MilkShape Basics
7) General MilkShape Tutorial

NOTE:
This tutorial explains the basic functions of MilkShape. I recommend to all inexperienced in Milkshape with questions to check this tutorial.

On start-up of MilkShape, this is what you should see:


The program is divided into four windows, which all have different viewpoints(left, back, front, etc...). The existing views are top, bottom, left, right, front, back, and 3D. The first six are where you will do all of your modelling. The 3D view just enables you to see what you are modelling in a 3D form.


When you press the SHIFT key then left mouse click, you can zoom in and out of each of the windows..(NOTE: You cannot do this while in Select mode because SHIFT has a special meaning there. SHIFT+Leftclick allows you to add vetices or faces, where as SHIFT+rightclick allows you to deselect vertices or faces, without losing the other selections.)CTRL+leftclick allows you to move within the viewports. In the menu on the right upper half of MilkShape one sees four window tabs named: Model, Groups, material, joints:


Model: This is the most important area, where all of your tools are located. When you click on the button "Select", notice how to toolbar changes? You have 4 other buttons(Vertex, Face, Group, Joint) and two checkboxes.


Okay, so we'll break it down:
Vertex: Three vertices make up a face. Vertices are those little dots you see on the screen. Individual vertices are connected together to form a polygon, or, a face. So, when you have The Select tool, with the Vertex box selected, you will be able to select those dots. Face: A face, as said before, is made of 3 verts joined together. With the Select tool on, click on the Face button(not the main toolbar face tool, the selection face in the selection toolbox) Now, select some faces, see how that works? I will get into the group and vertex select later on.

Rotate: This is used to, you guessed it, rotate the model.

Scale: This is used to scale the model down or up. Now we come to the modelling tools: As you can see, I first created a cylinder.....


And after playing with it for only a couple of seconds.....



I made something pretty cool with very little effort. An important note here, a lot of models start off as primitives, and after playing with the vertices and faces by pulling them out etc... you can create a complex model from a basic shape. Milkshape offers the possibilty of creating a model from scratch with vertices and faces, but, since this is quite complicated and hard to explain, I will only work with primitives. We dedicate ourselves now to the other instructions: Sphere, Geosphere, Box, and Cylinder. These are very self-explanatory. The only one that I will touch on is the cylinder. When you select the Cylinder tool, two buttons and one checkbox appear on the second toolbox window. One button "stacks", one "slices" and the checkbox "closed cylinder."


The "Slices" are how many different slices the polygon is seperated into, thus how smooth it is. The "Stacks" detemine how many rows of vertices the cylinder will have. Below is a good example. The left cylinder has 6 slices and 20 stacks. The right cylinder has more slices, but only 2 stacks.


A further important tool in the Model tab is the "Extrude" tool. You select faces(NOTE: the selection must be of faces, the extrude too will not work with vertices)then click the extrude tool, and drag out in the diretion you choose.




I note again: You cannot extrude vertices, only faces. If you extrude vertices, it will do something strange, or it won't do anything at all. Groups Tab: Fist, I must explain this term. If you are modelling an object independently, and want to rename it to "Ball" or something, go to the groups tab, click on the model that is the one you want to rename, then type your new name into the texbox, then click on "Rename":


A very important button on the Groups Tab is the "Regroup" button. If you have two groups, say "lowerarm" and "upperarm", that you want to be in one group, simply select those two groups and then click on "Regroup". This creates a new group with "lowerarm" and "upperarm" together as one group. Materials Tab: In this area you can assign a texture for a model. But, since the model is so important in this tutorial, I'll leave the skinning alone until another time. Joints Tab: In this area, you can create a skeleton for your model so that it may be animated. I will explain joints and animating in a future tutorial. Now the only thing that's left to explain is the menu.

