Free 3DS Max Tutorial - Creating A Stunning 3D Logo

Free 3DS Max Tutorial
Creating A 3D logo in 3DS Max

(Click Here To See he Logo Final in 3D)

1. The first that thing that you have to do is get a sample of the logo to use as a reference for 3DS Max. Your might also want to try using an image editing program to perform the same task, your going to find it much faster and easier to just outline the image in a photo program then export it to 3DS Max.

This is the original image that the logo was sampled from.

Creating The Outline To Be Used In 3DS Max

2. The next step would be to outline the logo using a pen tool or the line tool in 3ds max. Keep in mind that the points and lines you create in the image editing program are going to be the vertices and segments in 3ds max. Which is actually very convenient and the only reason were using this program. The program being used is Adobe Fireworks CS3. You may also use Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop to achieve the same results. Just make sure that you don't allow lines to cross over one another unless that are separate splines, and make sure to close your spines so that they can be turned into a 3D logo in 3DS Max without any problems or breaks in the model.

3. Then save the file as an .ai file which is the file extension for Adobe Illustrator.

Using 3DS Max From Here On

Importing Into 3DS Max

4. The next step would be to either drag the file into the viewport which is any one of the four small screens or go to File-Import- and then modify the file type to "Adobe Illustrator (*.AI)" and select your .ai file.

It's going to import it as a spine and now you can modify it and turn it into a 3D logo.

Extruding The Spline To Turn It Into A Mesh

5. Now we go into our Modifiers-Mesh Editing-Extrude and apply it the your spline. Once you have applied an extrude you can modify the settings in the right hand corner "Which is cut out of this image" by clicking on the modify tab and changing its settings there. I'll be covering the modify tab in a different tutorial.

3DS Max Materials and Texturing

6 .The next task would be the add some textures. For this logo It was decided that it would have a unique look if the outer faces were chrome and that the inner faces were glass. You can do this by clicking on the logo and going in to the Modifiers Tab-Mesh Editing-and select Edit Mesh. Now you can go into the modifier tab on the top right as we spoke about earlier and select only the faces we want to affect. Again all of the basic techniques will be gone over in other tutorials, so please bare with me. The main principle is that you can add a material to only a certain face or faces of an object as you please. The material editor can be found by going to Rendering-Material Editor. To apply a material you can drag the material on to an object, or while the object is selected you can click on the button right under the example spheres that has a sphere with an arrow shooting to wands a box. Keep in mind that the materials used are mental ray materials and they can only be used when the mental ray renderer is assigned. To assign the mental ray renderer you must go to Rendering-Render. In this section you must scroll all the way to the bottom and hit the plus sign to the tab Assign Renderer. In The Production Section change the render from Default Scanline Render to Mental Ray Renderer. Now you can go back to the material editor and use mental ray materials.

Adding Text In 3DS Max

7. It is now time to add the rest of the objects to complete this logo which is the name of the group and the studio in which they record. Just go into the create tab located to the left of the modify tab we were talking about earlier and selecting a sub-tab named Shapes. In this section you will find a button called Text, once you click on it a default text saying "3DS Max Text" will pop up on you viewport. You can edit the setting like font and size here as well as what type of structure you want the object to have. I'll leave that one for a different tutorial, in any case the next steps are the same as before. Extrude the object, give them textures and organize them to look like the original logo.

3DS Max Logo In Final Stage Of Creation

8. Of course the next couple steps would be to create a camera and lights, then animate the logo to spin and etc. All of these tasks will be covered in other tutorials in more detail. The min principle of creating a logo is what I wanted to get across in this particular tutorial. Please look around the site to see what else 3Ds Max Online has to offer.

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