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Model a Modern Spiral Staircase in 3ds Max

on Dec 19th 2009 with 63 comments
Tutorial Details

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

In this tutorial Ben Tate will demonstrate his approach to modeling a modern style spiral staircase in 3d Studio Max. The main focus will be spline modeling, although Ben will reiterate some of the more common poly modeling techniques too.

We will begin the tutorial by creating one of the steps and a simple railing post, and then look at cloning and positioning these objects into the necessary spiral pattern. Once that has been achieved, we will discuss how we can create and align the stair railing. Then, with the staircase complete, we will move on to create a hole in the upper floor for our staircase to pass through, and finish off the top landing by adding a circular railing. Finally, we will make any required adjustments to our splines, and finish the project off by organizing our scene.

Additional Files/ Plugins:

  • Download the Reference Materials for this tutorial

      • Video 1

      Download

      Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.

      Video 2

      Download

      Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.

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By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

Ben is one half (literally) of the editor duo here at Cgtuts+. Ben has over eight years of experience in the computer graphics field and although he's primarily a hard surface modeler, he's also experienced in the fields of uvmapping, texturing, lighting and rendering. He has authored many tutorials and training materials focused on 3d Studio Max and hard surface modeling. You can check out Ben's website at bentateonline.com to see more of his work.  

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  • Andrey

    thanks a lot, Ben.

  • Andrey

    first video is not match what it does match. in first video we are modeling rpg

    • Asdf

      That was from Chris Tate, this is from Ben Tate.

    • http://kaleb-3d.com Kaleb Aylsworth

      Fixed. Sorry bout that!

  • krloz

    the first video download is wrong, i think is the video from another tuto

  • Sasha

    Thanks Ben!

  • temtem

    thanks for the tut. i like the technique you used instead of the helix. also it’s good idea that the poles are splines, but you didn’t take the full advantage of these two ideas i think.
    i rather weld the first pole and the first vertex of the rail and also create a line between the last vetex of the side rail and the upper one, and weld the verts, so it’s one continues. than convert it to a poly and chamfer the loops of the sharp edges.
    anyway. it’s a great tutorial as usual so keep up! Can’t wait till the next. :)

    • http://www.bentateonline.com Ben Tate
      Author

      Hey Temtem, Thanks for the comments and that sounds like a good idea! You could definitely weld most of the rails together to make it continuous. A few of the staircases I originally looked at for reference, actually had separated stair and top railings. But a lot of them were also made from a single piece….so either way will look right.

      If you do weld them together, you could also try using ‘Fillet’ on the adjoining vert to get a smoother corner, rather then chamfering the edges…The reason I used chamfer in the tutorial for the top corner was just because ‘Fillet’ would have moved the rail out of alignment with the corresponding post and taken quite a bit of extra time to cleanup…so that’s something to be careful of. Also I didn’t weld any verts together that were hidden inside the posts, just because it wasn’t really necessary :) Cheers!

      • alik

        What i can say you are a good artist. I am painting all my life and I now what i talking about. Thanks for help.

  • http://www.alkabeergrafix.com Asim

    1st video is irrelevant… please check it.

    • Abojung

      what do you guys mean by 1st video. before watching any tuts, u guys sud learn who is the author. if u guys are talking about the RPG tut, that was posted by Chris tate, and this one is by Ben tate. my advice is to know the author, rather than comlain on silly stuffs.
      good one Ben, ur brothes are doing a fine job,,,

      • Kyle

        What in the world are you talking about? You might want to read what your saying after you type it. The first link for downloading “Video 1″ is actually a link for the RPG modeling tutorial Chris Tate put out, this is “Model a Modern Spiral Staircase in 3ds Max” and the link to the first video is for the other tutorial.

      • http://kaleb-3d.com Kaleb Aylsworth

        Actually they were right. The video in the flash player was the correct one, but the download link was sending them to the RPG video file by Chris.

  • Tom

    Great tutorial :) Thanks! keep them coming (:

  • Marek

    Ben makes excellent, moron-proof tutorials. Recognized Your voice since I ran into one of Your earlier tutorials about modelling a sink with plump handles. Simple when someone guides You this good.

