## Hello World!

The quickest way to become aquatinted with 3D Studio MAX is to create a simple animation. In this particular example, you create a simple 3D man and make him take a bow.

You don't need to know much more than how to launch 3D Studio MAX in order to undertake this tutorial. By the time you complete the steps in this chapter, you will know how to create circles, ellipses and N-Gons, how to move vertices and shape curves with the Edit Spline modifier, how to link objects together, place pivot points, and create key frames. You will also learn how to move, mirror and rotate objects. You will know how to render an animation, and how to view it.

Creating the Head with a Circle

Before you begin, move your mouse onto the word Front on your screen. Hold down your right mouse button and drag down. Let go when Show Grid is highlighted. This tells 3D Studio MAX to turn off the grid in the Front viewport.

To create the head of your character, you create a circle. Later in this tutorial you convert the 2D circle into a 3D disk.

1. Click the Create tab found in the upper right corner of the screen.
2. Click the Shapes icon .
3. Click the Circle button.
4. Select a point in the Front view of shown on your screen, hold the left mouse button down, and drag your mouse down to create a circle. This is called a click and drag operation.
5. Let go of the mouse button when your circle looks similar to the one shown below.

6. Change the Radius parameter to 25 in the command panel found on the right side of the screen. This changes the radius of the current circle.

When you create objects with 3D Studio MAX, the command panel for the object always appears on the right side of the screen. You can modify the object immediately after creation. This means you don't have to worry, in most cases, about creating particularly accurate geometry because you can always fix it later. Its often faster to make something wrong and fix it than it is to create it right it in the first place.

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