Page 355 - Kitab3DsMax

CHAPTER

Drawing and Editing

2D Splines and Shapes

any modeling projects start from the ground up, and you can’t get
much lower to the ground than 2D. But this book is on 3D, you say? IN THIS CHAPTER
MWhat place is there for 2D shapes? Within the 3D world, you fre-
quently encounter flat surfaces—the side of a building, the top of a table, a bill- Working with shape primitives
board, and so on. All these objects have flat 2D surfaces. Understanding how Editing splines and shapes
objects are composed of 2D surfaces will help as you start to build objects in 3D.
This chapter examines the 2D elements of 3D objects and covers the tools Working with spline
needed to work with them. subobjects
Working in 2D in Max, you use two general objects: splines and shapes. A spline is Using spline modifiers
a special type of line that curves according to mathematical principles. In Max,
splines are used to create all sorts of shapes such as circles, ellipses, and rectangles.
You can create splines and shapes using the Create ➪ Shapes menu, which opens
the Shapes category on the Create panel. Just as with the other categories, several
spline-based shape primitives are available. Spline shapes can be rendered, but
they are normally used to create more advanced 3D geometric objects by extrud-
ing or lathing the spline. You can even find a whole group of modifiers that apply
to splines. You can use splines to create animation paths as well as Loft and
NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines) objects, and you will find that splines
and shapes, although they are only 2D, are used frequently in Max.

Drawing in 2D

Shapes in Max are unique from other objects because they are drawn in 2D,
which confines them to a single plane. That plane is defined by the viewport
used to create the shape. For example, drawing a shape in the Top view con-
strains the shape to the XY plane, whereas drawing the shape in the Front view
constrains it to the ZX plane. Even shapes drawn in the Perspective view are con-
strained to a plane such as the Home Grid.
You usually produce 2D shapes in a drawing package such as Adobe Illustrator
(AI) or CorelDRAW. Max supports importing line drawings using the AI format.

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