  • Fuad

    i want to thank both Ben and Chris Tate for there great tutorials … but actually there is something wrong when i try to download the first Download because it simply downloads the first part of Chris Tate tutorial of the RPG Launcher one .. so maybe someone could check this thing out .. thx and best regards

    • http://kaleb-3d.com Kaleb Aylsworth

      This has already been resolved since before you posted this comment. Perhaps you should clear your browser cache, and try downloading it again.

      • Fuad

        yes it has been resolved just tried it and it works !! thx

  • Alex

    When do we get tutorials for MAYA…. in the internet are alot of tutorials for 3dMAX but not for MAYA :(((( …. Still i watched the tutorial :) …. it was great 10 points from ….nice work :)

  • Hildevar

    Great tuts as usual…

  • http://www.aschile.net Renato

    Gosh, took me like 5 hours to follow the entire tutorial but I made it, it looks great! :)

    Just need to add some texture.

  • http://www.youtube.com/mikkelholmabrahamsen Mikkel Abrahamsen

    When I use the fillet tool on a vertex in a edit. spline, the new verticies scale/move at a different rate.

    . * .

    . = new vertex
    *= fillet’d vertex

    What’s wrong?

    • http://www.youtube.com/mikkelholmabrahamsen Mikkel Abrahamsen

      Okay my spacing of the symbols didn’t work, but my question still stands. Fillet not spacing the verticies the same length from the beginning point.

      • http://www.bentateonline.com Ben Tate
        Author

        Hey Mikkel, That’s a weird one :) I’ve never actually seen that happen before. I’m not sure what could be causing it…Maybe try changing the vertex type before using fillet, you can do that by right clicking on the vert and setting it to something else, like smooth or bezier, etc… Just be careful it’s not going to effect the position or curve of your spline too much…Then try using fillet again….I’m not sure if this will have any effect or not….My only other suggestion is to just manually adjust the vertex position after using fillet to fix the spacing… Sorry I couldn’t be of more help :)

  • Rune Egeland

    When these tuts come, you can’t watch them without leaving a comment! Absolutely the best tutorials on the web!

    Thanks again Ben!

  • http://www.bentateonline.com Ben Tate
    Author

    Hey guys! Thanks for the great comments and I’m sorry to hear that there was a small problem with one of the videos, but it sounds like it’s all fixed now:) …. So I hope everyone’s finding the tutorial helpful and getting a good result out of it:) Thanks again!

  • http://colourvault.com CAMS

    i spyed a pole not aligned properly ;) heh. good tut mate learned good few things i didnt know :D

  • Melchor

    HELLO BEN YOU INSPIRE ME AS A BEGINNER 3D USER AN IT HELP A LOT. THAT WAS SO GREAT ! AND THANKS TUTS TEAM..

  • Eliecer

    thanks for the tutorial and specially for sharing your knowledge !
    happy holidays!

  • paurras

    Ben wait a tutorial materials and rendering. THX

  • http://www.youtube.com/mikkelholmabrahamsen Mikkel Abrahamsen

    I just want to reply and say that I fixed my problem, I had in my eagerness not noticed that two verticies weren’t welded and on different Z planes. I deleted the spline, tried again and it worked.

    Ben Tate, please don’t ever stop making tutorials – best of the kind!!

  • Andrew Cooke

    I have a problem. I’m stuck on the part where you’re making the railing by attaching the line vertices to the top of the poles. I have the line with all the vertices on it and I have snap toggle on with only vertices checked off, but every time I try and snap one of the verts to the top of one of the poles it only moves on one of the (x,y,z) directions. It’s probably happening cause I pressed some shortcut on the keyboard but I can’t figure out what it was.

    • http://www.bentateonline.com Ben Tate
      Author

      Hey Andrew, Sorry for the late reply! It sounds like you might have an axis constraint on. Here’s the default keyboard shortcuts (I think) for axis constraints:

      -Restrict to X: F5
      -Restrict to Y: F6
      -Restrict to Z: F7
      -Snaps Use Axis Constraints Toggle: Alt+D or Alt+F3

      I’d suggest trying “Alt+D” first when in vertex mode with ‘snaps’ turned on, as this is probably the most likely cause :) Hope this helps and sorry again for the late reply!

