I am trying to make a field sports dome and I am good at 3d shapes but this is driving me nuts--I am attaching what it looks like--the main thing is from TOP view the corners are square that is what is hard-Any ideas? I really wanted to do this in AutoCAD but I don’t think its possible in AutoCAD to make this complex shape-curving in all 3 dimensions at the same time...I know its not hard to do in MAX/VIZ but I don’t know which modifier to use and what 3d solid to start with ---HELP!

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hi
i would image something along splines+surface modifier. i have 3dmax in french, so in order to be more explicit, i’m attaching a file with what i think could be a good start.

good luck

Tudor

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1999_bdVoeAJUYFgWmA9SfQgA.zip

Thank you so much for your fast reply--unfortunataly I have VIZ 2005 and am unable to open the file made with new version of VIZ or MAX..Is there any way that you may save in a way I may open in 2005? I hope cause the thumbnail looks like you figured it out--I hope--its driving me nuts.

I don’t have Viz, but here is a sequence of steps from the previous max file that may help.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

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The shape you made is 100% perfect--BUT I have Viz2005 and 3d Max6 and neither one has a modifier called surface--unless it comes from somewhere other than the modifier list that drops down--or maybe it is called something else--what version do you have??
I would be so happy if you could briefly tell me the steps you used I see the screen capture which is great--but I don’t know if I start making a rectangle and then extrude or what exactly do I do next--if you could I would be happy to in return send you some of my best 3d objects which I made over the years --you may be able to use in you projects. So if you could breifly say- STEP by STEP what to do I would be so thankful-you are the only one who came up with the solution which is quite a credit that of all the people who look at this you are the only one to come up with this--congrats!!
David

To access the Surface modifier, pick a spline then go to Modify panel > Modifier List > Object-Space Modifiers > Surface.

Bruce Hammond
e-nimation.com
Peterborough, NH USA

Max8-32 SP3, Max9-32 SP2, WinXP

hi there,

glad to be of help, and Tim, thanks for posting the “english” visual translation of my model, since screen captures in french wouldn’t have helped much.
Dave, i’ll try to explain the steps; unfortunately i don’t have an earlier than 8.0 version of max. Maybe this link can help - http://www.kxcad.net/autodesk/Autodesk_VIZ_Help/surface_modifier.html - it looks like a piece of Viz help, which itself looks like the Max help, and you’ll be able to do it yourself.
1. draw a rectangle
2. convert to spline, select the 4 vertices and break them
3. draw the diagonals of the rectangle (with the “draw line” inside the spline options, or as normal splines that you will attache to your rectangle spline) each diagonal being divided in half, so you have 4 lines going from the center of the rectangle to each of the corners
4. select all vertices and convert them to bezier corners
5. select the center vertex (actually they will be 4 at the same point) and move it upwards
6. now select different corners and play with the tangents of the beziers corners in order to get the shape almost right
7. go to modifier - choose surface and play with the parameters

8. good luck!

if i translated something wrong from french, i’m sorry, hope you’ll figure it out

Tudor