Splines are an often-overlooked aspect of 3ds max when it comes to game art. Most people know that you can use a spline for a wire - but you can also use it for things like grooves, whole objects like handles, and even text! In this tutorial, we'll take a look at some of these advanced ways that splines can be used to save a lot of time on tasks that would otherwise have to be done by hand.
Using Splines to Add Detail to Your High-Poly Model in 3ds Max
Sep 7th in 3D Art, Autodesk 3Ds Max by Ben Bolton
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )imsraaia September 7th
Nice…
( )v Ralle v September 7th
The sweep modifier was new for me, never used it before. Thanks for the tips
( )Markerman September 7th
Hi Ben
Really great tutorial, I learned a lot…. To solve the problem of the normals flipping, it all has to do with the order of the vertices of your spline. So before sweeping you can change the order of vertices of the spline by going into vertex mode, show the vertex numbers, select the vertex at the opposite side of your spline and make this one the first with the make first command. This will flip your normals so no collapse is required.
Rgds, Mark
( )Rob September 7th
Great tut! Another way to flip normals on splin is to just draw your spline in the other direction
( )Nysuatro September 7th
Nice indeed. How about using splines on organic stuff ?
( )PIXEL.VASCO September 7th
EXCELLENT TUTORIAL …… PROBABLY ONE OF THE MOST TALENTED ARTIST AROUND CGTUTS.
( )Wes Burke September 8th
It was great to see the sweep modifier, I have never used that myself.
( )Rodrigo September 8th
Great Tut…
You can also flip the normals using the normal modifier, that way there´s no need to colapse it or change the vertex order…
( )Kaj September 8th
Thanks for these excellent tips.
( )Totally had forgotten about the Sweep Modifier. Endless of posibilities with it and thanks for added that about the Text and Sweep combined. Probably something I could have gone nuts over.
whaling September 9th
very handy
thanks
you can also add a normal modifier to flip the faces without having to collapse the stack
( )Naftali September 10th
There is a way to scale in sweep modifier…
you need to enter to edit spline and select all the spline… then scale it.
that would do the job.
does anyone know a good tutorial for baking floating geometry?
( )Mickatt September 10th
Thanks for posting .
( )I have some problems with your tutorial because It can’t work if you add a raytrace shadow or a GI because the sweep objects are just on top of the box and it create a casting shadow on it or a bounce GI.
Thanks for your answers me if I am wrong.
Ps: sorry for my english
Kaleb Aylsworth September 10th
Floating geometry is not meant to be rendered using any kind of advanced lighting (GI, raytraced shadows, final gather, photons etc). This is because it is a technique to quickly add detail to your high-poly model….but ONLY if that model is going to be used for baking normal maps that will later be applied to a low-poly video game model. If you are not familiar with normal maps, and their purpose, then I suggest you watch some normal map tutorials before trying to use the techniques Ben uses in this tutorial.
( )aphexx September 10th
thank you ben! sweep is cool, also the trick with floating carved in details is cool. i never realized, that these ones do not have to be welded in!
( )Mickatt September 10th
I agree with you Kaleb .
( )I usually use high poly modeling for TVC and I sometime have some close up shot on object thats why I don’t use normal map.
Best regards Michael
Panayot September 10th
“Splines are an often-overlooked aspect of 3ds max”. I completely agree with this. People use only a percentage of the magic of Splines. This is a step in the right direction. Finally somebody (game artist!) bothered to show piece of the spline power.
( )Jeremy2112 September 10th
Im missing whats happens at 2:00, when you decap and grab the inner border. when you scale that border in, it is extruding faces behind it. Am I missing a hotkey that you hit before scaling?. It happens a couple of more times on the outer border as well.
( )Kaleb Aylsworth September 10th
If you select any open edge in 3ds Max, you can hold “Shift”, and then either scale or translate (move) the edge, and it will drag a face out from that edge.
Hope that’s what you meant:)
( )aphexx September 11th
me again.
i just used your method, but ran into a problem, when using the spline technique.
if u use “flying” geo in you highpolys, then the AO baking will no more work.
you get AO shadows under the flying geo.
( )you are forced to bake AO’s of underlying mesh and “flying” mesh seperately, and then comp them together in PS.
Ben Bolton September 17th
Yeah, that can happen. Interestingly I don’t run into that problem often myself, I’m not sure why; it might have something to do with backfaces not counting for occlusion. Anyway, if you do run into problems with it, there are a few options.
You could paint the ao out manually in photoshop – how easy this is changes a lot from piece to piece.
You could also bake a color map, with the model black and the floating geo a bright color like red, and then use that red in photoshop to get a selection for the floating geo. You can then use things like inner and outer glow to fake the ao.
( )Mihai September 12th
one thing… when you use custom selection for a sweep modifier, you can scale it. Just select the shape that was swept, enter the sub-object level (spline for example) and scale it there.
( )daniel September 12th
thanks for the tut, interesting. How do you go about baking it?. I guess thats another tutorial though. And I guess the are available if I do a little search.
( )f0ru0l0rd September 12th
I have been stuck making my splines the wrong sizes for ages, and having to do another crappy work around. THANK YOU for this WONDERFUL time saving tip!
( )Ray September 15th
Thanks for the tutorial, i wasn’t aware of the floating geo trick, which is neat.
Maybe showing the baking progress would have been appropriate showing so many floating geo elements.
To do the hinges i’d rather instance 4 chamfer cylinders, as I’m not as quick with modeling shortcuts. Depends on your preference i guess.
Why did you collapse all your stacks? I would have just kept the stack and put a normal-modifier on top to flip. Keeping things non-destructive…
( )Ben Bolton September 17th
I didn’t even know there was a modifier for normal-switches, I’ll look into that. That does sound like a far better solution!
As for the baking, I just didn’t want to be redundant, as I’ve already done a baking video here with floating geometry as part of the Knife series.
( )Kasper September 15th
Too fast!!
Nice tho.
( )beartraps September 24th
The part around 8:30 when u turn the spline into a cylinder.. u know if there is a way to do that in maya?
( )Joseph Mckernan October 18th
You sneaky ba***rd! Thanks for the great tutorial man. I plan on using these techniques a lot!
I think someone once said.. “Float like geometry, sting like a bee”.
( )johnyhuska October 25th
many thx mate nice work
( )Seth October 29th
you could also add a edit poly modifier to the stack to flip normals without collapsing. For baking a AO map you can use Light tracer to avoid weird stuff happening under your floating geometery.
( )Martin November 2nd
Hi Ben, thanks for the tutorial. You are fast man, I dont know how many times I had to stop the vid and go back….Great thing with the shortcuts.
( )