Below is a quick guide to what I see as the three main Polygon Modelling tools;

You can choose the window you wish to work in by just left clicking within it. Highlighted in the right hand panel and the bottom of max are some useful tools for the selected perspective window. From right to left, Field of View, Pan, Rotate and Full Screen selected window.

1. Left clicking toggles the snap facility; by right clicking you can set the snap type.

2. Here I have set grid points as the snap limit, other useful ones are here such as vertex and midpoint.

1. Shown at the top is the current mode you are in, using these tabs you can quickly navigate between them or Max will navigate between them for you when you perform certain operations the current mode you are in is Create others include Modify and Motion.

2. Here you select the object you wish to create; here I have selected a Box. Draw out the Box in any of the perspective views.

3. This option gives you the ability to edit you X Y, Z values if the box you draw out is unsatisfactory in size. (I chose 160 units for X,Y,Z here) 4.This option allows you to add subdivisions, most useful when creating polygon models don’t use too many though as it can get messy and you can increase the subdivisions later. (I chose 4 subdivisions here.)

1. Right click in perspective view and then select Convert to: > convert to editable Mesh.

2. Automatically you will switch to Modify mode.

 1. Clicking this Tick Box makes sure that blackfaces are not selected.

2. The Extrude and Bevel tools are used to extrude a single Polygon Face. The keys F2 and F4 are useful for showing the individual polygons on a model. Here I have extruded the face by 40 units.

 1. Here I have selected vertex mode, which means I can edit individual points on the model, there are also other such selection tools to the right of these that can be explored.

2. The Move tool is selected to move around the individual points, other tools worth mentioning along this menu are the scale and rotate which appear next to the Move tool.

3. Selecting these points will also bring up the transformer helper, this is a colour coded X,Y Z axis. Moving these points back is just a case of placing your cursor over the appropriate direction on the axis and moving the mouse either up or down. For example I would expect to hover the cursor over the Y-axis. Now moving the mouse up will move the two selected vertices back until they touch the face behind.

 1. You can navigate some parts of the modify menu by placing the cursor over the menu until a grab hand appears now by left clicking you can scroll up or down.

2. I am now using the Weld tool and Select option to weld the two vertices we moved earlier to the two closest to them. For now I have put in the value 5.0 which means any selected vertex will be welded to its neighbour if it is closer than 5.0 units.

3. Here I have selected the four vertices to weld hopefully the top and the bottom vertices wont weld together because the distance is too far away but the ones we placed there will be welded. Now we just hit the selected button from the weld section of the menu. If you unsure if something is welded you can select the vertex and move it, if it is not welded this will become very apparent.

1. Once again I have right clicked on the Snap to options.

2. This time I have ticked Vertex and unchecked Grid points.

3. Now selecting the polygon tool (sorry I haven’t pointed to it on the diagram but it is there with the vertex selection tool at the top of the modify window.) and then the option marked as cut, we can cut the polygon face along the top and bottom edge of the cube.

4 .Here I have cut selected and have clicked on the left hand vertex on this corner then the right hand side. This leaves a Horizontal cut.

5. Now delete this side of polygon faces, Remember the bottom will need cutting the same as the top, this can be done by using the rotate tool to see the underside of the model.

  1. Now to fill those gaps, staying with Polygon mode selected click Create.

2. To fill in the gaps you must select each of the four vertices that make up the missing face in reverse order. Sometimes this doesn’t always work or the polygon will be there but the normal will be flipped making it seem invisible, more often than not because you have done it the wrong way around when creating the missing face.

 Belive it or not if you can do this Tutorial you have learned most of what you need to be able to create Models in Max, of course it is very time consuming and you may not be able to create anything amazing at first but in time these tools will serve you well.