Object-Space Modifiers

Topics in this section

Affect Region Modifier
The Affect Region modifier is a surface modeling tool, primarily used with vertex sub-object selections while surface modeling. With Affect Region, transforming a selection of vertices can also transform vertices in the region that surrounds the selection. This can help you form a bubble or indentation in the surface of an object. The easiest way to see this modifier's effect is with a shallow, flat box object with plenty of subdivisions. The Affect Region modifier has a two-part, arrow-shaped gizmo, plus numeric controls.
Attribute Holder Modifier
The Attribute Holder modifier is an empty modifier that provides a readily accessible user interface on the Modify panel to which you can add custom attributes. It has no user interface of its own; the interface consists solely of those attributes you assign to it. In essence, Attribute Holder is a stripped-down version of Parameter Collector that can collect only custom attributes and appears on the Modify panel instead of a floating dialog.
Bend Modifier
The Bend modifier lets you bend the current selection up to 360 degrees about a single axis, producing a uniform bend in an object's geometry. You can control the angle and direction of the bend on any of three axes. You can also limit the bend to a section of the geometry.
Bevel Modifier
The Bevel modifier extrudes shapes into 3D objects and applies a flat or round bevel to the edges. A common use for this modifier is to create 3D text and logos, but you can apply it to any shape.
Bevel Profile Modifier
The Bevel Profile modifier extrudes a shape using another shape as the path or "beveling profile." It's a variation on the Bevel modifier.
Camera Map Modifier (Object Space)
The Camera Map modifier (object-space version) assigns planar mapping coordinates based on the current frame and the camera specified in the Camera Map modifier. This differs from the Camera Map (WSM) modifier, which updates the object's mapping coordinates at every frame.
Cap Holes Modifier
The Cap Holes modifier builds faces in the holes in a mesh object. A hole is defined as a loop of edges, each of which has only one face. For example, one or more missing faces from a sphere would produce one or more holes. The modifier works best on reconstructing planar holes, but can do a reasonable job on non-planar holes as well.
Chamfer Modifier
The Chamfer modifier lets you add edges procedurally to specific parts of an object with an option for generating quadrilateral output. It can be applied at all sub-object levels and is typically used for rounding off sharp corners, but can be applied in other situations where additional mesh resolution is required. The modifier also provides an expanded feature set over chamfer functions built into objects such as editable poly, including a range of input and output options.
CrossSection Modifier
The CrossSection modifier creates a "skin" across multiple splines. It works by connecting the vertices of 3D splines to form a skin. The resulting object is another spline object that can be used with the Surface modifier to create a patch surface. These two modifiers, when used together, are sometimes referred to collectively as “Surface Tools.”
Delete Mesh Modifier
Delete Mesh provides parametric deletion based on the current sub-object selection level in the stack. The possible choices are faces, vertices, edges, and objects. Apply the Delete Mesh modifier to delete the geometry specified at that sub-object level.
Delete Patch Modifier
Delete Patch provides parametric deletion based on the current sub-object level in the stack. The possible choices are vertices, edges, patches, and elements. Apply the Delete Patch modifier to delete the geometry specified at that sub-object level.
Delete Spline Modifier
The Delete Spline modifier provides parametric deletion of spline geometry based on the current sub-object selection level in the stack. The possible selection levels include vertices, segments, and splines. Apply the Delete Spline modifier to delete the geometry specified at that sub-object level.
Disp Approx Modifier
The Disp Approx modifier (short for Displacement Approximation) lets you make the displacement mapping settings on an object in the modifier stack. It converts its input object to an editable mesh, so you can use this modifier to add displacement mapping to geometry primitives and any other kind of object that can convert to an editable mesh.
Displace Modifier
The Displace modifier acts as a force field to push and reshape an object's geometry. You can apply its variable force directly from the modifier gizmo, or from a bitmapped image.
