3ds Max 2024 Tutorial - Procedural Basalt & Cliffs

what's up YouTube [Music] today we're going to be taking a look at 3ds Max 2024 and how to create a procedural Basalt column generator we're going to be using the array modifier the new Boolean operator and using the data Channel modifier as well to add some extra proceduralism on top let's check it out all right so the first things first we're going to establish the base shape of the column itself so let's make a cylinder bring it down to about five sides to start with and then we're going to put a spline down that's going to be a shape for us to start working with to lay out our columns okay so we have this like kind of flowing river that it might be beside we're going to go to our column generator well our column here and put a array modifier on there we're going to select pick spline and then we are going to take it off a count put it on to relative offset of this count that way we have a better control over the density once we get moving there and let's add another y Let's do let's do three to start with and scroll down here to randomization well first scale we're gonna put this to incremental and start raising the Z drop this countdown there we go and then let's start adding some randomization as well all right this will give us some of the base shape to get started here go ahead and offset this on the X and we can always control the rotation a little bit more here in a minute but this is just to give some offset from the spline initially so now we need a way to be able to control the rotation of all of these columns without affecting their position right so we're going to put down a volume select that way we just have a selection of everything here we're just going to do it by object replace and after this we're going to put our data Channel and for here we're going to do component space and we're going to set this to negative 1 and negative one and you'll see why here in a minute and after this we're going to do transform elements and it's just going to be the Z we're not going to point at a node and this will control you can see where those colors are changing you'll see in a minute uh that it will affect the rotation so we're going to do a Vertex output and now when we control this Z you can see that the rotation is changing as well and that's what we wanted so we have a seed here close the rotation a little bit and then after this let's just do a turn into poly so that's the first step of what we're going to do add a little bit of Shifting here so we're just instead of having this at 100 where it's really shifted we can keep this at a lower value giving it some more tilt and we can do the same thing for the X bring this down as well so now if we mess with the seed you can see that we have a little bit of variety in our shifting so what we're going to do now is we're going to make a copy of this and we're going to go back down to the array we're going to change how far this is offset right about there and then now let's change the Z scale shrink this down also got to change the incremental Z that we have like more of this gradual kind of coastal area where the basalt is going to be quite a bit shorter giving us more variety here so already at this stage let's do a normalized spline that way we can keep a dynamic spacing on our spline you can see that now we have a way to control the knots so it was something like this is fine and if we go back to our beginning stage you can go ahead and move these points around change our array here really quick we're going to do fill on both so now as we make this spline longer The Columns are going to grow and they're going to be evenly spaced out you can see that we can really make something pretty Dynamic so we can start isolating the look a little bit better for what we're going for I think we need a little bit of more randomization in the Z just to kind of change things up a little bit here that's good we'll do it on the smaller wall as well let's go down to our Z okay and that's pretty good we can maybe even use another y count on here it's not too bad and then overall just push the scaling down even further something kind of like that have a little bit more variety in here and if we go to Clay probably preview this a little bit better also the height and dynamically change in here as well now we need a way to have this Basalt column generator be on the other side of this River that's going to be here and there's a few ways we can do that one of the easiest ways is for us to simply just make a copy over here and what we'll do is we'll go ahead and select the array of each one and we'll correct the offsets so this is the other small section and then offset this as well this is easiest and then that way we can still tweak some of these settings so we go back to our data Channel we go back to our transform elements we can just pick some different seats to change things up a little bit and they're not shared and we can even adjust some of the height if we go back to our spline everything should be working pretty well and if we feel like the incremental increase in height is too strong if we go back to our array and go down to scale incremental you can just drop this down put a little bit more variety in each as well we take a look here at the bottom rows they're a little bit too uniform so if we go to our array and go down to random positioning we can offset these a little bit to kind of overlap and along with that we can increase the scale a little bit as well go to our spacing and increase the density by dropping the spacing amount so again spacing drop down and shifting this position a little bit here we're going to want to chamfer you can already tell that the edges are reading more crisp right now that we got these basal columns set up let's go ahead and get a feel for how the