Tutorial Three – Reference Set Up

Now that I had finished editing my reference photographs in photoshop it was time to set up my reference plates in 3D Max. I started by creating a plane that would hold the front view image. I then modified the plane by changing the length and width segments to 1. I then positioned the plane by using the top viewport and dragging it to the left side. Using material editor I assigned my bitmap image to the diffuse channel. As the image had been squashed to fit the plane I went on to modify its texture co ordinates. I did this by adding a UVW Map, and using bitmap fit it allowed me to keep the aspect ratio of the original image. I also had to reposition the texture on the plane to allow me to view the front profile of my image. I did this by moving the image using gizmo within the UVW Map. As the image was becoming darker when I moved the view around, I self illuminated the material to 100% under the parent section of the material editor. I then went on to copy the plane and material, using the rotate and angle snap tools I rotated it by 90 degrees. I then moved it to the right side of my original plane. I also had to flip the image as it was facing the wrong way and increase the width of the plane to fit the image. Again I used gizmo to adjust it as before. To make sure I did not select the planes whilst modelling, under properties I froze the object and made sure that it was not showing the frozen object in grey ensuring that I could still see my reference image.