Edit Mesh Modifier
The Edit Mesh modifier provides explicit editing tools for different sub-object levels of the selected object: vertex, edge, and face/polygon/element. The Edit Mesh modifier matches all the capabilities of the base Editable Mesh object, except that you cannot animate sub-objects in Edit Mesh. See Editable Mesh for a complete parameter reference.
Edit Normals Modifier
The Edit Normals modifier gives you explicit and procedural, interactive control over each of an object's vertex normals. It is meant to be used primarily with mesh objects destined for output to game engines and other 3D rendering engines that support specified normals. The results are visible in the viewports and in rendered images.
Edit Patch Modifier
The Edit Patch modifier provides editing tools for different sub-object levels of the selected object: vertex, handle, edge, patch, and element. The Edit Patch modifier matches all the capabilities of the base Editable Patch object, except that you cannot animate sub-objects in Edit Patch. See Editable Patch for a parameter reference.
Edit Poly Modifier
The Edit Poly modifier provides explicit editing tools for different sub-object levels of the selected object: vertex, edge, border, polygon, and element. The Edit Poly modifier includes most capabilities of the base Editable Poly object, except for Vertex Color information, Subdivision Surface rollout, Weight and Crease settings, and Subdivision Displacement rollout. Edit Poly lets you animate sub-object transforms and parameter changes. In addition, because it's a modifier, you can retain the object creation parameters and change them later. For detailed information about animating with Edit Poly, see these procedures.
Edit Spline Modifier
The Edit Spline modifier provides explicit editing tools for different levels of the selected shape: vertex, segment, or spline. The Edit Spline modifier matches all the capabilities of the base Editable Spline object, with the exceptions noted below. For a complete parameter reference, see Editable Spline.
Extrude Modifier
The Extrude modifier adds depth to a shape object and makes it a parametric object.
Face Extrude Modifier
The Face Extrude modifier extrudes faces along their normals, creating new faces along the sides of the extrusion that connect the extruded faces to their object. As with most modifiers, this affects the current face selection passed up the stack. There are various differences between the Face Extrude modifier and the Face Extrude function in an editable mesh, especially the fact that all parameters in the Face Extrude modifier are animatable.
FFD (Free-Form Deformation) Modifiers
FFD stands for Free-Form Deformation. Its effect is used in computer animation for things like dancing cars and gas tanks. You can use it as well for modeling rounded shapes such as chairs and sculptures.
Fillet/Chamfer Modifier
The Fillet/Chamfer modifier lets you fillet or chamfer the corners between linear segments of Shape objects. Fillet rounds corners where segments meet, adding new control vertices. Chamfer bevels corners, adding another vertex and line segment. Note that this modifier works on the splines at the sub-object level of the shape. It does not work between two or more independent shape objects.
Flex Modifier
The Flex modifier simulates soft-body dynamics using virtual springs between an object's vertices. You can set the springs' stiffness, or how actively they keep vertices from coming close to each other, as well as stretch, or how far apart they can move. At its simplest, this system causes vertices to lag behind an object as it moves. At a more advanced level, you can also control the sway, or how much the spring angle can change.
HSDS Modifier
The HSDS modifier implements Hierarchical SubDivision Surfaces. It is intended primarily as a finishing tool rather than as a modeling tool. For best results, perform most of your modeling using low-polygon methods, and then use HSDS to add detail and adaptively refine the model.
Lathe Modifier
Lathe creates a 3D object by rotating a shape or NURBS curve about an axis.
Lattice Modifier
The Lattice modifier converts the segments or edges of a shape or object into cylindrical struts with optional joint polyhedra at the vertices. Use this either to create renderable structural geometry based on the mesh topology, or as an alternate method to achieve a rendered wireframe effect.
Linked XForm Modifier
The Linked XForm modifier links the transforms for any object or sub-object selection to another object, called the control object. The control object's motion, rotation, and/or scale transforms are passed onto the object or sub-object selection.
