Some 3D artists like to say that 3D design is the art of the use of editable meshes.

We will see the modern use of editable meshes here in this lesson. It's a simple step by step lesson. You will try to create a shark, a very basic shark, only for didatic purposes. Lets go:

1 - Create a box with the proportion:

• length = 3;
• width = 1;
• height = 1.

2 - Without liberate the figure (don't right click) change the values(look the previous figure):

• Length Segs = 3;
• Width Segs = 3;
• Height Segs = 3.

3 - Select the Box in the the Perspective view and click F4 The mesh appears in this view too.

4 - Right click in any view ans select: Convert to Editable Poly Editable Poly is new in 3ds max 4 and is similar to the old Editable Mesh. It has a "plus"..

5 - Open the list Editable Poly and click Vertex ( We will work only using vertex in this exercice).

6 - Enlarge the Perspective view. Right click and select: Extrude Polygon. Re-click Vertex.

7 - Click in one of the four vertex of the central polygon in the front part of the box and "pull" it draging the pointer. Do the same with each one of the other 3 vertexes.

8 - Create a new box in the central polygon of the superior part of "the sark" and repeat all the steps that we saw until now. Draging the vertexes, you will create the "dorsal fin".

9 - Returning to the basic box try to model "the tail".

10 - Create 3 clones of the dorsal fin: they are the new fins:

Until now we have "the shark" (it's only a basic image of a shark for didatic purposes) but it looks very "bloky" because it was defined with so few polygons. A real professional 3D object has many, many polygons.

Well... We will try to do it better:

1 - Select the body of the shark.

2 - Open the Modifier List - we have used it before - and find: Subdivision Surfaces | Mesh Smooth. Click.

3 - In the rollout section Subdivision Amount set: Iterations = 1. (Don't try nothing upper than 3!)

It's not a perfect sharp to a "sea" but can be used in some places.

We have a free webcourse only about 3ds max mesh modeling. Go to the site web page to find it.

To open the demo, click in the button:

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