A Squid in 3D Studio Max.

Here is my squid I made in 3D Studio Max, I stared by using the ‘Spline’ tool to make then using ‘Lathe’ to copy the original line and make it three dimensional.

Then I selected ‘Spline’ again to create a line for the tentacles, I then made a circle and went to create, geometry, compound objects and finally loft, with my line selected I clicked get shape and then clicked on the circle, this made the tentacle round and 3D.

Whilst I still had loft selected I went into modify then skin parameters to add some detail to the tentacle, I then went to deformations and opened the scale curve editor, I added a Bezier point and then smoothed off my tentacle.

I clicked on the front view of the program interface to bring it up full screen, I then selected, command panel, hierarchy, affect pivot only, then I went into top view of the interface and went into tools, array and then typed ‘8’ into the array dimensions box and clicked rotate over totals and then 360 in the ‘Z Axis’ box and clicked apply, this gave me the eight tentacles, I then dragged the legs onto the body to merge them into one whole shape.

I then added a texture using the material editor tool, this was done by selected diffuse colour and selected my bitmap image.

I then moved onto animating my squid, I set my squid at a neutral rest stage by making it straight, I then moved onto frame ten and clicked auto key, this starts recording the movements, I then moved the tentacles into a suck in position as its preparing to move, on frame 15 I moved the tentacles out into a thrust movement and then moved the whole squid up so it gave the feeling of movement, I cloned the same process over one hundred frames and then rendered it into my final video.