Tutorials - Modelling 101 3DMax R3 [Kenny Z]
TUT-10


For this tutorial we're going to be building one of this past century's greatest inventions. This particular object is still one of my favorite time wasters. We'll be building the original Nintendo Entertainment System or NES for short.

I think we'll start with something simple. How about a controller? If you've got one around bring it over for reference, if you don't have one I'm sure the net has some images for it. I've got my controller...though slightly chewed on by my cats so long ago...I think I'll leave those marks out of the modelling ;)

What we'll need to start with first is a Chamfer Box. Usually I don't use prefab objects but this one fits the controller's shape perfectly. Place the chamfer box in the scene and set the chamfer to match the edges on your controller. This tutorial isn't going to be precise modelling like some. Think for yourselves, you need to learn what the different settings do. There's the basic shape all set up. Pick up your controller and look at it. I decided to model the seperator line next.

For this I used Slice. It's in More under the Modifiers Tab. You'll see that it makes an orange square in the viewport. Select the Sub Object button. The square turns yellow and allows you to move it around. Move it up to where the bottom of the seperator line will be on your mesh. Now do the same thing again this time making the top of the seperator line. I've found that the slice feature is one of the cleanest ways to add straight lines to your meshes.

Collapse your mesh. It's a good idea to do that after a slice, it frees up some memory and keeps Max from crashing. Now select the polys you just created. Do a negative Extrude on them until you feel satisfied with the depth of the seperation.

Now we can start on the control section of the mesh. The first thing we should do is set up the black rectangle on the front of the controller. We'll use shapemerge for this. Make a rectangle spline and chamfer the edges till you feel that it works for the mesh. Then shapemerge it to the top of the controller. I had to do some vertex welding to clean up this shapemerge. Just follow my other tutorial to find out how to do this effectively. Now extrude that rectangle very slightly. The black area on the controller isn't indented very deeply, it's just visible.

As you can see I already did that nick just above where the wire feeds in. I selected two of the polys through Edit Mesh -> Polygon I wanted to add the nick in and sliced them before negative extruding in the nick. I also added two lights to the scene so you could see the shapemerge a little better.

Next we'll do the control pad. I'm looking at it trying to figure out what would be the best way to go about it. Most of my modelling time is spent trying to picture what the object would look like in wireframe. I know the first thing we need to do is make the indention and raised area around the control pad. That's going to mean another shapemerge on the mesh.

Well, after some work I discovered that the best way to create the control pad shape is with two rectangles with chamfer edges that I joined and shapemerged to the mesh. Start with a single rectangular spline with chamfered corners. Using Edit Spline cut the bottom corner and side off and then move the two remaining vertex upwards until you have one of the four buttons on the control pad. Now we're going to use the Array tool. Don't know much about it? Check out my Array Tutorial to find out how to do it. You'll need to make those four control buttons. Don't worry if the vertex don't touch, we'll fix that in a minute.

What you'll want to do first is drag two sets of those vertex down so they'll cross where your other lines meet them. This'll help us make sure the corners stay at a 90 degree angle. Now that you've done that drag the other sets exactly to the lines on the first. Using your 3D Snap tool snap the vertex on the longer lines to the ones that are in position. There, you've just made your spline for your controller. This will be our spline for the shapemerge as well as what we'll use to extrude out our control pad buttons. Shapemerge the control buttons to your controller in the proper position. Then take about an hour to clean up your shapemerge...kidding, it shouldn't take that long for you unless you made a mess of it like I did...

Now look at your controller again...oooh pretty...ahem, I mean look how around the control buttons there's a slightly raised section. We'll need to extrude the shapemerge upwards slightly and then extrude it again by .01 so we can scale the cross shape inwards to make the lip. Finally do a deep negative extrude to get the area around the control pad. Looks nice huh?

Now we'll make the actual control buttons. Remember that spline you had? You'll want to extrude that upwards after shrinking it to fit inside your new cross shape. Oh, and if you didn't remember to make your shapemerge a copy and not an instance the first thing that happens is the disappearance of all your hard work. To fix this minor problem is to first hit Undo and then clone your spline before you extrude the control buttons. As for your first spline, the one you used to make the shapemerge, delete it. What you want to do is extrude this spline upwards a total of three times. The first one will be a huge extrude straight up, the second will be a slight slant as you scale the buttons inward and the final one will be an even sharper slant and scale. This gives the buttons a curved appearance. Time to once again refer back to our controler. Notice how the end of the control pad cross move upwards very slightly making that nice place for your thumb to rest. We need to do this to our shape but the problem is we can't do that without completely screwing up our shape. Using Edit Mesh -> Polygon select the top cross poly. Use the Slice modifier to divide up the cross into 5 polys. You'll make your cuts so that your very middle section is a perfect square. Don't worry about getting too precise with your cuts toward the middle vertex, that's why there's a weld feature. After you weld your vertex and your square looks perfect you can select all the edge polys for your ends of the control pad and move them upward manually. There, you've got that great thumb rest shape. Here's a wireframe top view that'll help this last paragraph make sense. Note I added that circle to the middle of the control pad.?