      PS: Just wanted to mention, If you go to “Customize > Customize User Interface” and click “Write Keyboard Chart” you can save out a text file of all the keyboard shortcuts Max is currently using. It’s handy to have and a lot easier to find what you’re looking for, rather then sorting through Max’s pull-downs in the Customize UI. I usually just use the “Find” option in a text editor to jump to what I’m searching for :)

      • Andrew Cooke

        Thank you so much it’s all fixed now. It was the axis constraints toggle
        Alt-D that did the trick.

        Is there some site that shows a good way to lay out shortcuts because some of the preset shortcuts are just all over the place. I don’t want to just do it randomly on my own because then I’ll probably end up writing over some other shortcut that I need.

  • Nir Sullam

    Ben
    Very nice tutorial but there were 2 steps that could have been done easier (and faster)
    1. Copying the steps – Using the Array tool is faster and more exact.
    2. Refinning the spline – you could have used the divide command0

    Regards

    Nir

    • http://www.bentateonline.com Ben Tate
      Author

      Hey Nir, Thanks for the comments and you’re right! Divide would have been better to use rather then adding the extra verts manually to the spline. For some reason I never seem to use the divide function, so it never really occurred to me to do it for the tutorial :)

      The array tool is definitely one of Max’s best tools and one of my personal favorites…..I decided against using it for this particular part of the tutorial, because although it would have evenly spaced the stair copies in a single click. It would not have been able to do so in the spiral pattern needed without playing with a incremental, move offset. As well as both a rotation total and a move total. In the end I figured I’d try to keep it as easy and straight forward as possible by only needing to rotate a selection…Plus I’ve used array in most of my other tutorials, so I thought it might be good to change it up a bit and try to show another way of manually achieving the same results :)

  • Rmora

    Very good your tutorial, congratulations, I have learned
    much, my question – what is the rendering engine that
    use in the image? .. v-ray? MENTALRAY? … Also, that
    used on the image background (blue) … what are the
    stage settings in the image? …

    Thank you very much
    Congratulations

    I speak Spanish use google translations to write.

  • ampaholic

    Thanks Ben, this will help in other projects i’m doing.

  • Cliff

    as usual, great tutorial ben.

    Like to see some texturing toturials tough.

  • Stenionet

    The reference images are off-line.

    • http://www.bentateonline.com Ben Tate
      Author

      Sorry about that! I recently launched a new version of my website and I must have forgot to copy the reference image over, but it’s all fixed now :)

      • Stenionet

        Ben Tate
        Yours tutorials are very good. I am doing all of them.
        Thanks from Brazil..

  • Josh

    Hi I am using version 7 and when I try to connect there is no option to slide or pinch. Is this meant to happen? If yes then is this tutorial not possible in version 7?

    • http://www.bentateonline.com Ben Tate
      Author

      Hey Josh, So sorry for the super late reply!! I’m not really sure when the slide & pinch options were added to Max. I think they were added in version 8!… It is still possible to recreate the same function, but it will take more time!…You’ll have to use connect to add the needed edge loops, then manually move each loop to the desired location. I would recommend using “edge constraints” when doing this to prevent any change in the objects shape (If you have that option in V7). You can turn on edge constraints by selecting an object, then go into the “modify panel” and under the “Edit Geometry” tab. Find the pull down menu for constraints and set it to “edge”. Then select the edge loop you want to adjust, and use the ‘move’ tool to slide it to the correct position. Another method for doing this would be to use the ‘cut’ tool and manually cut in the edge loops, but it’ll be more tricky and probably not as precise. So I’d recommend using the first technique!

  • Alex.B

    Thank you Ben. You are a true artist, wich I can learn alot from. Greetings from Romania. Keep up the good work.

  • Giang Tran

    Thanks Ben. Ur stuff helps me a lot ~.~

  • t3rdburgl3r

    I would say if it is only reference ‘images’ you should include the image files as part of the post as the link no longer works.

