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Chapter 10: Accessing Subobjects and Using Modeling Helpers

l Compound objects: A miscellaneous group of model types, including Booleans, loft objects, and
scatter objects. Other compound objects are good at modeling one specialized type of object such
as Terrain or BlobMesh objects. All the Compound objects are covered in Chapter 27, “Working
with Compound Objects.”
l Body objects: Solid objects that are imported from an SAT file produced by a solid modeling
application like Revit have the concept of volume. Max mesh objects typically only deal with sur-
faces but can be converted to a Body object. All the information on Body objects is covered in
Chapter 28, “Working with Solids and Body Objects.”
l Particle systems: Systems of small objects that work together as a single group. They are useful
for creating effects such as rain, snow, and sparks. Particles are covered along with the Particle
Flow interface in Chapter 41, “Creating Particles and Particle Flow.”
l Hair and fur: Modeling hundreds of thousands of cylinder objects to create believable hair would
quickly bog down any system, so hair is modeled using a separate system that represents each
hair as a spline. The Hair and Fur modifiers are covered in Chapter 29, “Adding and Styling Hair
and Fur, and Using Cloth.”
l Cloth systems: Cloth—with its waving, free-flowing nature—behaves like water in some cases
and like a solid in others. Max includes a specialized set of modifiers for handling cloth systems.
Creating and using a cloth system is discussed in Chapter 29, “Adding and Styling Hair and Fur,
and Using Cloth.”

Note
Hair, fur, and cloth are often considered effects or dynamic simulations instead of modeling constructs, so their
inclusion on this list should be considered a stretch. n
With all these options, modeling in Max can be intimidating, but you learn how to use each of these types
the more you work with Max. For starters, begin with primitive or imported objects and then branch out by
converting to editable objects. A single Max scene can include multiple object types.

Converting to editable objects
Of all the commands found in the Create menu and in the Create panel, you won’t find any menus or sub-
categories for creating editable objects.
To create an editable object, you need to import it or convert it from another object type. You can convert
objects by right-clicking on the object in the viewport and selecting the Convert To submenu from the pop-
up quadmenu, or by right-clicking on the base object in the Modifier Stack and selecting the object type to
convert to in the pop-up menu.
Once converted, all the editing features of the selected type are available in the Modify panel, but the object
is no longer parametric and loses access to its common parameters such as Radius and Segments. However,
Max also includes specialized modifiers such as the Edit Poly modifier that maintain the parametric nature
of primitive objects while giving you access to the editing features of the Editable object. More on these
modifiers is presented in the later modeling chapters.

Caution
If a modifier has been applied to an object, the Convert To menu option in the Modifier Stack pop-up menu is not
available until you use the Collapse All command. n

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