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[IrishDragon]

Ok, I'm a bit new to 3Ds Max 8. I'm looking to create my own game but lack the graphic arts skills. So here I am to learn..

Currently I am modeling an arrow. (I know, I'm so advanced). It took me 30 minutes + to create the stick, move one vertex or vortex to the far left, another to the far right, and then bring the top corner and bottom corner from the left sides together to form the sharp point of the arrow.

Tonight I will be working on creating the feather/tail of the arrow.

Once the model is complete, I will be working on animating it to look like 1000's of them are flying towards my screen.

What makes this difficult is my lack of knowledge on how to navigate the program, so any pointers you professionals and amatures can provide would be lovely.

Thanks a bunch.

~A giant Dragony-newt

[SIM-O]

hey, doesn't that version have hair and fur? select the stick for your arrow, then go to >modifiers, hair and fur, hair and fur (WSM)

there will be a new panel. click the "face" selector. (little red things at the top)
now select where you want the feathers/bristles.
now, just below the selecting buttons, is another button, "update selection" click it.

now scroll down the panel to "frizz parameters" in that sub panel you can control frizz (duh) so as you can see feathers aren't usually that frizzy. so make the value next to "frizz root" 14, and the value next to "frizz tip" 5.

now for color, you can of course use any color you want but in this instance i will be using red. so scroll up to "material parameters" sub panel, and for the value next to "tip color", pick dark red and for the "root color" value pick a brighter red.

now go back up to the "general parameters" sub panel, and in the "hair count" value, pick 15000, next to the "root thickness" type 15 for the value and in the value next to "tip thickness" type 7.

ok hang on we're almost done :P

scroll up to the "styling" sub panel.

the fun part :P ;
in the top view, use the ark rotate to make it so that the stick is at a 90 degree angle to your view, so that you can pull the feathers towards you to make it look more like feathers, it should be like this < \ >.
now in that sub panel, under the sub heading with a box around it saying "styling" choose the "select" tool.
a little above that, are different kinds of selections you can choose from under the "selection" thing above, choose "select whole guide" then go the view which is your top view, and select the feather on the left had side.
now select the"hair brush" tool underneath "styling". now move the curser into the top view window, see the circle? thats you region of edeting, so make sure the whole of your selected hair is covered and pull it down. if it gets a little tangled, just pull on the tips a bit until it's just right :P.
now rotate your view again with "ark rotate" and make sure your arrow is like this < / > (cept' with the feathers of course :P) and do the same thing.

it will take a while to master, but this is the basics, cos as you can see, i was able to tell you :P

so anyhow, when it's to your liking, render it and it should look kinda like this, except with a much better stick i hope :P



if it doesn't, don't hesitate to ask for help, as long as you rep me, unless it looks better, in which case you should rep me :D

oh yer, a top view also might help.

[minimus]

Hair and fur may give a good result but will alsow increse the render time and if he wants 1000 of them the software will probably crash.

when you want to make many fly he should use the particle system then he shouldn't be using hair and fur but try to model it instead. will make the software much easyer to navigate alsow.

[IrishDragon]

Originally Posted by minimus

Hair and fur may give a good result but will alsow increse the render time and if he wants 1000 of them the software will probably crash.

when you want to make many fly he should use the particle system then he shouldn't be using hair and fur but try to model it instead. will make the software much easyer to navigate alsow.

I am not sure what you mean by hair and fur

But the arrows (the one model) is being animated to fly at the screen 1000 times using the particle system.

Currently the issue I am having is angling the camera correctly, as well as placing a background image. (a blue sky with some clouds from which the arrows will rain down from)

Also attempting to create some basic designs, like bows, swords, shields, spears, glavie's. Later on, I'd like to get into modeling more detailed fantasy weapons.

Thanks for the advice and please please please keep it coming.

[SIM-O]

"Hair and fur may give a good result but will also increase the render time and if he wants 1000 of them the software will probably crash."

no, but i mean, if the arrows are flying into the camera, it would be good to have those ones that are really close to the screen, in high detail.

[minimus]

Originally Posted by SIM-O

no, but i mean, if the arrows are flying into the camera, it would be good to have those ones that are really close to the screen, in high detail.

I can agree on that one. closer = higher detail level

about the background you should gett a panorama image and make a spear dome that you can apply it to to gain a nice sky. then the camera can travel any direction and still have a desent sky inn the background. about the sky that the arrows will fall down from im not so sure. if you aare going cartoonish you can make a sky out of spear primitives. or els it should be sopible to make one with particles. or maybe composit a sky inn After efects or somthing when the animasjon is done :) many ways to do it.