out credit card...
cough...
cough...

Anyway i ended up starting the body over. I figured creating blocks with the same thickness, deleting faces, and welding vertices together is a bit easer.. For me.. Because i'm obviously doing something wrong hah

---

and about the background thing. Blender had a feature like that so i figured Adobe would implement something as well. I searched and found it

wanna make it retardedly easy?

use a line under create > shapes and trace the shape of your guitar, connect the ends like you would a bezier. You'll get a vector line, if you convert it to editable poly, it'll make a plane in that shape you drawn. you can now pull edges down from it to get the sides. Select border and highlight the open end, which is your bottom, then find the Cap button to close it off.

that method is fast, but less controllable. after that, you can cut it up, and use the Cut tool for that. it allows you to draw edges on the faces for more detailed editing.

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/2193/example01ej9.jpg
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/7375/example02nc9.jpg
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/9993/example03qj6.jpg
http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/204/example04mp1.jpg

Usefull thread.

Stickied.

Mind if i change the topic title to something like "Rimrooks Modelling Tutorials" or something like that?

uh sure if you really think it should be called that.

Still plan on posting any of these turotials on TWHL? What format do you need?

Tutorial is great for me till I get to the part where you assign the bone. Fsr, I can't get it to "attach" to my crate.

The only thing I can thing to add to the tutorial would be to copy/cut/enlarge some of the icons you'll be using in each section, and place them at the start of each step where they'll be used.

I'm using max 7, here's the file if you want to look:

Crate SDK (lolz)

I found this on Valve Development Community for hl2 static models, it includes a few extra steps, but I didn't try it yet:

5) Make 1 bone by clicking on the very center (0,0,0) and then right clicking. It'll create 2 joints (1 bone). (Check screen shot)

6) Apply a physique modifier to your model and attach your simple rig as the node.

7) Click the plus next to Physique in the modifier list and select vertex.

8) Select all of the verts and click assign to link. Then click the green plus symbol, set "Blending between links" to "No Blending", and click on your bottom bone at 0,0,0. All the verts should turn green.

edit: NEVERMIND! I was trying to move the box, not move the bottom of the bone as instructed! : ) (finishing now)

use the Cut tool for that. it allows you to draw edges on the faces for more detailed editing.

So would that (cut tool) allow me to draw a box on the body and extrude the pickups?
And... your model puts mine to shame already
But i'll work until mine is complete.

Yay! I maded crates! = )touch it

The only thing I had to add to the .qc file was a texture called null.bmp to get it to work. does this mean I left faces untextured?

Anyway, Thanks so much for the tutorial! = )

rim: bbcode format for tutorials:

[b] [i] [u] [s]

heading

[list]
[li]list item[/li]
[li]list item[/li]
[li]list item[/li]
[/list]

[green]
[yellow]
[red]

[ent] - Entity. This tag is used for entities. For example, 'func_wall'.
[ins] - Instructions. This tag is used when giving specific instructions to the user. Useful for keyboard shortcuts and the like.
[val] - Value. This tag is used for data values. Things like important numbers and similar.
[prop] - Property. This tag is used for properties. Can be used for entity information.

So would that (cut tool) allow me to draw a box on the body and extrude the pickups?

Yeah, that can be used for that, but for minor details I wouldn't mesh it. I'd just make and element of the model rather than something meshed in.

Example:These two boxes are two elements attached to eachother. So if i click either part, the whole model is selected as one.And these two are meshed. physically welded and put together. They count as 1 element.

Also, an element can only have smoothing groups within itself. Two elements on the same smoothing group will be smoothed seperately.

The only thing I had to add to the .qc file was a texture called null.bmp to get it to work. does this mean I left faces untextured?

Yes, the untextured faces are textured with a Null texture fail safe. However this doesn't null the faces from being drawn like in hammer. They just receive the null texture and the poly count doesn't change.

EDIT:
@ Penguinboy:
Is that posted anywhere else? I didn't know about any of that until just know. Might be helpful if people can type that stuff in before submitting.

Unless I missed it somewhere...

