GMAX

Getting Started: A Guide to Basic Modeling - Pepper

In this tutorial an introduction to G-Max is provided, an a beginners guide to getting started modeling

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What is G-Max? The best way to explain it is to ask Discreet, the creatos of G-max, here is what they say:

"Gmax® is a free 3D modeling and animation tool based on Discreet's award-winning 3ds max® software. Built for gamers to create their own in-game content for gmax ready games, a gamer can produce everything from characters and vehicles to landscapes and props. Not only do you get to customize your games, you also learn 3D design within a professional-level tool.

Or put simply (in my words), G-Max is a stripped down version of 3dstudiomax. You wont be able to render scenes, create movies etc. But it is a very powerfull modeling tool, if used properly. And i will explain how the need-to-know things work. Before i start to tell what everthing does you need a registration key to be able to use G-max. Get it here: G-Max.

You will need to register your copy of G-Max, but dont worry! Its free!.

In the rest of the tutorial i will asume you have a fully working copy of the latest version of G-Max on your computer.

As soon as you open up G-Max you might be overwhelmed by the complex interface, this is also one of the reasons people think it has a very high learning curve. In reality it isnt that hard, just learn the basic functions first, and where you want you can fiddle around with the other tools to find out what they do.

Here is a list of the tool we will use. I wont go in-depth with the other tools, since discreet supplied a few dodgy tutorials with G-max that explain some of the other functions.

Here is a picture of the default layout of G-max.


Most of the things we will ignore, I'll explain the functions you need to know.


With these buttons you control the viewport(view your working in),from left to right:

red: You use this to zoom in, click and drag in a viewport and it will zoom in.
green: Use this to move the view, click and drag in a viewport and it will move.
bleu: In your active viewport a yellow circle will appear, click and drag in the circle and you can move the view.

Next: The creation tab, in this box we will create objects. Most of the tools you will use are located there. I will only explain the tools we will use.

Creation tab


Object type:In this box you select the primitives you want to create, a primitive is a basic shape, a box, cone or plane. Click on the box and drag in the viewport of your chose. If you did everything right you created a box!
See below for a small explenation in pictures.

Name and color: In this box you specify the colour in the viewport and the object name, if you leave it blank it will name a box box1, box2 etc.

A small explenation of creating objects:







Now that was easy isnt it?

Lets make out standard house out of it. We will do this by using a edit mesh, there are serval ways to go around editing primitives in G-max but il explain my personal favorite.

Remember our creation tab? With the box still selected move on to the second tab, this is how it looks when selected:



As you can see there is not much to do in there yet, that is because we need to convert our primitive to a editeble model, i prefer using a edit mesh, here is how we do that:

1. Still in the modify tab you should see a box with the words modifier list in it and a small arrow pointing down on the right of it.
Click on the arrow, a list with all sort of words appears, these words are modifiers. We use this to edit a primitive in a way we enjoy.
Scroll down up to edit mesh. And click on it.

If you did everything as i told then there should be a whole list of new options, i wont explain all of the option.



This is what you should get, i always minimalize the selection box, that is the upper one in the list. To select a vertex or polygon i always use the editmesh properties, you can open those by clicking on the small + in front of the edit mesh.



At first the words vertex , polygon and face may b confusing, but its quiet simple.
polygon:A polygon, also know as a triangle always consists of 3 points, the so called vertexes. Between these 3 points it will create a solid surface that is visible to the human eye.

face: A face is the same as a polygon, except that a face is 3 or more vertexes and can have a unlimited amount of vertexes.

vertex: a point in space, this defines the edge of a polygon/face.

If this still confuse you i can help you out quikly.
Back in G-max we go to the perspective viewport. Right click on the perspective word and a menu should pop-up.
Scroll down to edged faces and click on it. Now we can see the edges of the polygons and faces.



Back to the edit mesh, click on vertex. As soon as you click on it the viewport changed, it shows 4 bleu points on the outer edges of our box. This is what the vertexes are.

But, i promised that we would create a house, so lets get on with it.

In the edit mesh modifier select the face mode.
In the viewport click on the top of the box, the edges of the selected face should turn red.

We want a angled roof, so we need to extrude it, this is how we do it: 1. we will need to switch to the selection mode, do thos by clicking on the 4-way arrow on the top of your screen.
2. Select the top polygon of your box. 3. In the edit geometry tab click on extrude. 4. Back in your viewport click and drag the select face, it should move up and create 5 new faces.

Here is how i did it:







All we need to do now is to make a angled roof of it. Here is how we are going to do that.

Earlier i told you to go into polygon mode, now we are going to use vertex mode, in the same tab we used to select the polygon mode we can select the vertex mode, do that.

We need to weld the top vertexes to create a roof. To weld go back to the edit geometry tab. Scroll down to weld, we will use the target weld, but 0,1 is much to small to reach the other vertex, most of the time i change this to 1000. select the first 2 of the upper vertexes to weld. You can select a vertex by dragging a box around it. To add something to your selection hold control and click, to remove from your selection repeat the step wiht alt. When you got the vertexes selected weld them, repeat these steos for the other end of the roof. Here are pictures to help you understand the welding:





Look!! A house!! But, with a bit of imagination you can do a lot more. watch this:



Here is how i did this, i selected the 2 roof parts, i extruded them, Then i select the new sides of the roof and extruded them again. Thats all!! As most people you want to get your models into game, but discreet tryed to make it as hard as possible for people to get there models into the game if there isnt a game pack. To find out wich games are supported by G-max look here: