3D Max Glass Tutorial

Let's start by making the base of the glass. Choose Gengon (Create - Extended Primitives - Gengon) and input the height, radius and the number of sides. In this case we will use height 18 mm, radius 72 mm and 8 sides. To make units show in millimetres, you should configure Metric:Millimetres in Customize - Units Setup To see edges of the created object and not just the wireframe, right click the Viewport (Perspective) and set the Smooth + Highlights and Edged Faces options in the submenu. To model this object we must make it editable, so right click the object, in the submenu choose Convert To: Convert to Editable Poly. The next step will be creating of the surfaces that will be "pulled out". While the object is selected on the right side of the interface click on the Modify button. It opens the Modify panel. In the sub-object selection list of Editable Poly select Vertex. For speeding up the process you could use the option Sub-objects: Vertex in submenu that opens with the rightclick on the viewport. I think this only works in 3DS Max version 4.0 and later. This can really save time because you don't have to scroll the panel.  We will use option Chamfer for making the poly that we want to "pull out". In the previous step we have the option Sub-object: Vertex turned on. Rightclick the viewport and choose Chamfer. You can find this option in Edit Vertices menu at the Modify Panel on the right. Select the vertex in the middle of the top surface of the object. When the mouse pointer changes you can spread the vertex on the existing edges of the object by holding the rightmouse button. Spread it until it looks like on the picture. Next is the extrusion of the polygon. Rightclick the viewport and in the submenu choose Sub-objects:Polygon. Turn on the Ignore Backfacing option in the selection menu of the Modify panel. It prevents unwanted selection of the polygon and other sub-objects that are on the opposite side. Holding the Ctrl key, select the Polygons as shown on the picture. The selected polygons will be marked with the red color. By pressing F2 key you can change the way how the selected polygons are shown. By pressing F3 key you change wireframe view to smooth and vice versa. By pressing F4 key you toggle show edges. Rightclick opens the submenu in which you click on the Extrude icon (The same you can achieve thru Edit Polygons in Modify panel). The new menu opens in which you can set extrude level, let it be 100 mm. Press Ok. The top edge of the glass is to wide. On already seen manner choose sub-object: Edge and using the Ctrl key select inner edges of the top of the object. Rightclick the viewport and choose Scale (Or click on the Select and Uniform Scale icon on the top of the interface). Enlarge the edges so they look like on the picture. In this phase it would be useful to make the material transparent. Pressing the M key opens the Material editor. Material is standard, diffuse color set as you want, and Opacity to 50. Specular Level set to 75, and Glossines set to 30. Drag the material on the object. Now on the object we apply Mesh Smooth modifier. At the modify pannel click on the modifier list and pick Mesh Smooth. In the Subdivision amount part of the menu set Iterations to 2. Now we got a round glass, not the 8 angle that we wanted. That is because the surface that is created by the Mesh Smooth modifier tangents the surfaces that we created in the process of modeling. So, it is needed to detail dome of the surfaces. And this are the edges that we want to still remain as edges. We are back on the basic elemens of our glass. Choose Edge in the Editable Poly of Modify panel. Select the inner edges as shown on the picture. Rightclick the viewport, click on the chamfer icon, and set the chamfer amount to 4,5 mm. Now select all the edges, except the ones we used chamfer on and ones on the bottom of the glass. The again use the chamfer icon, and for the amount set 0.2 mm. Select the two vertex in the Top viewport and choose Scale transform, open Scale Transform Type-In with the rightclick, and set Offest Screen to 500 and press enter. Select the two vertex on the right (inside vertex of the glass) and do the same except set the value to 1000 instead of 500. Do this for all of the eight inside edges. On the outside surface of bottom of the glass there's a little round gap. Select the center Vertex of the bottom and make a Chamfer as on the picture. Select the new polygon and choose Extrude. Set the extrude value to -0.5 mm. The glass is done! Maybe the rendered image looks like the glass has too little segments, so set the Iterations to 3 in Mesh Smooth modifier panel. Image is rendered with Brazil r/s with the following settings: Brazil: Image Sampling Min Samples=0, Max Samples=3 Brazil: Luma Server Sky Light on, light yellow Brazil: Photon Map Server, Global and Caustic set to on The rest all set to default values. For the glass material I used Brazil glass, and for the environment I used kitchen.hdr.