MapScaler Modifier (Object Space)
The MapScaler (OSM) modifier works in object space to maintain the scale of a map applied to an object. This lets you resize the object via its creation parameters without altering the scale of the map. Typically, you might use this to maintain the size of a map regardless of how the geometry is scaled, if you change the object size by adjusting its creation parameters. However, if you use a Select And Scale tool to change the object size, the map scales along with the object.
Material Modifier
The Material modifier allows you to animate, or simply change, the assignment of material IDs on an object. If the material ID is animated, the change to a new material ID is abrupt, from one frame to the next.
MaterialByElement Modifier
The MaterialByElement modifier lets you apply different material IDs to objects containing multiple elements, at random or according to a formula. When animated, this effect is useful for such applications as an office building at night with window illumination turning on and off at random.
Melt Modifier
The Melt modifier lets you apply a realistic melting effect to all types of objects, including editable patches and NURBS objects, as well as to sub-object selections passed up the stack. Options include sagging of edges, spreading while melting, and a customizable set of substances ranging from a firm plastic surface to a jelly type that collapses in on itself.
Mesh Select Modifier
The Mesh Select modifier lets you pass a sub-object selection up the stack to subsequent modifiers. It provides a superset of the selection functions available in the Edit Mesh modifier. You can select vertices, edges, faces, polygons or elements, and you can change the selection from sub-object level to object level.
MeshSmooth Modifier
The MeshSmooth modifier smoothes geometry in your scene by means of several different methods. It lets you subdivide the geometry while interpolating the angles of new faces at corners and edges, and apply a single smoothing group to all faces in the object. The effect of MeshSmooth is to round over corners and edges as if they had been filed or planed smooth. Use MeshSmooth parameters to control the size and number of new faces, and how they affect the surface of the object.
Mirror Modifier
The Mirror modifier provides a parametric method of mirroring an object or a sub-object selection. You can apply the Mirror modifier to any type of geometry, and you can animate the mirror effect by animating the modifier's gizmo.
Morpher Modifier
Use the Morpher modifier to change the shape of a mesh, patch, or NURBS model. You can also morph shapes (splines), and World Space FFDs. As well as morphing from one shape to another, the Morpher modifier also supports material morphing.
MultiRes Modifier
The MultiRes modifier reduces the memory overhead needed to render models by decreasing the number of vertices and polygons. This is useful not only within 3ds Max, but for content creators who export models for use outside of 3ds Max, such as in Web-based 3D applications. MultiRes offers several advantages over the Optimize modifier, including faster operation and the ability to specify reduction as an exact percentage or vertex count.
Noise Modifier
The Noise modifier modulates the position of an object's vertices along any combination of three axes. This important animation tool simulates random variations in an object's shape.
Normal Modifier
The Normal modifier allows you to unify or flip the normals of an object without applying an Edit Mesh modifier.
Normalize Spline Modifier
The Normalize Spline modifier adds new control points in the spline at regular intervals. Use Normalize Spline to produce splines for motion paths that require constant velocity.
Optimize Modifier
The Optimize modifier lets you reduce the number of faces and vertices in an object. This simplifies the geometry and speeds up rendering while maintaining an acceptable image. A Before/After readout gives you exact feedback on the reduction as you make each change.
Patch Select Modifier
The Patch Select modifier lets you pass a sub-object selection up the stack to subsequent modifiers. It provides a superset of the selection functions available in the Edit Patch modifier. You can select vertices, edges, patches, and elements. You can also change the selection from sub-object level to object level.
PatchDeform Modifier (Object Space)
The PatchDeform modifier deforms an object based on the contours of a patch object. This modifier works similarly to the PathDeform modifier, but uses a quad-based patch object instead of a spline shape or NURBS curve path.
PathDeform Modifier (Object Space)
The PathDeform modifier deforms an object using a spline or NURBS curve as a path. You can move and stretch the object along the path, and rotate and twist it about the path. There's also a world-space modifier version. See PathDeform (WSM).
