Ya vol! mine student. This is to be the first in a look at the deeper levels of Max. It's designed for people who perhaps don't know much about how 3d stuff works, or have just started out in Max. Now in this on I'll be explaining as much as I know about the mesh. How it's constucted and what elements go it to createing a mesh shape. It will also gloss over "edit mesh", perhaps the most useful modifier in the Max armoury. Some of you may find this all too easy, no real objects are built on these tutorials. They are mainly for understanding how it all works, you should be able to take this knowledge and use it in your own creations. I try not to teach you how to build a certain object, but how 3d stuff works. If you don't have a deep understanding on how it all fits together, then you'll never build great objects and you'll never push the medium to what it's capable off.

It's just a cube man, no need to be scared...

OK, so here's a cube. nice and easy to start with. I might as well explain how it all works on a cube, because it is so simple - no one should get lost. So her eit is a cube, sitting there all peacful. But what's under the hood? What makes this simple shape tick? Well hold on then and I'll tell ya!
Any shape you make is built out of "verticies" these are points in 3d space (defined by a 3 point co-ordinate [x,y,z]). But verts don't show up in the render, their just the pegs that you hang your shape on. What you see when you render stuff are faces. In Max all faces are triangular, so you need three verts before you can have a face. The interesting point about faces is that they only have one side. On the other side they are transparent. When you build a face you also get three edges free in to the bargain. Now edges are the thing that most people forget about, and for most part, this is ok. But there are some times when an understanding of edges can get you out of a tricky spot (like smoothing - more on that later). So we have the basic elements of a mesh, all the building blocks to get you started. Just in case you need it here are some pics of the magic 3.....

Verts, faces, edges.

Look deep within yourself Clarice....

But theres more to just these three elements. Theres normals (verts and face), UV co-ords, smoothing and ID numbers. All of these things are contained within the the magic three. Lets start with UV co-ords, these define where on your shape the texture appears. Now most of the time, you'll just be using the UVW map modifier, and your texture will all fit nicely. But again, that's not the point. We need to know HOW it works, then we might be able to exploit it somehow. Each vertex carries with it (as soon as you've appied mapping of course) another set of co-ordinates. These are texture co-ordinates, and they range from 0 to 1. They are a % of texture, this is why when you change the size of the texture you apply it gets stretched to fit your object....
Get your laughing gear round this diagram...

The four co-ords you see in this pic are the ones that the four verts in the side of the cube carry. If there were verts inbetween they would have an inbetween co-ords. This is when you apply planner mapping. This is the simplest type of mapping but they all work in the same way. The extreme corners of the gizmo all apply the co-ords of 0,0 0,1 1,0 1,1. Once you apply the co-ords they don't change when you alter the mesh, that's why the texture all stetches and warped all you pull the mesh.
I hope that's clear? I'ts clear to me but then again I'm the one writting it.

Are you normal?.....

What is a normal? You hear this mystical work being spoken in hushed tones around dark allies late at night......
What the hell are you doing in a dark alley late at night? You should be home in bed you young scamp!
A normal is realy a vector. "Oh gee thanks, a vector, well that clears it up". Hold up there young fella give me a chance to speak. A vector is a maths type thing, it's best to explain it as a 3d direction. Naormals are split into two types, face and vertex. In Max you can only modify and see FACE normals. The face normal indicates which way a face is pointing. Remember I said that faces only have one side? Well the normal points in the direction that the visable side of the face points.

A face normal, yesterday......

The little sticks indicate the normal, the option the show them is at the bottom of edit mesh, sub-object face. The direction that you build a face determins it's initial face normal. If you create them clockwise the the normal will point away from you. But if you build it anti-clockwise then it will point toward you. This is how they are usually built.
The second type of normal is vertex. Now, your not allowed to see or directly alter vert normals, but they do get changed for you when you play with smoothing. Smoothing is a fudge of the shading of the poly to simulate a rounded surface. With good use of smoothing you can use less faces but still make a surface look round. It works like this. Each vertex has a normal for each face that it's connected to (so in a cube each verts is attatched to three faces, so has three normals) If the normals point in the same direction you get smooth shading at that point. But if they don't point in the same direction you get a hard edge. Look at these two diagrams.....

See on the left the normals for each side of the cube point in different directions. But each side of the cube has parralel normals, this means that each side of the cube is smooth within itself but not smooth against the other sides of the cube. In pic 2, you can see the normals are all lined up and that the shading attempts to make the cube look more round (although no too well).
(NOTE:- I think I made a boo boo in the smooth diagram. The normals would probably all point in the same direction. But you can still see how the seperate un-smooth normals all come together on the smooth version.) You apply smoothing in the sub-object face area. By giving each face a "smoothing group" you can alter which faces are smooth and which are hard.

If two faces that share an edge have the same smoothing group number, than that edge will be smooth. But if they don't have the same number, then the edge will be hard. Each face can have up to 32 different group numbers (but usually you'll only need two or three). So for our cube example, the smooth one, all the faces share the same smoothing group number. Therefore all the edges are smooth. In the hard edged one, each side of the cube has a different smoothing group number, so six hard sides to the cube are defined.]

Just a quick bit about edges here. You get edges when you buils a face, each face has three edges. Edges come into play when you want to bend sets of faces. If your edges don't lie in the correct orientation then when you bend an object then you get ugly ridges in it. This is an easy thing to fix, edit mesh comes with a function called "edge turn". This takes a group of two faces (two faces form a square with one, usually hidden, edge that runs from corner to corner) and reverses the hidden edge orientation. This helps you get a clean bend. Edges are realy important on low ploygon models, where every face (not minute) counts. If you know your edges you can make a shape look like it has more faces than it realy does, by controling the way the faces bend. A much undervalued but handy skill.

You got any ID kid?.....

One more small point about faces in Max. They also carry a "Material ID number". This tells the face what material out of a multi-subobject material it should be using. There is a tut on this, go back a page and you'll find it.

My guy is, a tad too ornamental...

The last bit I'll be explaining is all about the "Matrix". Now, you see that box shape that appears around all objects when you select them? Well that box is called the transformation matrix. All verts ste are stored as an off set from this matrix. (the matrix is always a box that your object is inside) Using a matrix is a cheap way of applying rotation,scale and move offets to an object. Just do a few calculations to rotate tha matrix and all the verts do the same. Less calculation overhead, you see? When you switch to box diplay moe what your realy seeing are object representations of the matrix. It's just move, rotate and scale that use the matrix. All modifiers directly maniplate the verts. Before doing any animation it's best to reset the transformation matrix (by using the small utility) because pivot orientation is also dirived from the matrix. You don't need to worry much more about it than that, as long as, whan you've finished modeling, you reset it, all should be well.

well I think thats your lot, now you know how a mesh works, you should be able to plan the most effective ways of creating objects.