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nerseus · Joined: 27 Mar 2007 Posts: 2008 Location: USA

Creating a Room in 3ds Max
The following links are to step-by-step guides for creating a furniture room in 3ds max.

Room Tutorial Part 1 - Creating a Basic Room
Room Tutorial Part 2 - Multiple Materials
Room Tutorial Part 3 - Lights and Furniture Nodes

Part 1 is currently available as a video OR screenshots with text. Parts 2 and 3 are just video for now, but I will convert to screenshots soonish.

What Each Guide Contains
Part 1 is a complete step-by-step guide to creating a basic room with a light, camera, furniture nodes and a single texture.

Part 2 expands on that by adding multiple textures.

Part 3 expands even further to tweak a light and add wall and ceiling nodes (with proper orientation).

Going forward
I had planned to add more parts, but haven't yet made the time. Remaining parts would be:
* Adding Vertex Lighting
* Adding a custom avatar pose/animation (you CAN use the furniture tutorial as they are almost identical)
* Adding room animation - idle and triggered
* Adding a prop action - combining avatar and room animation

-ner

Thank you,
ner

yokoed · Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5110 Location: USA - PA

Awesome ner. Razz

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XxoVoxX_disabled_40584896 · Joined: 21 Aug 2009 Posts: 12 Location: South Africa

This is Brilliant, exactly what i was looking for Very Happy

Thank you Ner. Also Thank you very much for helping me out and giving me the link this this thread Yokoed, much appreciated Very Happy

XxoVoxX_disabled_40584896 · Joined: 21 Aug 2009 Posts: 12 Location: South Africa

Hi Ner,

I noticed when downloading your files which you added to guide us that the following files:

TestRoomFinishedPart1.zip
TestRoomFinishedPart2.zip
TestRoomFinishedPart3.zip

When you click on them to download they all come up as the same file saying:

TestRoomFinishedPart1.zip

If its ment to be like that then i apologise Smile

Another thing i'd like to know is what version of 3d Max are you using? as i tried to open up the above files and keep getting this error.

"Unknown class, no stand-in: SuperID =0xB60, Class ID=(0x4A0C66E1,01513165)"

I read through your First tutorial, its amazing, very informative and easy to understand, thank you for all the time and effort put into this to help others out Very Happy

nerseus · Joined: 27 Mar 2007 Posts: 2008 Location: USA

Ah, thanks XxoVoxX. I'm fixing the links now. And... I'm using Max 2008. I *will* remake these tomorrow in Max 7 so everyone can see the (horribly) awesome texture work Razz

I'll update when the links are pointing to Max 7 files Smile

-ner

twistednanny · Joined: 29 Sep 2007 Posts: 2723 Location: Thailand

Thanks for the useful information and tips :8
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nerseus · Joined: 27 Mar 2007 Posts: 2008 Location: USA

Fixed the links to the sample room files - should be 3 separate links now Smile

I also remade each file using Max 7 (instead of Max 2008). Let me know if this doesn't work for you!

-ner

temptii · Joined: 12 May 2007 Posts: 1319 Location: Australia

YaY!!! Awesome tuts... and very appreciated.. Smile

MadamHaggie · Joined: 20 Jun 2007 Posts: 32 Location: USA - OH

*sharp intake of breath otherwise known as a gasp!* Ners!!! You mean... you... you.... you do more than party jesus and the hilarious Paint Train???? *thud* And just when I thought you couldn't get more awesomer! This truly kicks hiney, my friend! I can't wait to give 'er a try....
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nerseus · Joined: 27 Mar 2007 Posts: 2008 Location: USA

shh... the first rule of party jesus is... we don't talk about party jesus.

There are a bunch more tuts on the main tut page. Well... two links in.

First is the 3D Program Tutorials thread.

That thread links to the older thread which got renamed: The List of 3D Meshing Groups.

That "Meshing Groups" thread is really the old tutorial thread. If you go through that, page by page, there are a ton of tutorials, including some of my older vids on page 4. Sorry - just max stuff. Party Jesus and whatnot are only on my homepage Razz

-ner

IchalNova · Joined: 26 Jun 2009 Posts: 2 Location: USA

very helpful, i do have one problem though. when i was creating a simple room i couldn't get the texture to apply correctly. it shows up and doesn't stretch or skew at all, it's just backwards. i followed the steps in the video to correct this but no luck. Could the problem be that i'm using studio 8? i noticed that it said you were using 7 so i thought that may be the problem. sorry for sounding newbish im still fairly new to 3ds max, it's way different than blender thats for sure. any help on this problem would be appreciated.

nerseus · Joined: 27 Mar 2007 Posts: 2008 Location: USA

@Karriban:
The "backwards" texture is explained and expected, based on how I make the mesh. It's also fairly easily fixed by applying the UVW Mapping modifier and setting the mapping mode to Box.

To understand why this was a problem, it's important to note that polygons all have a "front" and a "back". That is, imagine a polygon like a piece of weird paper. If the "front" of the paper is facing you, you see it. If you turn the paper around, it disappears. So imagine a box made of 6 pieces of such paper, each side pointing "out". If you're holding this box in front of you, it looks like a box. But if you built the box with all 6 sides facing the other way, then those sides that are closest to you would be invisible and you'd instead see the "backside" of the box. It's a strange concept - 1-sided polygons - but important for lots of reasons as a mesher Smile

So... the issue is that I used a Box as a starting object - each side faces out. I "flipped" the box inside out so that it would become a room. That also has the effect of flipping the texture mapping. Luckily a "box" is a standard primitive and there is a UVW Mapping modifier that you can apply which will apply a texture mapping to each face that is NOT reversed.

If I'd built the room using planes or other objects I probably would never have had to flip the faces and thus the textures would be straight. But then, there would be a good chance that I'd need to fix textures in other ways. In a later room tutorial I show how to apply some tiling to one wall, for example. It's all part of basic Max functionality to map textures to a surface and there are many many ways to do that Smile

-ner

IchalNova · Joined: 26 Jun 2009 Posts: 2 Location: USA

i understand why they textures are backwards, i'm new to 3ds max not modeling all together XD. i meant i wasn't aware if there were any problems with studio 8 that required a patch. anyway i managed to fix it, turns out i had the graphics settings for 3ds max set up wrong, and it wasn't showing the effect of the UVW mapping modifier, and a few other things that were fixed by correcting the graphics set up. all textures apply fine now, thx again for your helpful tutorial Razz

yokoed · Joined: 22 Mar 2006 Posts: 5110 Location: USA - PA

Watching your video is a great help for those who need this information, but it leads me to a question.

I know and submitted many rooms to the catalog and was taught to link the camera01.01.root, camera01.01.root.target & omni light to the node room which is linked to the skeleton.room and was wondering why you don't include that in your video.

Has me thinking that maybe it's not necessitary could you elaborate?

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Arezeon · Joined: 06 Jan 2009 Posts: 5000 Location: USA - MA

will the back wards texture problem not go if I tick on 2 sided in the previewer ?
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