Week 2 - Weekly Blog Entry

Important elements that I may need from the interface includes:

• The different perspectives - Top, Bottom, Left and Right. This is to help me create models from all different viewpoints so its better scaled and easier to model.
• Primitive Shapes - These are the most simple shapes I could use with lesser polygons and are easier to combine together to make more complicated looking shapes. Shapes include: Sphere, tube, cube, cylinder and cone. 
• Modify Command Panel - You can see all the parameters for an object, you can also modify shapes in this tab by using the extrude tool to create more shapes off of the original shape. This could be very useful and less time consuming than creating new shapes every time and combining them together. Before even using the extrude tool I would need to convert the shape into an editable poly.
• Auto-grid / Snap tool - This is very helpful for me if I want to create one object on the side of another object. It helps snap the object into position better rather than moving the shape myself. This is more reliable to use if you want better quality models which is what I want.
• Moving, Rotating and Scaling - You can move the shapes around, rotate the shapes and also scale the shapes to make them bigger or smaller. 
• Copying Objects - This is helpful for some of my models that I'm going to create because my models are symmetrical so all I would need to do is copy the shape and clone it. This is more accurate than creating the shape again and trying to resize it to the same size as the original.
• Renaming Objects - This is probably the most useful element in 3DS Max, this is because renaming certain objects help with what shapes what. Renaming the shapes to something related to that object will help me identify certain aspects of the models I'm making. 
• Increment Save - Turning this on in the preferences section will make sure any models are saved each time you click save. It saves each file separately so it shows progress and it also helps if one of the files crash and you have the file before hand where you can just modify upon. 
• The most important element would be the help option in the top right hand corner. This is a help booklet for all the different tools I need to use throughout this module, this is handy because if I'm stuck then this should be able to help me.

No further thoughts on the models which I'm going to create as I'm still learning how to use 3DS Max. Although I am looking at some of the images for my models and wondering how it can be cut down into simple primitive shapes.