3DS Max Exercises 1.2 - House

House

The second exercise was to create a house. This must include four walls, a floor, a roof, a chimney and windows - two on the front and one for each side. I am going to try different methods of creating the window holes and evaluate the pros and cons of each.


Geometry modeled around window

The first stage of this method entailed modelling the house out of many different shaped cubes. To create the window holes I first positioned and scaled the cubes below and to the side of the holes. I then used a combination of the auto grid tool and changing the snap mode to 'vertex'. This enabled me to use the tall cubes to the side of the holes as the grid it was being placed on. Using vertex snapping, I created the top face of the cube above the window from the corners of the tall cubes and dragged it down from there.

Experimenting with the 'Hide Selection' tool, I was able to create the chimney. Having created a pyramid for the roof, I then hid it so I could accurately scale and position the chimney from the ceiling plane. After hiding it, I moved it up on the Y axis so it was slightly inside the pyramid and used the Boolean subtraction tool to remove the hidden part.

The final result is shown here in wire frame and ''realistic' rendering.

Pros:

• No extra height, width or length segments needed to be added to the cubes
• Only uses positioning of basic primitive shapes 

Cons:

• More polygons used than cutting out shapes from one cube due to use of multiple cubes
• Vertex snapping can become tricky when you have objects behind what are you trying to pinpoint  

Deleting Faces


This second method utilised the height, width and length segments options for the cube properties. Using only one cube for each wall, I was able to split those up into equal size polygons. This allowed me to edit each of those faces separately.
 

After converting the cubes to 'editable poly', I then selected the particular faces that I needed and deleted them to form the window and door holes. I also  deleted the faces on the inside faces of the cubes. 

The final result is shown here in wire frame and ''realistic' rendering. I used the same method for the chimney as before.
 

Pros: 

• Only uses four cubes in total for the walls
• Segments allow for easy selection of a particular part of the cube  
• Not all geometry needs to be cut into segments if nothing is being deleted from it (e.g. back wall)

Cons:

• A large number of polygons are used just to be able to delete a few of them. This is inefficient as the other polygons still remain where they are not needed
• The extra, unused polygons are also on the inner face of the cube which will never be seen - another waste of resources
• The cube becomes hollow when you delete faces, allowing you to see inside it which would require extra geometry to cover up
• Can only delete square shapes as this what the segments divide into

Boolean subtraction 

The third method involves creating and positioning shapes to 'cut out' of the model. As shown below, I have created a cuboid for the door and cubes for the windows. I selected matching windows at the same time to make sure they are placed accurately. Using 'A-B subtraction' I was able to cut out multiple shapes on the walls.

The final result is shown here in wire frame and 'realistic' rendering. I used the same method for the chimney as before.

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 Pros:

• Only requires one cube for each wall
• Shapes to be cut out can be accurately positioned on the x and y planes using grid snapping
• Doesn't make the wall cube hollow once cut out

Cons: 

• Accurate positioning using snapping is not possible when moving an object on the z axis
• Surface geometry from the cut out object can be applied to the hole, adding unnecessary polygons

Having tried out different methods, it seems a combination of 'boolean subtraction' and, in some places, modelling geometry around gaps would be most efficient. It is unlikely deleting polygons will come in useful due its drawbacks.