From the course: 3ds Max 2024 Essential Training

Deforming an object with a modifier - 3ds Max Tutorial

From the course: 3ds Max 2024 Essential Training

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Deforming an object with a modifier

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In this chapter we'll explore Parametric Modeling with Modifiers. Parametric Modeling uses simple instructions or parameters that are reversible or non-destructive. The simplest example is a Parametric Deformer modifier such as Taper, Twist, or Bend. In the next few movies we'll explore a Parametric Modeling workflow with Modifiers and we'll learn about the modifier stack in the process. I've got a monitor screen here for a computer. I want to create a stand for that screen. And to begin that, I've got a box that's already ready to go. So I'll select that. And in the command panel, we have the name and color rollout, where we can rename the selected object. I'll call it Monitor Stand. And press Enter. Let's add a taper deformer. One way to add a deformer is from the Modifiers menu. menu, we can go to modifiers and we have parametric deformers, but I do prefer to use the modifier stack. I'll go over to the modify panel and in the modifier list, click on that pull-down list and type in a TA and we go straight to taper. Click on that to add the taper deformer and we see we have an orange box around our geometry. It's a little bit hard to see sometimes because the selection and highlighting kind of fights with the orange gizmo box. But that is the gizmo which will allow us to sort of visualize the effect. And we can go into our modifier here and start making changes. In order to see something, we'll need a non-zero taper amount. We can increase the taper amount. Just click and drag and bring that up. Maybe set that to a round value of 1. And we are seeing a taper effect. We can orbit around in our perspective view, Alt and middle mouse and take a look. But it's not tapering in the dimension that I want. And as seen in the top view, I want my box to be tapered along its y-axis, which happens to be the world's y-axis. So I want to change the taper axis down here. We've got primary and effect. Primary sets the sort of longitudinal axis of that taper effect. Let's set that to y. And now we're seeing in the top view then I'm tapering in the object's y-axis, which again happens to be the world y-axis. The tapering is occurring in two dimensions. You can see in the left view, we're also tapering the height. I really only want to taper the width, and that corresponds to the x-axis of the object. Down here we see effect, and it's defaulted to xz in this case. If I chose z, then we'd only taper the height. We can see that here in the left viewport, and there's no tapering happening in the top view or the world's x-axis. But that's what I want. I want to taper in the object x-axis, so click on Effect, X. And now we have more or less the result that we want. We can play around with the taper amount and get different results. I want some curvature to this. I want this to be kind of an interesting design. There is a curve parameter, and I can increase that, And we'll see that at some values, the curve will give a result in the gizmo. We can see, say I set that curve to negative 2.2 or so. The gizmo is curved. But in this case, the actual box is not curved. We have a straight line here instead of a nice soft curve. That's simply because the box has no segmentation in that axis. And that's the way polygons work. If we want to have curvature, we're we're going to need to have points, edges, and polygons in which to resolve that curvature. In other words, we need more level of detail running in this axis. Because this is a parametric object and we haven't converted it to editable, we can still change the segmentation of the box. We can go into our modifier stack, select the box, and if Show End Result is on, we can see that as we increase the number of length segments, we'll start to resolve some curvature there. Fewer segments will result in a more blocky curve. More segments, of course, will give us a higher resolution to the shape. You can set that segments to something like, let's say, 40. We can adjust the position of that modifier relative to the object, and that will give us curvature in different areas on the object and change the shape. To do that, we'll want to go back up to the taper modifier and open up its sub-object types by clicking on the right-facing arrow. Open that up, and we have two sub-object types for a taper deformer, gizmo and center. And in this case, they'll accomplish the exact same thing. So it doesn't really matter which one we choose. I'll choose gizmo. And now the gizmo highlights in yellow instead of orange. And we're automatically dropped into the Select and Move tool. If we click and drag on the y-axis here in the top view, let's right-click so we don't lose our selection. We can drag on that y-axis, and we and see how we're able to change the center of that taper effect. And that's going to have an influence on exactly how that object is going to be formed. And let's give this just a numeric value for the position. I'm going to set it to a y position of 40 centimeters and press Enter. Next, we can apply limits to this effect. So the curvature will be constrained within a certain area. want to exit out of gizmo sub-object mode, just click on gizmo once again. We've got some limits here. Enable limit effect, and we can play around with the upper and lower limits. And if we give these both a negative value, we'll start to see something corresponding to some limits. The taper effect is only constrained within the lines of those limits. Okay, let's put in some numeric values once again. I'll set the upper limit to a value of 0 cm, and press Tab, and set the lower limit to negative 50 cm, and press Enter. And now I've got the result that I want, where we've got some tapering that's occurring in this area, but there's no tapering up here. Finally, I'll adjust the amount of my taper. Once again, we can click and drag on that amount. Let's enter a numerical value here, too. We'll set the taper amount to 2.2. And also let's adjust our curve. We'll press Tab. We'll set the curve to negative 2. And that's giving the result that I was hoping for. OK, finally, I can just change the height of the box because I want to have a very short object here. So I'll go back to the box and bring its height down. We'll set that to a value of 0.5 centimeters. And that's an introduction to how to apply a parametric deformer to change the shape of an object.

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