And here's what your mesh should look like right now.

Coming along nicely if I do say so myself :) Once again refer to your controller. I see little indented arrows on the four ends of the control pad. Looks like it's time for another couple of shapemerges to bring in more detail. Start with the 'up' button and create the arrow there. It's going to take a bit to get the arrow looking decent unless you know some tricks but teaching tricks is what tutorials are all about. Here's how I made the arrow in less than 30 seconds and it's perfect, in my eyes at least ;) First just eyeball out half the arrow minus the bottom line. Next, using Edit Spline select the tip vertex. Now go to Edit -> Align and align the vertex with the control pad's center. Now, you'll need to move the pivot point using the Align tool as well. Next, mirror over your half arrow and use the Attach button in Edit Spline to connect the two halves. Weld the tip vertex together and use the Create Line feature to make the final bottom line to the arrow. There, that was pretty simple but without knowing those terrific tools it would have been an pain to get set up perfectly. You've got a terrific arrow ready to be arrayed and shapemerged to your controller...or do you. Here's where I teach you another neat trick. It's called don't do anymore work than you absolutely have too. You'll be making four identical parts to that control pad. Why not save yourself some time and make one of those pads and array the others out? We can do that in less time than it would take to merge and clean each and every arrow.

Select your control pad object and change the viewport view to bottom. Using Edit Mesh -> Polygon select the bottom cross poly and delete it. Now go back to top view and change to Edit Mesh -> Vertex. Select all the vertex on the ends of the control pads except for your top one. Delete those vertex. Hurt didn't that? Don't worry, we'll restore that hard work in a few minutes. Merge your arrow into your top button and clean it up. Now extrude it to the depth you feel works for the mesh. Time to restore your hard work. Select your top control button and use the Array tool to restore the 4 of them to their original positions. Now, select first the right button and using Edit Mesh -> Vertex highlight the polygons that make that circle and the remaining vertex that make the square. Delete these vertex and do the same for the two other newly arrayed buttons but don't do it to the first one. Select the first button and using the Edit Mesh modifier find the Attach tool and attach the three other control pads to the first. Select each poly that joins in the middle and weld them all using .1. There, you have your control pad complete with arrows. Awesome huh?

Congratulations, you've completed one of the most difficult parts of this controller. Now you need to get the rectangular spline for the select and start button area set up. I'm sure by now you know how to do it. Shapemerge the rectangle and clean it up. Do the extrusions and set it up to look exactly like the controller. Go ahead and do the same thing for the A and B buttons. You should now have this.

We're getting pretty close to completing the top just four buttons to go. We'll do the select and start buttons first. I'm going to try to use a rectangular spline to form the first button. Make that spline like usual and chamfer the edges, I've found that if I weld the two inner vertex closest together I get the perfect shape for the buttons. It resembles a sort of capsule shape. The next step is of course a shapemerge. You'll want to go ahead and shapemerge both spots for the buttons. Do a negative extrude on the newly shapemerged and cleaned areas. Now extrude up your new button. You'll need to do a little bevelling like we did on the control pad. I found that by messing with the smoothing groups I can come up with a decent looking round rubber effect on the buttons. Smoothing groups control how smooth the transition from poly to poly is. On the buttons I set the smoothing groups on the top polys to 2 and the very bottom poly was 1. That way I didn't get odd smoothing effects as it tried to smooth a 90 degree angle.

As you can see the smoothing groups don't need to be slightly sloping angles, I've got a sharp angle there in the button and by smoothing that it gives the button a kind of soft effect.

Time to do the A and B buttons. Now you're thinking, ok cool, a circle spline. Wrong. Get a NGon spline. We can add sides to the Ngon so we can control exactly how many polys we use in creating those circular buttons. I used about 20 to 25 for my spline, but I'm going for ultra close ups on this tute. Use whatever you feel like your application calls for. Yep, merge in those Ngons and do the negative extruding. Then extrude up your buttons. Check out the controller again, look closely at the A and B buttons...they have an indention in the top don't they? You'll need to create that. Thankfully since you did mess with smoothing groups you'll understand a little about how to do the buttons. You'll need to negative extrude the tops though, and watch your edges.

That completes the first part of this tutorial. Hopefully you have a great model of a Nintendo Entertainment System Controller. It should look almost exactly like this.

Now it's your turn. Time to let you run free. Since I'm pretty much insane when it comes to details I decided to model the underside of the controller as well. Test what you've learned and do that yourself right now. This is what I got, what did you get?

I hope you've learned something from this tutorial. Keep checking back because I plan on modelling the rest of the NES Console in the future. I just might make a tutorial about it ;)

-Kenny_Z