Page 200 - Kitab3DsMax

Part II: Working with Objects

Plane
The Plane object enables you to model the Great Plains (good pun, eh?). The Plane primitive creates a sim-
ple plane that looks like a rectangle, but it includes Multiplier parameters that let you specify the size of the
plane at render time. This feature makes working in a viewport convenient because you don’t have to worry
about creating a huge plane object representing the ground plane that makes all other scene objects really
small in comparison.
Tip
Dense plane objects can be made into a terrain by randomly altering the height of each interior vertex with a
Noise modifier. n
The Plane primitive includes two creation methods: Rectangle and Square. The Square method creates a
perfect square in the viewport when dragged. Holding down the Ctrl key while creating a Plane object also
creates a perfect square. You can also define the Length and Width Segments, but the real benefits of the
Plane object are derived from the use of the Render Multipliers.
The Scale Multiplier value determines how many times larger the plane should be at render time. Both
Length and Width are multiplied by equal values. The Density Multiplier specifies the number of segments
to produce at render time. The Total Faces value lets you know how many polygons are added to the scene
using the specified Density Multiplier value.
Using these multipliers, you can create a small Plane object in the scene that automatically increases to the
size and density it needs to be when rendered. This allows you to use the Zoom Extents button to see all
objects without having a huge Plane object define the extents.

Extended Primitives
You access the Extended Primitives by selecting Extended Primitives in the subcategory drop-down list in
the Create panel. These primitives aren’t as generic as the Standard Primitives but are equally useful as
shown in Figure 5.15.

FIGURE 5.15
The Extended Primitives: Hedra, ChamferBox, OilTank, Spindle, Gengon, RingWave, Hose, Torus Knot,
ChamferCyl, Capsule, L-Ext, C-Ext, and Prism

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