MilkShape Basics
3) Getting Around MilkShape

After you have successfully installed Milkshape and after you open up the application, your screen should look something similar to this:



drawing. Top, Right, Front and 3D.
* Note the Tool Tabs on the right side of the screen. We will be using these extensively.
* And last, take a look at the toolbar on the bottom of the screen. That will come much later. A few places of interest on the screen:
* Notice, of course, the toolbar at the top - take a moment and flip through each of the menus.
* The 4 main viewing vindows. Each one represents an orthographic view of your
Basic Polygons
Basically, modelling is the creation of a 3D character or object from a wide variety of far simpler shapes. In many ways, modelling could be considered similar to sculpture, but in a computerized environment. For our sculpture, first we need a box:


Click on the "Model" tab on the tool bar to bring it to the front (if it is not currently) and select "Box" by left clicking on it.

Now move the pointer into one of the 2D views and press and hold the left mouse button and drag out a square before releasing the button. You'll notice that a similar square has also been dragged out in the other two 2D windows and that in the 3D window we now have a grey cube. Drag yourself a box that is four grid units wide on the top view and centres about the origin (the co-ordinate (0, 0, 0) that is represented by two coloured lines on each view plane and three lines in the 3D space). If you mess it up then you can always press Delete and try again. Donıt worry about exactness for now; save your patience for later when making real models.


Congratulations. You have created a box primitive that is actually 12 triangles joined together to form a lovely mesh. You can see those triangles in the views. Vertices are marked as small solid squares.
You should also notice that each of the squares appears to be divided into two triangles. All the polygons that are created and used in Milkshape (and currently all 3D games) are created from triangles. Although this is not particularly important with relation to the cube we have just created it is easily shown here and can be important with more complex shapes when Milkshape chooses to remove the opposit triangle to the one you wished to remove. Again, this may not make a huge amount of sense at the moment, but so long as you remember that the polygons are made up from triangles you'll know what I'm ranting on about when it happens.
Now choose the Select tool from the same place you chose "Box" earlier. Click somewhere in a view to deselect your box. The select tool works in a number of modes, each having its handy purpose in manipulating meshes. If you havenıt changed anything then you are probably in "Face" select mode. If not, click the "Face" button to put yourself in Face Selection mode. Check that there is a tick in the box labelled "ignore backfaces" at the bottom of the select options. Normally when you click on a face to select it, Milkshape will select all the faces that are underneath the mouse pointer: when "ignore backfaces" is selected then Milkshape will merely select the first face that it comes to in that view. Drag a selection box out in the top view and youıll notice that two triangles become red, denoting that they are selected. Now choose the Move tool while your triangles are still selected. Drag them through the Top view a little to the right.




As you see in the 3D view, you have now skewed your box. If you canıt see this click and drag around in the 3D view. This will rotate the viewing camera around the origin so that you can see your mesh a little better. Now try holding down Control while dragging. This will pan the 3D view, and will also work with the three other views. If you use Shift while dragging then you have an effective zoom tool. Unfortunately, Shift-zooming does not work in the 2D views. To zoom in a 2D view, change the value in the first textbox (the textbox immediately right of the View perspective combobox) of the Viewport Captions (if you donıt see these turn them on through the Window menu). A higher value will zoom in while a lower value will zoom out. Currently, I think you can only enter integers in here but Iım not quite sure. The default zoom value is four.
This Tutorial was made using Milkshape 1.2.1

A budding designer will always try new things and experiment with available tools to get the most stunning results possible. This tutorial (you may call it a primer) will not tell you how to create the stunning 9000-poly, fully animated, player model that you created in your dreams. However, this tutorial will tell you how to use a program that will definitely set you on your way towards that dream.