by Didik Wijaya
This tutorial needs you to understand basic use of 3dsmax.

In this tutorial you will create earthquake effect. You will create shaking and cracking ground, splitting two areas creating a longitudinal hole. Not only applied as earthquake, you will also can apply this effect as cracking ice effect. This tutorial is divided into 4 parts, where first part is creating customize ground object, where earthquake take place. You will create this tutorial from scratch.

1. First, open or reset 3dsmax. In Command Panel, make sure Create tab is selected. Click Shape icon. Then, click Line button. In Top viewport, create jaggy line from bottom to top like image below. When finished, right click to end creating a line. The shape of the line is up to you, but don't distort too much. Your line will be used to create a cracking in the ground.

2. Make sure line is selected. In Command Panel, click Modify tab. Add modifier Extrude from modifier list. Fill in any Extrude Amount. I use 50. You can use your own value, just use the value that suit yours.

3. Right click extruded line and choose Convert to>Convert to Editable Poly. In Selection rollout, activate Edge selection. Select all edges in the upper part. Then, hold Shift while moving the edges to the left. You will get new polygons created. We will use these polygons as ground. Next, while edges still selected, in Edit Geometry rollout click X button right next to Make Planar button. The selected edges will be forced to become coplanar along X axis. When finished, de-activate Edge selection. For easy modeling, I activate F3 (wireframe mode) to see clearly in viewport.

4. Hold Shift and using Select And Move tool, click object in viewport once. When Clone options window appear, click OK. Make sure Copy is selected. This process result in creation of the exact copy of object. It seems that you only see one object, because duplicated object share the same position with original object.

5. Make sure duplicated object is selected. To check, notice the object's name in Command Panel. If you see Line02, then duplicated object is selected. Click Modify tab in Command Panel. Activate Vertex selection. In Top viewport, select all vertices in the leftmost part, and move them to the right. Use image below as reference.

6. Now, change to Polygon selection. Select all polygons and in Edit Polygons rollout, click Flip button. This way, all polygons in duplicated object are flipped. If you turn off wireframe mode (F3), now you can see polygons clearly.

Next, in Part 2 tutorial we will add material to all objects.

Earthquake Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

Any question or comments regarding this tutorial should be sent to:
Didik Wijaya, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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