CCG/Modelling: 3DSMax Initial Setup
3DSMax/gmax Initial Setup You should first set up 3dsmax or gmax with default settings, both programs have similar settings. The units are easiest to work with when set to metric, some experience problems with animation in imperial units.
Set the menus as follows:
1. From the Customise .. Preference Settings .. General, set the System Units Scale
2. From the Customise .. Units Setup, set the Units
3. From the Grid and Snap Settings ..Home Grid, set the grid to a very fine value, say 0.01 metres. This allows you to have a fine grid when you zoom in, and allows you to snap objects to the grid points (this option may be turned on or off in 3dsmax/gmax). The grid will not clutter the screen as it only shows a grid density suitable for viewing as you zoom in or out.
4. From the Customise .. Preferences .. Files, some boxes may already be ticked, but the following settings are useful:
Increment on save, after first saving the file with a name of your choice, subsequently using the save button will automatically create a new saved file, incrementing the file number. For a file called bridge, this gives bridge001, bridge002 etc as you Save the file, you do not need to use Save As. Save often, and if you have a problem with the model you can go back a few saved steps and start again. When you have finished the model, you can remove unnecessary older saved files.
It is very important to check the Auto Backup. If 3dsmax or gmax crashes (and it sometimes does, when you are trying to undo too many steps when mapping, or typing a material name in some of the dialogue boxes in gmax) you can find three files called Autobak001, 002, 003 in the Autobak directory.
3dsmax cycles through these numbers and overwrites them. Find the directory, look at the time stamp for the most recent file, open it in 3dsmax or gmax and you will only have lost up to 5 minutes of work (whatever time you have set). You may have to "Show All Files" to see the file, when trying to open it from the Autobak directory.
5. From the Customise .. Configure Paths .. General you can choose the paths for your files. It is useful to set the Export path to the full directory of the Custom Trainz directory in TRS2004 or the editing directory in TC. It is simple to then navigate to the particular model directory from there, without navigating from the C: directory every time you export a file.
An easy way to have consistent 3dsmax/gmax settings is to load a previous model and then select the "new file" option to begin a new model, retaining the settings from the previous loaded file.
One issue with 3dsmax4/gmax is "saved file corruption", caused by a Microsoft upgrade. Your saved files naturally get larger as you work, but a reasonable files size may be 100k to 400k, depending on the model. Sometimes the next file save becomes corrupted and the file size will jump to 2 or 3mb. While it does not seem to have any effect on the file contents, you will notice this effect by the greatly increased save and load time of the file. Do not merge any object from the corrupted file into a new file, it can corrupt the new file as well, and inflate the size. If you
were also using the Increment on Save option, you can then end up with many large files, using up valuable disk space.
This had been recognised by Discreet, and information is available on the Discreet site:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/item?siteID=123112&id=5582099&linkID=5573345
