I will have to assume you have a basic understanding of MAX knowledge, although I do get down to the very basics. I'll cover as much as I can for those who have just jumped on the 3D bandwagon (what took you so long! :) but I can't guarantee I'll get everything in. So good luck to all and hope it's helpful to you. It is a bit tedious I'm sure for some (I realise I drag it out a bit) and I apologise for that, but sometimes covering everything enables you to pick up some of the small, yet very handy things to know. The things in bold, however, are the most important things to note. So if worse comes to worst, skim and then focus on that.

Once again I have to give credit to all those who have got me where I am from family and friends for support, and also the many people who use forums ( www.3dbuzz.com is excellent source by the way ) and of course all the tutorials I did manage to find along the way. Everybody is a legend in their own right, love your work! :)

Now, back to the tutorial.

As I will be using my head as the characters head (mixing a self portrait project into the mix) I have the images handy. As a personal preference I use the following folder structure for my project. Keeping this standard keeps my projects clean and together and if I ever need it I know where to find things easily. Oh, by the way, my character is called Weaver :)

Weaver
- Anims ( Optional : When you start getting into the animations it's sometimes handy to save the animation files seperately)
- HL2 ( Optional : The files used to export into Half Life 2)
- Maps ( For all final textures )
- Misc (Any loose ends that don't fit anywhere else )
- Reference ( For all materials pertaining to the creation of the character. Textures, photos, sketches etc.)
- Renders ( In progress and final renders )
- UT2004 ( Optional : The files used to export into UT2004 )

OK, have your reference handy and open up MAX. This is where the real journey begins. So get comfortable :)

The reference you use can be multiple files or one file. As we will be using planes to map our textures onto we can therefore move the reference as we see fit. I'm going to use the one image similar to this one, although the distance between front and side is different so that they don't overlap.

I generally use the full viewport rather than the four views to work on as you get closer to the action. Select the Front viewport and use the in the bottom right panel to do so.

Create a Plane at whatever size (roughly what you think will be needed). Fill up the viewport vertically, and then make sure the plane is set to 0,0,0 coordinates. More so for the flip value when we duplicate half the head. Make the segment count on each axis equal 1 (as you don't need them and it just makes things look more complicated later, if only by a bit)

While we are here you might as well add the UVW Map. Go to the modify panel ( ) and apply one using the drop down menu. This should apply a Planar Map exactly the size of your Plane. What we need to do is match it to your reference, especially if you are using separate files. Select Bitmap Fit at the bottom of the UVWMap modifier and then select your front reference pic. THe map shoud change accordingly and we will line it up as needed after the next step.

Go to the Material Editor ( Hotkey : m ) and select a new material space. Expand the Maps pulldown to edit the Diffuse element (or simply press the box button next to Diffuse base colour in the top section ) and select Bitmap as the shader. Select your front reference pic and choose open, go to the root layer of your material using the pulldown just under the material slots and then press the Show Map in Viewport button ( ) just next to the pull down. Select your first plane and assign the material ( ). Close the material editor.

Press F3 to change the viewport from wireframe to rendered and you should see your image on the plane. If your image is not in the correct place, click on the UVWMap modifer plus symbol and select Gizmo and move / rotate / scale the Map to suit.

The quality of the map will be low res, if you want to fix this, to the detriment of performance of course, go to Customize | Preferences and then select the Viewports tab. Down the bottom you should have configure Driver, select this to bring up a window that has the Download Texture Size section. Click this to on so that your res image will be high res, but only when you restart Max (I couldn't get it to automatically update the quality). You should finish with the following.

Follow this process again with your other views either from scratch or by holding shift and rotating the plane. Move the planes so that they look similar to the following. This way you can work in front of the image, without them getting in the way.

Right mouse click on each plane and go to properties. Deselect the Show Frozen in Grey button and then slect the Freeze option in the section above that. You have now set up your reference to start modelling.