The Basics of Modeling and Texturing

for Rise of Nations


Part 1) Modeling

Well before you make the model you need to decide what it is you are going to make. In this tutorial we have decided to make a Tiger tank to replace the King Tiger. This is what a Tiger Tank looks like:

Now that we to have decide what we are going to make, we have to look for the blueprints. There are several sites that you can find blueprints from on the internet.


You can also use any printed materials or if worst comes to worst draw it yourself and scan them in for reference as well. But it is a crucial step in guiding your construction of the 3D model. What you will need are three different perspectives. Once we have the blueprints I divide them up into there separate views. A Top view, Side View and a Front view (a rear view would also help but not as critical). You can accomplish this task using adobe Photoshop. Make sure when you create the views that they are all to the same scale, and that each view is also the same pixel size, and furthermore that the position of the various parts of the object line up with their position in the other views. You can use the ruler tool in photoshop to assist you in this. This will be critical later when you place the viewports into 3D Studio Max as a guide. We won't go into detail how to use 3D Studio Max, for that you should get a book or search the web for tutorials on the tool itself. Anyhow, we shall begin to build our model, and we will go through it step by step:

  1. Set up the viewsports in 3D Studio Max with the blueprints. You may need to re-orient your blueprints (by rotating them) so that the front of one viewport matches the front of another viewport. But if you follow the orientation shown below you should be ok. We did not do this in the tutorial but you may also want to shift the white color in the blueprints to gray in order to make the lines define the 3D model stand out better and easier to see. When you set up the viewports also make sure you have selected the proper settings, that is: Match Bitmap (this is to make sure the scaling of the viewports matches the blueprints), Display Background (this is self explanatory) and Lock Zoom/Pan (this is to make sure that when you zoom in, your blueprint gets scaled along with your model view), as shown in the picture following on the left. When you are done it should look like the picture following on the right.

  2. We will begin with the Tank's Hull. A good way to create a tank hull is to begin with one long box. In this case a box with 2 segments on the “length" axis will be sufficient. You can have more segments you wish to have a more refined shaped, but generally we should keep the model as simple as possible when we are creating it for a game, and even simpler for an RTS game because of the high number of units it may need to render in real time.

  3. Right click the object > Covert To: > Editable Poly.
    This will transform the box object to what is called an "Editable Poly" that allows you to manipulate each individual vertex that defines your original box shape.
  4. Move the Vertex into shape of the side view of the tiger.

  5. Now to get the basic hull shape I will “Bevel" the side polygons (Edit Poly > Polygon > Edit Polygon > Bevel). This is shown in the picture on the left. When you have bevelled out the sides, your hull should look like the picture on the right. Use the front view to guide you as to how far out and narrow you need to bevel the sides.

  6. But we not done yet! We need to extrude the lower front polygon to form the nose. Follow the same procedure as you would bevel, in fact you would just bevel the front also, but just to practice, try the extrude tool. If you look at it from the side it should look at first like the picture on the left. But once its extruded you need to then go to the Vertex mode and shape it in to the right shape. This is shown on the picture in the middle. When you have the correct same your model should look like the picture on the right.

  7. So now we have the basic hull shape now we need to add some details, like mud guards, exhausts, driver viewport and hull machine gun. The mud guards can be formed with a simple rectangular plane. The driver view port a simple box. Each exhaust with a box with 3 segments along one length, with the middle section slightly pulled out to create a rounded effect on one side of the box. The second exhaust and mud guard can be cloned from the first. The machine gun can be formed with a simple sphere, and a three sided cyclinder. Position each of the objects using the move and rotate objects selections using the blueprints as a guide. The model should look like the following picture when you are done.

  8. Now that the hull is done. we need to create tank treads and wheels. The tread is a box divided into 8 segments. So create that and then make it an editable polygon. Cut off the two end polygons, so that they are a flat hollow box. Shape the box in vertex mode, using the rotate tool to bend the box into the shape desired for the treads. Once you have done that you will need to place a plane in the middle and then cut out the shape of the tracks to form the wheels. Delete any extra polygons that you dont need. Clone the tread and wheel plane and then flip it on the other side to form the second set of treads and wheels on the oppposite side of the tank.

    Alternatively, you can create the treads and wheels as a single box, that you can shape to the tank treads. However you would loose some details in the shape to distinguish the treads from the wheels but may gain some savings by reducing the number of polygons you need to create your model.
  9. Now we can start the turret. We begin by creating a Cylinder with 12 sides. Again convert it to an editable polygon and shape it in the top view. Use the vertex mode to move the vertices to fit the blueprint, and use the collapse tool to remove extra vertices that you may have moved into a common point. The picture on the left shows the turret initially, and the picture on the right shows how it should look after you shaped it appropriately.

  10. To model the gun mount we will need to first bevel the front polygon of the turret. This will create a tapered block that narrows towards the front. We then need to extrude the front of this block to form the front of the gun mount. Finally to complete it, we need to create a box with two segments to form the lip of the gun mount. Shape it so that it is hexagonal in shape and position it so that it is slightly protruding from the rest of the gun mount.
  11. Now we can add the "88mm" maingun. We begin with a cylinder with 7 segments. Reduce it to 4 sides, however for best results a 5 sided cylinder is recommended. With the cylinder selected only. Covert To: > Editable Poly. Next, shape the barrel using vertex move or uniform scaling to match the blueprints. Position the barrel to fit in front of the gun mount. Afterwards, your model should resemble the following picture.

  12. Next we want to add an ammo box on the back of the Tiger's turret. First you need to cut additional segments into the back of the turret to form the outline the ammo box. The picture on the left shows the turret just after creating the cuts. Locate the appropriate faces in the back of the turret and extrude them. When you have the box extruded, use the vertex mode modify them to the same shape dictated by the blueprints. The picture on the right shows the result of the extrude.

    Alternatively, you may want to create the ammo box as a separate box object and shape it as appropriate. This will allow you create a variant unit without an ammo box by making the texture skin around the ammo box transparent. This is not possible if you simply extrude the surfaces to form the ammo box.
  13. A final detail is the commander's cupola and the AA gun. Simply create a cyclinder with 6 sides and 1 segment. Remove the bottom side of the cylinder. Shape and position it on top of the turret using the top veiw as a guide. For the AA gun, simply create a 3 sided cylinder for the gun barrel and a box for the ammo hopper. Position these appropriately.
  14. Now remove any polygons that are out of sight, like the bottom of the tank, and inside surfaces. Right click on an object to select it and then “Hide Unselected" makes this process much easier. The other recommendation, is to name the parts so that when you next unwrap the model to create a texture template. It will save you a lot of work to be able to isolate and identify each part of the tank, as the unwrap process tends to create a set of shapes that can often be hard to identify.

    Now Export it in a .3DS format and we can move on to the next phase, the "Unwrapping".


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By One_Dead_Villy and Unit35