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Compound Objects

Compound objects typically combine two or more existing objects into a single object.
  • Create panel > (Geometry) > Compound Objects
  • Default menu: Create menu > Compound
  • Alt menu: Objects menu > Compound Objects
Topics in this section
  • Morph Compound Object
    Morphing is an animation technique similar to tweening in 2D animation. A Morph object combines two or more objects by interpolating the vertices of the first object to match the vertex positions of another object. When this interpolation occurs over time, a morphing animation results.
  • Scatter Compound Object
    Scatter is a form of compound object that randomly scatters the selected source object either as an array, or over the surface of a distribution object.
  • Conform Compound Object
    Conform is a compound object created by projecting the vertices of one object, called the Wrapper, onto the surface of another object, called the Wrap-To. There is also a space-warp version of this function; see Conform space warp.
  • Connect Compound Object
    The Connect compound object lets you connect two or more objects between "holes" in their surfaces. To do this, you delete faces in each object to create one or more holes in their surfaces, position them so that the holes face one another, and then apply Connect.
  • BlobMesh Compound Object
    The BlobMesh compound object creates a set of spheres from geometry or particles, and connects the spheres together as if they were made of a soft, liquid substance. When the spheres move within a certain distance of one another, they connect together. When they move apart, they take on a spherical form again.
  • ShapeMerge Compound Object
    ShapeMerge creates a compound object consisting of a mesh object and one or more shapes. The shapes are either embedded in the mesh, altering the edge and face patterns, or subtracted from the mesh.
  • Boolean Compound Object
    A Boolean object combines two or more objects into a single mesh by performing a Boolean operation on them.
  • Terrain Compound Object
    The Terrain compound object creates planet surfaces from contour-line data.
  • Loft Compound Object
    Loft objects are two-dimensional shapes extruded along a third axis. You create loft objects from two or more existing spline objects. One of these splines serves as the path. The remaining splines serve as cross sections, or shapes, of the loft object. As you arrange shapes along the path, 3ds Max generates a surface between the shapes.
  • Mesher Compound Object
    The Mesher compound object converts procedural objects to mesh objects on a per-frame basis so that you can apply modifiers such as Bend or UVW Map. It can be used with any type of object, but is designed primarily to work with particle systems. Mesher is also useful for low-overhead instancing of objects with complex modifier stacks.
  • ProBoolean/ProCutter Compound Objects
    The ProBoolean and ProCutter compound objects provide modeling tools for combining 2D and 3D shapes in ways that would be difficult or impossible otherwise.
Parent topic: Creating Geometry

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