material is going to read and how the overall look is going like that that's not too bad all right so once we have our procedural assault column set up now we need a way to have a procedural clip that kind of goes along the side of it right to fill it in and make it feel more realistic and there's a few ways we can go about this let's minimize this so let's take our spline here and let's just go ahead and make a reference to this and let's do an extrude all right so now that we have this let's make sure we have more segments to work with so let's just split this up a little bit and we want a procedural way to edit the overall form of this uh but we can't use that at Poly because as soon as the topology changes and new vertices are added uh it'll throw off the stack so what we're going to use instead is an ffd modifier um and that's just going to give us an overall shape that we can kind of work with here through F3 so we can see what we're doing and we just want to kind of change the shapes around give something a little bit more Dynamic before we throw a material that's going to displace on there that's okay if it feels a little bit round because once we have the material that's displacing it'll feel a lot better so now we can see that if we preview the end um everything's procedural so like the amount the extrusions and the segments all of that will be fine and using the ffd make sure all of all of the data is preserved the way it needs to be so something we may want to consider here too is a way to remove any clipping Basalt that's hitting this wall in a way we could do that is actually by using the Shell modifier that way we have some thickness on this wall let's do a inner amount something kind of like that just to make this a solid piece go back down to this assault row and we're going to do a volume select and with that we're going to do volume mesh object we're going to pick this wall and we're going to do objects let's do face all right so that's all the faces that it's intersecting with and now if you have Wall worm installed uh you have another modifier and we'll do select faces and we'll do selected faces we'll do by element this will expand the faces that it selects and then we can just delete those actually we don't even need to use the select bases we'll just do a delete faces and it'll be the same thing selected faces eye element and it'll delete those so anything that was clipping is now resolved it also takes care of some extra geometry that we don't have to worry about anymore all right so let's go ahead and set up the displacements for this wall and since I don't want the displacing volume to delete any extra points and process and take longer what I'm going to do is I'm just going to clone this as a reference and now up on this piece so let's hide our original so let's hide this bring this back in we're on there cool and so above here let's do our Boolean modifier do open VDB so super dense so that's fine because now we're going to displace this let's grab that map bring over here instance and let's start cranking up the value so luminance Center and let's start displacing let's also make sure it's a let's just do cylinder for now or even use existing mapping make a UV map really quick we'll do a box there we go so we got that wall coming out a little bit there and honestly that's probably fine and you'll see why the bullying modifier is really cool so we'll just copy this put it after the displays we lost a little bit and that's fine and realistically we didn't have to displace upward um but we're doing this kind of quick so now we have a wall that is procedural along with it now it's really dense so if you want to make real-time edits I would lower this and make it less sense but if you want to like push this out right away it's like a you know a nanite setup or whatever for unreal you're pretty much ready and good to go so let's get the materials on there and do a quick test render then we'll be good to go oh yeah and we need to put another UV map on it after this bullied modifier that clears the UVS so let's just take the same UV we had from before paste instance that way we know it's always going to line up with a displaced material there we have it pretty unique procedural setup realistic wall Basalt columns that are being dynamically called out if they're intersecting hopefully you guys learned a few things it was some uh really cool creative workflows on how to utilize different modifiers and the way you approach setting up different Assets in your scene it allows you to really experiment and iterate more creatively without having to redo work so I hope you guys found some value in this and I would really appreciate it if you guys let me know what you want to learn next what you liked and what you didn't like about the video that way we can continue to grow as a community and I can provide better value and really deliver the kind of content that you want to see and watch and be a part of like I said in my previous video I did just start a patreon super new I I do plan on trying to deliver more value in the sense of maybe 3D assets or textures or exclusive tutorials that will give me a little bit more of a financial Edge to really put some extra time and effort into a few things that way you're always getting the highest quality content possible so thanks for sticking around and checking out the tutorial and hopefully you had some fun and let me know what you want to see next all right see ya

Channel: Kingdom Crafter

Views: 6,515

Keywords: 3ds max, 3d, 3dsmax, tutorial, 3d tutorial, environment art, landscape, procedural, procedural cliffs, automatic cliff, 3dsmax2024, 3ds max 2024, 3d modeling, arnold renderer, Basalt Columns, Basalt, 3d art, how to 3d

Id: lFf0uhFkl5I

Length: 11min 25sec (685 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 09 2023