Point Cache Modifier (Object Space)
The Point Cache modifier lets you store modifier and sub-object animation to a disk file that records only changes in vertex positions, and then play back the animation using the information in the disk file instead of the modifier keyframes.
Poly Select Modifier
The Poly Select modifier lets you pass a sub-object selection up the stack to subsequent modifiers. It provides a superset of the selection functions available in Editable Poly. You can select vertices, edges, borders, polygons, and elements. You can change the selection from sub-object level to object level.
Preserve Modifier
The Preserve modifier lets you retain, as much as possible, the edge lengths, face angles, and volume of an edited and deformed mesh object using an unmodified copy of the object before it was deformed. When you push and pull vertices at the sub-object level, the process typically stretches the edges and often alters the face angles, resulting in irregular topology. You can use the Preserve modifier to generate more regular edge lengths, and a "cleaner" mesh.
Projection Modifier
The Projection modifier is used primarily to manage objects for producing normal bump maps. You apply it to the low-resolution object, and then pick a high-resolution object as the source for the projected normals. When you use the Render To Texture dialog to set up projection, Render To Texture applies the Projection modifier to the low-resolution object automatically. You can also explicitly apply the Projection modifier to set up the projection before you use Render To Texture.
Projection Holder Modifier
The Projection Holder modifier appears for objects being used by the Projection modifier's Project Mapping feature. It contains the data generated by the Project Mapping operation, much as UVW Mapping Add or UVW Mapping Clear do for Channel Info manipulations.
ProOptimizer Modifier
The ProOptimizer modifier lets you select objects and interactively optimize them.
Push Modifier
The Push modifier lets you "push" object vertices outward or inward along the average vertex normals. This produces an "inflation" effect that you can't otherwise obtain.
Quadify Mesh Modifier
The Quadify Mesh modifier converts the object structure to quadrilateral polygons whose relative size you specify. This capability helps to produce rounded edges when combined with MeshSmooth.
Relax Modifier
The Relax modifier changes the apparent surface tension in a mesh by moving vertices closer to, or away from, their neighbors. The typical result is that the object gets smoother and a little smaller as the vertices move toward an averaged center point. You can see the most pronounced effects on objects with sharp corners and edges.
Renderable Spline Modifier
The Renderable Spline modifier lets you set the renderable properties of a spline object without needing to convert the object to an editable spline. This is particularly useful with splines you have linked to from AutoCAD. It also lets you apply the same rendering properties to multiple splines at once.
Ripple Modifier
The Ripple modifier produces a concentric rippling effect in an object's geometry. You can use either of two different ripple effects or a combination of both. Ripple uses a standard gizmo and center, which you can transform to increase the number of ripple variations.
Select By Channel Modifier
The Select By Channel modifier works in conjunction with the Channel Info utility. After you store a vertex selection into a subcomponent with Channel Info, use Select By Channel to quickly access the selection.
Shell Modifier
The Shell modifier “solidifies” or gives thickness to an object by adding an extra set of faces facing the opposite direction of existing faces, plus edges connecting the inner and outer surfaces wherever faces are missing in the original object. You can specify offset distances for the inner and outer surfaces, characteristics for edges, material IDs, and mapping types for the edges.
Skew Modifier
The Skew modifier lets you produce a uniform offset in an object's geometry. You can control the amount and direction of the skew on any of three axes. You can also limit the skew to a section of the geometry.
To Use the Skin Modifier
The Skin modifier is a skeletal deformation tool that lets you deform one object with another object. Mesh, patch, or NURBS objects can be deformed by bones, splines, and other objects.
Skin Morph Modifier
The Skin Morph modifier lets you use a bone's rotation to drive a morph; that is, a deformation of the object mesh. Skin Morph is intended for use with Skin or a comparable modifier such as Physique: Add the Skin Morph modifier after the skin-type modifier. You create the morph at the frame in which the effect should be greatest, and then Skin Morph automatically animates the affected vertices into and out of the morph, based on the rotation of the bone that drives the morph.
