Building Autocad Complex Shapes in 3ds Max

Building Autocad Complex Shapes in 3ds Max by Aziz Khan, Afghanistan

Hey guys how are you all doing? Hope everyone doing well, once again welcome to one of my tutorials, this time this tutorial is for architectural visualization people who are dealing with visualizations and stuff, we will start with the AutoCAD drawing file DWG which I already imported into max and saved it as max native format which can be downloaded fromhere, if you want to follow along with me, 3ds Max 2010 or greater will be needed to open the max file.

I created this tutorial to help those who are confused how to build their models using complex AutoCAD imported drawings inside max, which I guess it’s pretty easy to build complex shapes by spending some time to work with them in appropriate method or way, in this tutorial I will show you my method of working with complex AutoCAD drawing inside max, the drawing which we will work on this tutorial is pretty nice with some challenging curvatures and will help you to build even more complex shape using this technique, you might be thinking we can extrude the shape into 3d model, yeah you are right we can do it but the problem is that we won’t have clean and smooth faces as well as it will be problematic while cutting the faces or adding extra edges for  windows and door areas, also might create problems while applying textures because of their flipped normal`s, so it’s always good to start in appropriate way, once we are finished with modelling and stuff, I will show you how to set up a lighting rig for the selected room we want to render, so this technique could use for any interior scene, so let’s get started.

1- Open up the scene supplied along this tutorial, and you should have the one like on the image below.

2- Now create a box with the appropriate dimensions to match thickness of the walls and also add the segments to the width and height of the box as needed, in the image below I forgot to add the segments for the height but I always can add if i needed any, but it’s always good to start from the base to keep it smooth, once you are happy with the overall shape, right click and convert it to editable poly, selected the faces on the top view port use your extrude operation and follow along the guide lines, use your move tool to place the vertices along the lines if there is any curvature, as shown on the image below.


3- keep going on we will be using the same techniques to complete the whole shape, as you can see on the image. 

4- since we are using the same techniques of extrude and move tools so i will only show you the progress of the making of this entire shape model.

5- keep it up.

6- here we will stop with this model and start modelling with new box make sure you have the same settings you used for the previous one,  I stopped with this model because i don’t want to have a single object on the scene and it also create problems in texturing if I wanted to apply different materials, I can still apply materials to separate polygons but it will be problematic if I wanted to use UVs shell, I would end up with large and messed up map, so i don’t want to have it, going with the extrude and move tool i reached here with new box model.

7 - use the same method to create that round corner as you can see on the image below.



8- Stop with this model and create a new box with the same settings and start working with it.



9 - so as you can see with are done with the exterior walls.

10- start using the same method for the interior walls.





11 - as I was forgotten to add the segments for the height so here I can add few using the quick slice operation, as showing on the image below.



12- and I added few segments which I was forgotten to the ones in the starting of this scene. (if you already added in the starting then you can skip previous step).

13- and I spent some time to create holes for the windows and then extruded the edges of the deleted faces and the welded their vertices to get a solid mesh, for the rounded corner I just used the inset and bevel operation to give it a windows shape.



14- and then placed the windows on newly created windows holders, as you can see the frames for the windows are too big later on I will fix this problem, create a window with appropriate windows frame, not like mine, mine is only for test purposes.



15- ok now I applied the materials for the windows and glasses, as well as created the floor applied the tile texture, and the roof, so here we will be working on this single room the technique of lighting will be the same as for this room.



16- added the place holder for doors, also set a camera for test renders, like the one on the image below.

17- For the moment we are done and ready for some test renders, assign v-ray as your renderer because we are going to use v-ray for lighting up the scene, if you don’t have v-ray installed in your system you can follow along with any 3rd party rendering engine you have in your access regardless.

Once you set v-ray as your renderer now it’s time to adjust the settings to get the desired lighting, in the v-ray tab from "Image Sampler Type" roll out chose "Fixed" as your image sampler and "Catmul-Rom" as your filter you can use any filter if you like but this is my favourite most often I am using it, fixed image sampler is pretty nice if you want to capture details on your renders because of its detailed renders, if you don’t have much detail on your scene you can use one from the 2 other on the roll out, now in "Color mapping" rollout choose "Reinhard" as your color mapping and set the "Burn Value" to 0.5 to have some good mixed lighting of "Exponential" and "HSV Exponential" you are more than welcome to experiment with any of them, and always play with the settings to achieve your desired look and feel, you are not bound to what i am doing here!!

Note: Fixed Image Sampler Type is a bit render expensive because of capturing the small details, so use it on appropriate scenes.

18- from the "Indirect Illumination" tab follow as the image showing you below, as you can see I am using fairly low preset because i am going to have a test render and i dont want to wait and watch for test renders, once i am happy with the settings then I can use medium or high preset anytime.



19 - In the v-ray "Light Cache" rollout check mark the indicate option this will help us to see the light cache calculation.



20- Set couple of v-ray lights and make sure they are not intersecting with anything in the scene, like the one showing below.

21 - and this is the settings for v-ray lights just we created right above, so this is my settings for the this scene, if you are using different scenes then it might differ from the one we are using here.



22 - and it's time for our first test render, hit render and lets see what is the result, so here is mine and if you are using the same scene as i am using you should have something like the render below.



23 - For the moment I am fine the lighting and lets see how it will look if i add the sun light, so create a "V-Ray" sun light and set it up somewhere facing to windows like mine below, and then set the lighting parameter the one showing below, you can change the intensity of light if you want.



24 - with that set lets have another test render, and now I got this one which is pretty nice for the moment, once we start adding the other stuffs like furniture, lights, lamps, table etc the scene will get more brighter because of the secondary light bounces.

25 - this is another test render facing window, brightened the wall color a little bit, and fixed the window frame to make it realistic.



26 - moved camera to the left to check out if everything is setup nicely, so it looks cool.



27 - from another angel facing the side window, and yet everything looks nice for the moment.



28 - now its time for the final adjustment, I added the couch, table, lights, frame, carpet using v-ray fur, now merge your stuffs in the scene like I did showing in the image below.

29 - let give it a test render, so I got this.



30 - Moved the couch and other items to the other part of the room and then rendered it and i got this.

as you can see the intensity of the light is a bit of too much on the left side where sun light hits the couch, decrease it if you want but I am happy with it for the moment, or you can change your color mapping from "Reinhard" to "Exponential" to have a bit of darker result for the brighter areas by playing with bright multiplier values.

31 - another render turned off the sun light and got this result, play with the settings if you want but i am happy with this result. Note: i am still using the same low preset change it to medium or high if you are going to have the final render.

32 - here I thought to add few more items to the scene to make it more realistic, so I added a palm plant, photo frame, and couple of ceiling lights, so this is the wire frame setup.



33 - Here i changed my preset to medium on the irradiance map rollout, other then everything is the same as we setup in the starting of lighting setup, so far I got this result, as you can see a bit of noise on the wall behind the lamp plant pot and the couch you could reduce the noise by increasing the values on the subdivisions of lights in their settings, I am not going to render anymore of this scene, I am leaving it all to you to play around.



this was the tutorial for this architectural visualization, I hope this helped you to learn something on how to build models based on some complex AutoCAD drawing/shapes, and still if you got any question or feedback regarding this tutorial you are more then welcome to contact me at aziz3d@hotmail.co.uk and I will be glad to write you back.