  • http://mediafire-gamez.blogspot.com tripl3x

    Hi Ben. Great tutorial! Very good explain and clean modeling. Interesting techniques and also easy.
    Just one minor error I have noticed:
    The post on the last, bigger, step is a bit off as the step is smaller than the other ones.
    Here’s a screenshot from the video: http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/1332/minorerrorj.png
    Apart from that everything is perfect and even that cannot be considered a problem as it takes no more than 5 minutes to fix and can be a challenge for the user to try the skills learned in the tutorial.

    Thanks. :)

  • Ant

    Why you used copy instead of instance for stairs?

  • trev

    When you cut the hole in the upper floor, you could have use pro boolean tool and subtracted a cylinder from the box. then convert to edit poly and then turbosmooth.

  • http://spiralstaircasekits.org Spiral Staircase Kits

    Very nice design. Not sure if it’s been answered already, but I didn’t see it; do you plan on making these plans for real stairs or is this just a project? The design is very smooth, I would love to find a kit I could review that was half as smooth as this. Regards.

  • Abdul Hameed

    Hi Ben Tate, your tutorial has highly impressed me. You are Indeed a good teacher. Every thing is very clear and attractive in your tutorials. Please I want to learn how a complex building of good exterior is made in 3D Studio Max. If possible send me the link of the same (free tutorial of course). Thankyou. thanks a lot that you have inserted very good tutorials and hope you will keep it up.

  • KD6387

    I’m having a problem with 5:20 of the second video where you use array to make the posts at the top of the staircase and I was wondering if you could help? Instead of making 10 copies in a cirlce, it makes 10 copies in the same place but I haven’t missed anything.

    • http://www.bentateonline.com Ben Tate
      Author

      Hi KD,

      Sorry for the delay getting back to you, I completely missed your comment!

      If the copies are being generated on top of each other, it’s most likely using the wrong axis or pivot point position.

      Sometimes the array tool can be a little finicky and will take a few attempts to give you the correct result.

      Fist thing to check is if the pivot point is in the right position. When the post is selected it’s pivot should be positioned at the center of the top landing, rather then centered to the post itself. (sometime it will jump back to it’s original position, even though you’ve already moved it)

      Second, if the pivot is already positioned correctly. And you have the Top viewport selected when using the array tool, it should work on the ‘Z’ axis. But if not, try selecting either the ‘X’ or ‘Y’ axis (rather then the ‘Z’ axis) in the array dialog.

      Chances are one of them will create the copies in the correct position for you. If you’re still having a problem, just let me know and we’ll get it sorted out :)

      Cheers,
      Ben

  • Remo

    guys, these videos are broken! any chance for a re-upload ?

    • http://www.bentateonline.com Ben Tate
      Author

      Hey Remo,

      Both videos seem to be working, can you give them another shot? It may have just been a temporary glitch with Blip.tv (happens all the time! ;)

      Cheers,
      Ben

      • Remo

        It works today ! great :) thanks for the reply also.

  • Remo

    and now it doesn’t anymore xD really weird since It is only with the second video (its idd a blip.tv glitch apparently).

    • http://www.bentateonline.com Ben Tate
      Author

      Hey Remo,

      Sorry about that, it’s not working for me either today! Looks like Blip has moved the video to another server and screwed it up! No worries though, I’m re-uploading the video now and hopefully will have it working very soon! Sorry again for the inconvenience (I hate Blip!)

      Cheers,
      Ben

    • http://www.bentateonline.com Ben Tate
      Author

      Hey Remo,

      I’ve re-uploaded video 2 and it seems to be playing fine now. I converted it from a FLV to a M4V. So hopefully it won’t give you any further problems :)

      Have a good one!
      Ben

  • ERIC

    HI , I BEEN SEARCHING ONLINE FOR MODELING ANIMAL TUTORIAL MORE SPECIFIC
    A GOAT BUT I CAN’T FIND ONE GOOD AND STEP BY STEP. HOPE YOU CAN HELP WITH THIS, A LINK FOR THE TUTORIAL OR SOMETHING .

    THANKS

  • Kamoldip

    Thanks for the tutorial. I have a ques. please. If I make the round railing into square why it turns down?