Skin Wrap Modifier
The Skin Wrap modifier allows one or more objects to deform another. While Skin Wrap is flexible enough to serve a variety of needs, it's primarily intended for animating a high-resolution object, such as a character mesh, with a low-resolution one.
Skin Wrap Patch Modifier
Skin Wrap Patch is a simple modifier that allows a patch object to deform a mesh object. It's very easy to use: just assign the modifier to a mesh object, and then use the modifier to specify a deforming patch object. Each point on the patch object influences a surrounding volume of points on the mesh object.
Slice Modifier
The Slice modifier lets you use a cutting plane to slice through a mesh, creating new vertices, edges and faces based on the location of the slice plane gizmo. The vertices can either refine (subdivide) or split the mesh, and you can also remove the mesh from one side of the plane.
Smooth Modifier
Smoothing eliminates the facets on geometry by grouping faces into smoothing groups. At render time, faces in the same smoothing group appear as a smooth surface.
Spherify Modifier
The Spherify modifier distorts an object into a spherical shape. This modifier has only one parameter: a Percent spinner that deforms the object, as much as possible, into a spherical shape.
Spline IK Control Modifier
When the Spline IK Control modifier is applied to a spline, you can select and transform its vertices without having to access the vertex sub-object level.
Spline Select Modifier
The Spline Select modifier passes a sub-object selection of shapes up the stack to subsequent modifiers. It provides much of the same set of selection functions available in the Edit Spline modifier. You can select vertices, segments, or splines, and you can change the selection from sub-object level to object level.
Squeeze Modifier
The Squeeze modifier lets you apply a squeezing effect to objects, in which the vertices closest to the object's pivot point move inward. The squeeze is applied around the Squeeze gizmo's local Z axis. You can also use Squeeze to create a bulge on the vertical axis, to accentuate the squeeze effect.
STL Check Modifier
The STL Check modifier checks an object to see if it's correct for exporting to an STL (stereolithography) file format. Stereolithography files are used by specialized machines to produce prototype physical models based on the data in the STL file.
Stretch Modifier
The Stretch modifier simulates the traditional animation effect of "squash-and-stretch." Stretch applies a scale effect along a specified stretch axis and an opposite scale along the two remaining minor axes.
Subdivide Modifier (Object Space)
The Subdivide modifier provides an algorithm for creating meshes used for radiosity processing. Processing radiosity requires meshes that have elements shaped as close as possible to equilateral triangles. The density of the mesh also needs to be considered in determining the resolution of the lighting details that need to be captured. The denser the mesh is, the finer the lighting detail and accuracy will be. The trade-off is a larger memory requirement and slower rendering times. The Subdivide modifier works on a whole object and does not work on selected faces in a mesh.
Substitute Modifier
Typically, designers use two-dimensional shapes to represent objects, such as furniture, in their AutoCAD designs. However, when they link their DWG files into 3ds Max for visualization, they want to see how the objects will look in their design.
Surface Modifier
The Surface modifier generates a patch surface based on the contours of a spline network. A patch is created wherever the segments of the interwoven splines form a three- or four-sided polygon. The Surface modifier and the CrossSection modifier, taken together, are referred to as Surface Tools. They allow you to create complex or organic surfaces, like the fuselage of a plane, or a three-dimensional character.
Surface Select Modifier
The Surface Select modifier (formerly known as NSurf Sel) lets you place a NURBS sub-object selection on the modifier stack. This lets you modify only the selected sub-objects. Also, selected curve sub-objects are shape objects that you can use as paths and motion trajectories.
SurfDeform Modifier (Object Space)
The SurfDeform modifier works the same way as the PatchDeform modifier, except that it uses a NURBS Point or CV surface instead of a patch surface to apply surface deformation.
