How to Make a Complicated Engine in 3ds Max in Such an Easy Way

As the best render farm in the CG industry, Fox Renderfarm will share with you a production process from 3D artist JFD. JFD is specialized in 3D hard surface mechanical modeling. In this article, he used 3ds Max to make an engine, and elaborate some techniques.

Make a plan and collect reference

We’ve collected some reference pictures of the engine. When I found the main reference picture, I looked for more pictures for the parts we cannot see in the main picture. These references are very important to the structure.

After that, we need to analyze the references and separate the big parts. In this process, we use some colors to mark those parts to make it easier for later modeling.

With the rough structure with colors, we made the models with some structural parts (big components and bumps). Then, some details can be added accordingly layer by layer.

We used the Spline tools and Boolean to create the small components respectively and copied them to layout according to the references. Those carved parts are made in ZBrush.

When assembling all the small components, we used Voxel Remesh. After that we used 2 ways to make the surface smooth,

To use Voxel Remeshe to smoothen the models quickly.

To use Boolean and danymesh and polish tools to achieve that

It takes a lot of time and patience to make the complicated components. You can choose one of those division methods based on your needs. You don’t need to switch between apps if you make it in 3ds Max, and you can view the effects instantly in 3ds Max. But the shortcoming is also there, it will make the polygons very high, which not only requires high hardware parameters and slow down the process.

Using ZBrush will be more complicated since you need to switch between apps. But it can be more steady to make and the quality is satisfying.