If when you first looked at MilkShape you thought it was small, esspecially if you have a background in programs like 3D Studio MAX. But, for beginners to the 3D modelling field MilkShape is very suitale. It doesn't have alot of complicated systems or buttons you'll only use once in your life. It doesn't scare the beginning modeller away from ever trying the program again. Though it looks simple, it has very advanced features. MilkSHape doesn't need to hide itself from the large companies, because it has many useful functions and tools. The necessary functions that I mentioned above are in this menu bar. The first is "File" This doesn't seem very great at first sight, but, MilkShape has MANY files which you can import and export. Preferences allows you to change the color scheme, FPS, and other miscellaneous things.


In the preferences, scroll through the list till you get to Persp Background. Then click on choose. You will be able to change the color of the 3D background, and, if you go through that list, almost everything's color can be changed in the preferences. Next I will discuss the Edit window briefly: Undo, Redo: you can undo an uh-oh, or re-do it if you made a mistake. Duplicate selection: Select the face(it has to be a face/faces) that you want to make a duplicate of, then hit CTRL+D or, edit Duplicate selection.

DELETE selection / This deletes everything that is selected.

SELECT ALL / None: Select all selects everything, including joints. Select none deselects everything, including joints. Hide Selection / Unhide ALL: If some faces are getting in your way, you can select them and hide them..if you want to see them again, just click on unhide all.


The next window is Vertex . Since I found still no special use of these options, I will deal only briefly with it.


Snap Together: If you need to join two vertices together, this'll do it.




Like I said, I don't know all these windows too well as of yet, I do recommend you play it to try and figure it out and find advantages within them. Like I already mentioned in the start, I deal with other tutorials that animate, and thus omitted the next window.

Probably the most important window for the menus is tools:


With him one can execute primarily conversions for other formats such as HalfLife or Quake etc., but there are further functions for Modelling that are much more important. The first of the tools would be Show model Statistics:

Here, it shows a complete breakdown of vertices, faces, smoothing groups..This tool is valuble. You need to pay special attention to the Face count if you are into the game modelling business, too many faces cause the FPS(frames per second) to slow down. If you didn't create a model within your "polycount" range, there is a special tool called "Progressive Mesh"(mesh is your collection of verts and faces, basically your model). This attempts to cut down on your face count while retaining the same basic form of your model. Now, the following should appear:


Now, choose a suitable percentage(preferably not under 50&), move the bar until you get the percentage you would like, then click "OK". The number has now been reduced. There is a tool also in the tools menu which works exactly opposite of "Proggresive Mesh" named "Smooth Edges":

The last tool in the tools windo is "Mirror All", which mirrors your selection in whichever way you want.


This is the next menu, named "Window"


Here, we can adjust many of the windows that we use most often. How the Control panel is displayed, where the tools are. The Texture Coordinate Editor is the means of tweaking the textures to fit the model. I will not get into it here, it is of little importance to us right now. Show Viewport caption, which, if you want more room in the Milkshape window, you can rid yourself of this for awhile. It shows what type of "view"(front, 3D, back, etc...) you are in. The Keyframer are the animation tools, so, if you are just modelling, you wouldn't need that. The Message window just lets you know of any errors that may occur during the writing process of file saving.


It's purpose consists of the co-ordination of the frames in the animation mode(if you want your models to move> and right now, it's of little concern. The Last Window I will talk about is this:


If you right-click on of the viewport windows, you will come upon a menu. The first four choices are render based. Wireframe; to see verts and face lines only. Flatshaded; low rendered model, no shading or texturing. Smoothshaded; medium rendered model with shading and lighting. Textured; if you have a skin and you applied it, select this to see your texture on your model.

Projection: this is so you can choose which perspective you would like(front, 3D, left, etc....)
Show axis: This is for when the axis gets in the way of seeing your model Show grid: This is the same as show axis, only for the grid.
Draw Backfaces: If this is unchecked, it helps to speed up the program, however, if you have open ended objects while draw backfaces is unchecked, you will have a hard time looking at them.
Reset view: Resets the viewport back to the original zoom factor
Frame all: Frames all of your objects so that you can see them all in the window Frame Selected: Same as frame all, only, it works for selctions only Choose Background Image: Use this if you want to trace over a model. It allows you to load .jpg, .bmp and .pcx files into the BG(doesn't work on 3D view) Maximize: Maximizes the window.