Sweep Modifier
Use the Sweep modifier to extrude a cross-section along an underlying spline or NURBS curve path.
Symmetry Modifier
The Symmetry modifier is especially useful when modeling characters or building ships or aircraft
Taper Modifier
The Taper modifier produces a tapered contour by scaling both ends of an object's geometry; one end is scaled up, and the other is scaled down. You can control the amount and curve of the taper on two sets of axes. You can also limit the taper to a section of the geometry.
Tessellate Modifier
The Tessellate modifier subdivides faces in the current selection. It's particularly useful for smoothing curved surfaces for rendering, and creating additional mesh resolution for other modifiers to act on. If the stack selection level is Vertex or Edge/Border, Tessellate affects only on faces or polygons that use selected vertices or edges. If no sub-object selection has been passed up the stack, then the entire object is tessellated.
Trim/Extend Modifier
The Trim/Extend modifier is used primarily to clean up overlapping or open splines in a multi-spline shape so that lines meet at a single point. As with the Fillet/Chamfer modifier, this modifier operates on the splines at the sub-object level in the shape. When applied to a selection of multiple splines, Trim/Extend works as it does on a single spline.
TurboSmooth Modifier
The TurboSmooth modifier, like MeshSmooth, smoothes geometry in your scene.
Turn to gPoly Modifier
The Turn To gPoly modifier converts geometry to the hardware mesh format used internally by 3ds Max. This makes it unnecessary to convert the mesh from editable format to the internal hardware format, resulting in significant performance improvement when deforming the mesh. The improvement is most noticeable with high-resolution geometry.
Turn To Mesh Modifier
The Turn To Mesh modifier lets you apply object conversions in the modifier stack. As another example, you could use this modifier on a sophisticated patch model to which you might want to apply a tool that applies only to meshes, or convert the object to a mesh. Also, when you apply general-purpose modifiers such as Normal, Material, or UVW Map, it can be helpful to explicitly control the type of object beforehand.
Turn To Patch Modifier
The Turn To Patch modifier lets you apply object conversions in the modifier stack. Using the Turn To Patch modifier, you can fine-tune the conversion process such as turning quads into quad patches.
Turn To Poly Modifier
The Turn To Poly modifier lets you apply object conversions in the modifier stack. Also, when you apply the general-purpose modifiers, such as Normal, Material, or UVW Map, it can be helpful to explicitly control the type of object beforehand.
Twist Modifier
The Twist modifier produces a twirling effect (like wringing out a wet rag) in an object's geometry. You can control the angle of the twist on any of three axes, and set a bias that compresses the twist effect relative to the pivot point. You can also limit the twist to a section of the geometry.
UVW Mapping Modifiers
This group of modifiers provides various tools for texture mapping: that is, managing UVW coordinates and mapping materials onto geometry.
Vertex Weld Modifier
The Vertex Weld modifier behaves like the Weld feature in editable poly and similar objects by combining all vertices within a specified distance from each other into a single vertex. Vertex Weld is useful for cleaning up meshes that contain clusters of vertices within small areas.
VertexPaint Modifier
The VertexPaint modifier lets you paint vertex colors onto an object. You're not restricted to only vertex-level painting. Using sub-object selection, you can also control which vertices get painted, face-by-face. All faces sharing a vertex have the adjacent corner shaded as well. The resulting painted object receives a coarse gradient across each face.
Volume Select Modifier
The Volume Select modifier lets you make a sub-object selection of vertices or faces for passing up the stack to another modifier or modifiers. The sub-object selection is completely separate from the underlying parametric geometry of the object. Like other selection methods, Volume Select works with single or multiple objects.
Wave Modifier
The Wave modifier produces a wave effect in an object's geometry. You can use either of two waves, or combine them. Wave uses a standard gizmo and center, which you can transform to increase the possible wave effects.
XForm Modifier
Use the XForm (short for Transform) modifier to apply transformations (Move, Rotate, Scale) to objects. The XForm has two main functions: