Time required to complete: 5-10 min.
Hello and welcome to another 3D Studio Max Tutorial!
Today we will create and render a modified 3D Text without using any plugins at all. You can use any kind of geometry with this simple rendering technique and get pretty good results.
So let's get started:
Step 1: Open 3Ds MAX and go to the Create Tab > Shapes > Text and click once in the viewport. Use the parameter's text box to type your text.
Step 2: Apply an Extrude Modifier to the text and increase the Amount to 22:
Step 3: Next apply a Edit Poly modifier on top of our extruded text, then go to Polygon selection and with CTRL pressed select the text top & bottom polys.
Step 4: Then hit Delete on your keyboard and you should end with something like this:
Step 5: Next apply a Shell Modifier on top and leave the default settings:
Step 6: Go to the Create Tab > Geometry > Standard Primitives > Box and drag a big box over our text.
Step 7: Right Click and Convert the Box into an Editable Poly. Then select Polygons and delete the top and front polygons as you can see in the image below:
Step 8: Next go to Edge selection and by holding CTRL select all the inner edges:
Step 9: With these edges selected go to Chamfer Settings (press on the box next to Chamfer) and use a value of 2.0 as Chamfer Amount then hit OK:
Step 10: Apply a Shell Modifier on top of our Editable Poly and leave the default settings:
Step 11: Select the Move Tool (shortcut W) and move the text above our "floor" to avoid any geometry intersection after the shell modifiers.
Step 12: Go to Create > Lights > Standard > Skylight and click once in the viewport.
Step 13: With the Skylight selected go to the Modifiy Tab and enable Cast Shadows and lower the Rays per Sample to about 17 (increasing this value will also increase our render time but it will reduce the noise in our shadows).
Step 14: Press M on your keyboard to bring up the Material Editor. Select an empty slot and inside a Standard material change the Diffuse color to 60,60,60 (RGB), increase the Specular Level to 15, Glossiness to 19 and assign this material to our box.
Step 15: Select another empty material in the editor and change the Diffuse color to 250,250,250 (RGB), increase Specular Level to 72 and Glossiness to 60 then scroll down to Maps and add a Raytrace as the Reflection Map and reduce its value to 35. Assign this material to the text:
Step 16: Scale the box up to make it wider or longer. Then select an angle which you like and press Shift+Q to render it out:
And that's it, we're done.
Here are some other renders:
For any question about this tutorial please use the comment section below.
To keep in touch with the newest tutorials that I post follow my blog on facebook: www.facebook.com/VenomX3D
See you next time with another tutorial.
