Using Splines to Add Detail to Your High-Poly Model in 3ds Max

on Sep 7th 2009 with 46 comments
Tutorial Details

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.

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Ben Bolton is a freelance game artist and student from New Hampshire. He has four years experience with weapon and environment modeling, and has contributed to several Source engine mods. He is currently attending Champlain College in the Game Art and Animation program. You can view his portfolio website at: www.benbolton.com.  

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  • http://www.cgtrade.net imsraaia

    Nice…

  • v Ralle v

    The sweep modifier was new for me, never used it before. Thanks for the tips :)

  • Markerman

    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

    Great tut! Another way to flip normals on splin is to just draw your spline in the other direction :)

  • Nysuatro

    Nice indeed. How about using splines on organic stuff ?

  • PIXEL.VASCO

    EXCELLENT TUTORIAL …… PROBABLY ONE OF THE MOST TALENTED ARTIST AROUND CGTUTS.

  • http://www.wesburke.com Wes Burke

    It was great to see the sweep modifier, I have never used that myself.

  • Rodrigo

    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

    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

    very handy
    thanks

    you can also add a normal modifier to flip the faces without having to collapse the stack

  • http://www.bilderish.com Naftali

    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

    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

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

      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.

  • http://saschahenrichs.blogspot.com/ aphexx

    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

    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

    “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

    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.

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

      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:)

  • http://saschahenrichs.blogspot.com/ aphexx

    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.

    • http://www.benbolton.com Ben Bolton
      Author

      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.

  • http://www.live-studio.ro Mihai

    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.

  • http://www.haymakerfx.com daniel

    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

    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

    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…

    • http://www.benbolton.com Ben Bolton
      Author

      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.

  • http://www.l4u.dk/ Kasper

    Too fast!! :(

    Nice tho.

  • beartraps

    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

    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

    many thx mate nice work

  • Seth

    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

    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.

  • KiNGPiN

    Cool Tutorial
    Learned alot of new techniques especially using the sweep modifier

    thx man :)

  • Marcelo Fidelis

    Muito bom ….obrigado pelas informações

  • Max

    Very nice tutorial. I didn’t understood very much about foating geometry and when can be used…but anyway…very talented guy. thanks alot

  • http://www.oscarblanco.net Oscar Blanco

    Great tutorial, learned a lot of basic tools I didn’t know about, like the sweep modifier :)

    I was wondering about when applying lights with shadow rendering… since the spline creating the effect of the hatch border is not really part of the main object, and it’s not affecting it or doing some sort of boolean operation, it’s just a floating geometry fooling the eyes into thinking there’s a groove on the main object’s surface. Thus, the shadows give it away… what’s the work around for that?
    Thx.

  • Alexei (Ukraine)

    It’s simple and powerful! Great! Thanks!

  • tsu3000

    Great tut Ben! I didn’t know about this technique – thanks for this. You mentioned about some hot keys you use for this tut. Can you share your hot key mappings with us please?

  • Seefer

    Great tutorials. I’ll be trying them out when I get home.

    You mentioned trouble with normals when creating a sweep using a custom spline? Maybe the direction you draw the custom spline is important for determining the normal direction? Could drawing the custom spline in the opposite diection fix this? Just a thought.

  • Hans

    Well, absolutely you know what you are doing, but for the student, he or she, needs to see every step you make. Your short cuts are not help full. If you use panels and drop down menu you would rich better to your audience.
    Thanks

  • LUIZ

    Hello A really great tutorial, just can not get the same effect as the seu.Parabéns.

  • mac

    i did every thing and when i click flip button ……………. boom ………………. nothing happened ……… just selected polygons flipped……. but not create a smooth border on the smooth poly…… how did u do this ….. how can i do this……………….

  • http://ufo.bitmap.co.at my7hai

    hello, nice tutorial, especially for me since im moving from maya to 3dstudio max.

    theres one small thing though where i think ur wherent quite right: it is possible to scale the “custom selection type” when u do a sweep.

    -> just select the custom shape u created.
    -> choose “spline” (selection mode)
    -> drag select over the custom shape (again)
    -> scale! :)

    hf :)

  • http://www.michaeldunnam.com Michael Dunnam

    Nice work. I’ve never used the sweep modifier before :)

  • troy

    Nice Tutorial.
    But how can i use this with Lights and Shadows? For Renderings(mostly works with Lights ;)) its important.

  • eorichard

    To answer to the problem of normal orientaion of the sweep, you must reverse the order of vertices of your initial profile curve.
    [Editable Spline]+[Spline mode]+”select spline” + [reverse].

    To have shadows, just go to the object properties and uncheck the “cast shadows” option on the right column.
    Then you can use raytrace shadows with your lights.
    Problem : the precision of Mental Ray prevent you from using such a technique with it.