Sweet. The pickups and bridge won't be too bad since they'll just be laid on top, But The neck is being a supreme P.I.T.A.
I can't get it

rim, that markup is only valid for twhl3, which is coming very soon.

yeah the way you're advertising it. I'll just go about my business and wake up to a brand new TWHL 3 one morning.

is there a way to subdivide a face? i keep subdividing the whole damn thing instead.

Select the face and click the tesselate tool? i think that might be what you need. not sure what your asking tho.

I MAEDED PIPES AND WELDS AND SMOOTHEDED!...Tetsu0: if you mean like add verticies (in hammer ctrl + f) try this:

**Slice the plane like Rim showed us (I tried just selecting 2 edges and JUST slicing those, but it slices through everything still).

**Now the face/polygon is split, but you have 2 sets of verticies.

**Select all the verticies you just sliced/made and weld

Now the "face" is split in too. If you actually want to manipulate "faces" you can, but not in editable poly. In editable poly there is no face option fsr...

Rim: What's the difference between editable mesh/ploly? When I modelled in gmax eons ago, I always used mesh, but your editable poly ways seem much easier. = )

haha. sweettt. Got my guitar neck finished. Now i have to work out the kinks where the headstock meets the neck.

Here's a quick render:

great pipes and great guitar!

you guys are picking up on this quickly!

Now the difference between Mesh and Poly is Oldskool and Newskool.

Polies will work better since you don't have to deal with every face's triangle. In poly they are done automatically, plus the tools are updated.

As far as adding Vertexes, the Edge, Border, and Face parameters all have a big [ Insert Vertex ] Button.

http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/9550/insertvertexxu5.jpg

I wish I could... ... ...

Phooey on modelling, teach these people how to animate

he's getting to that

That's enormously useful Rimrook... It even creates the the connecting edges, sweet. I'm beginning to see what you mean by the polys being more advanced

All this new knowledge and I can't think of anything to make... I've been looking through blueprints of Russian battle tanks from WW2 on, but nothing's inspiring me. I think I'll just jump in and start cloning-draggin edges and see what comes up!

How about.. creating the terminator head you've got as your icon. That should keep you occupied for a month.. or six.

I'm working on the basic texturing tutorial. Unwrapping isn't hard, its just explaining it.

coool! can't wait

yeah, i've tried modeling, uvmaps always gave me a shitload.

i'll be sure to rush that to completion then.

rather nifty... i shall use these in the future, nice job

Here's an update of my progress:I re-built the body using the line technique. Cut around the body and recessed the outside edges to give the body the 'sharpened' look.

Added in the neck, pickups, and hole for the Floyd-rose bridge.

Items needed to be added:
2 Volume knobs
Floyd-rose bridge + Tremolo (whammy) bar
3-way switch (non functional, so it's a stick basically)
tuning hardware.

And Rimrook, could i just add a plain going down the neck and texture it with a transparent texture with strings instead of just creating the strings from polygons themselves?

Face count: 121
polygon count +/- 60?

Noob question, sorry.

But where can i get 3D studio max?

HLMapper: It's not free, but there are other ways to get it, but things liek that should be discussed points elsewhere... <cough cou-Bit-uu-Torr-uu-ent-h cough>

Tetsu0: looks sweet, is that with mesh smooth?

Rimrook: I'm having problems with getting the viewport backgrounds images to work correctly. They bork and rescale, and even though I made there proportions in photoshop perfect I can't get them to show up even in the correct proportions in max, not to mention the random distortions and having to hit ctrl-alt-shift-B (longest SHORTCUT evar) to update them.

Is there an easier way?

Also having a problem with getting the snap settings to my lieking (moar like Hammer grid snap). (like if you turn off snap and move something, and then turn it back on and try to snap to a grid point, it won't seem to do it)

I've been going through the max 7 bible and trying stuff, but this interface is so overly complicated and counter-intuitive (at least compared to my familiarity to hammer) that I'm not even sure what I'm doin half the time lawl!

Here's my current snap-related settings:

-Use Axis Constraints [on}
-Reference Coordinate system [constant]
-snaps set to: gridlines and vertex
-what is grid nudge distance (can you "nudge" objects like in hammer?)
-grid nudge distance set to 0

Sorry for the long-winded post, The truck comes for me soon. = )

edit: I got the snapping problem sorted, but don't ask me what I did, cuz I don't know! : ) I am curious how you run your snaps tho Rim.