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Animated Still Life

Adding a Material to the Orange

 

Autodesk 3ds Max Tutorials > Introduction > Animated Still Life > 

Creating an Orange

Here you'll create a sphere primitive, color it orange, and name it. Then you’ll add a realistic orange peel material to it, so the rendering will have the speckled appearance of fruit skin.

Create a sphere:

1. On the Create panel, click the Geometry tab, then in the Object Type rollout, click Sphere.

   The button highlights to show that it is active and ready to use. Before you make the sphere, you'll make two changes in the Create panel.

2. At the bottom of the Parameters rollout, turn on Base To Pivot.

   Base To Pivot lets you create a sphere with its pivot point at its bottom.

   To create the sphere so the orange is resting on the wooden slab, like the rest of the objects in the scene, you'll use the AutoGrid function.

3. On the Create panel, directly below Object Type and above the primitive object names, turn on AutoGrid.

   AutoGrid creates a grid on the surface of any object, so you can create another object directly in contact with the surface.

4. In the Perspective viewport, position your cursor between the apple, the bottle, and the knife blade.

   After a moment, a tooltip appears showing you which object the cursor over. The tooltip should read wooden board.

5. Create a sphere by pressing down on the left mouse button and dragging away from where you started. As long as you hold the mouse button down, you can adjust the size of the sphere. When you release the mouse button, the sphere is complete.
   TipYour sphere might be a different color from the one in the illustration.

   

   Create a sphere using AutoGrid.

6. On the Create panel > Parameters rollout, change the Radius setting to 20 and press Enter.

   The sphere changes size in the viewport. In 3ds Max, it’s typical practice to rough out an object with the mouse, then reset its parameters to your specific requirements.

Change the color and name of the sphere:

By default, 3ds Max chooses colors at random for new objects, so the sphere is probably not orange. You can change the color of the sphere in the viewport to simulate an orange.

1. In the Create panel > Name And Color rollout, click the small, colored square next to the default name, Sphere01.

   

   The Object Color dialog is displayed.

2. Click an orange color and click OK.

   The sphere in the viewport turns orange.

3. Double-click the name Sphere01 to highlight it.
4. Type in orange to change the name of the sphere. Press Enter to set the new name.
   NotePressing Enter is an explicit way to make a change to a parameter. 3ds Max also accepts the change as soon as you click anywhere on the screen.

Move the orange:

You might want to move the orange so it is slightly in front of the apple. To do that, you'll use the Transform gizmo.

1. On the main toolbar, click the Select And Move button.

   A tripod of red, blue, and green arrows appears. This is the transform gizmo. As you move your cursor over the arrows, each axis label and arrow stem turn yellow. When one is yellow, you can press and drag to move the object in a single direction. If you move your cursor over the inner corners of the transform gizmo, the plane turns yellow. This lets you move in a single plane.

2. Using the transform gizmo, move the orange so it is in front of the apple.

   

   Transform gizmo used to move the orange

The rendering looked interesting because of the materials that were already applied to the geometry. Next you'll apply a material to your orange using the Material Editor.