3Ds Max House Tour

In this tutorial you will learn how to use 3Ds max to make your own house. These steps will guide you to create your own personalized house, you do not have to make the house identical to the pictures.

Computer/Laptop/Desktop

3Ds Max Program

First you want to create the foundation of your house, the walls and flooring. The walls and flooring are all made out of box shapes. The walls were rotated 90 degrees and placed with the edged flushed against the floor. To create windows, you want to make your desired window shapes, in this example a square/rectangle and have it intersect and go through the wall at the location you want it to be. Then with the wall selected go to the drop down window next to standard primitives and choose compound objects. Now the button ProBoolean will be available. Click on ProBoolean and more options will appear, under the Parameters heading, make sure Subtraction is selected, then in the section above click Start Picking and then click on the window box. Repeat the same process for your door frame. To create a door that opens, first make the same shape, the same size as your door frame. Next create a small cylinder the same height as your door. Now you need to link the door to the cylinder. Later when you animate, you will rotate the cylinder which will swing the door open/closed.

All of the furniture and items inside the house are created from one shape by editable mesh. To do this, first create your shape, for example if we are making a chair, create a box. I suggest creating a box the size of the seat, not the entire end length you want. Change your view in the top left corner of the winder from default shading to edged faces. Now right click on your shape, and go to convert to, convert to editable mesh. Now under selection click on the square icon, now hold shift while selecting all of the squares you would like to transform. Once you have them all selected scroll down a little bit until you see extrude, click extrude and type your desired length into the box next to extrude. Repeat this step until you have your desired chair/object. If you want the final edges to be rounded instead of pointed, go to the top of the column where it says modifier list and choose MeshSmooth.

For the rest of the items in the house, the same techniques are applied using editable mesh.

Made from box using square selection:

1. bed
2. dresser
3. shower
4. vanity
5. mirror
6. towel rack
7. table
8. chairs
9. couches
10. kitchen island
11. kitchen countertops/appliances
12. utensils
13. tv
14. toilet

Made from sphere using vertex selection:

1. sink
2. bowls
3. plates
4. cups

Once you have all of your objects made, you are going to want to add materials to them, so they appear more realistic. To access the materials menu click on the last icon located in the top menu bar. For object that you just want to be a solid color, choose the standard material. You have to drag the material into the view window. Once you have the material you will see a list of options, click on diffuse color to change the color and it's appearance. For special materials, like a wood finish you are going to drag the "Advanced Wood" and a standard material to the view window. Next you are going to connect the wood material to the diffuse option on the standard material. Once you have your desired material assign it you the object by selecting the material and then clicking the spray can icon (4th over) on the materials window bar. If you are assigning a special material such as wood, checkers, gradient, etc, you will need to click on the 8th button on the material window bar after assigning the color for the pattern to show.

When creating your house, 2 tools that will be very helpful to creating the layout and moving objects are the move and rotate tools. They are located next to each other on the top menu bar of the program. The move tool lets you move an object back/forth, left/right, and up/down. (it is the 10th icon on the top bar) To the right of the move tool is the rotate tool that lets you turn your object in any direction using the 3 different axis. The last tip I have for you is how to duplicate objects. This is a great skill to know as it can save you time and help keep your house proportionate. In my model I duplicated the doors, chairs, silverware, and cabinets. To duplicate an object select the object with the move tool, as you drag it using the move tool hold down the shift key and a menu will pop up asking how many clones of the object you would like to make.

Good luck and have fun making your own 3D house!