8

154 Chapter 5: Creating Geometry
Naming objects is a good practice for
organizing your scenes. To name a set of
selected objects, see
Named Selection Sets
(page 1–67)
.
To change t he obj ect’s d isplay color (optiona l):
• The color swatch next to the object name field
displays the selected object’s color and lets you
select a new one. The color is the one used to
display the object in viewports. Click the color
swatch to display t he
Object C olor dialog (page
1–155)
.
You can also change object colors with
Layers
(page 3–706)
.
To adjust the object’s parameters:
• You can change the creation parameters
immediately after you complete an object, whi le
it’s still selected. Or, you can select the object
later and adjust its creation parameters on the
Modify panel.
While making adjustments, you can use viewport
navigation controls like Zoom, Pan, and Arc
Rotate to change your view of the selected object.
Yo u c a n a l s o a d j u s t t h e t i m e s l i d e r.
To end t he creation process:
While the object type button remains active, you
cancontinuecreatingobjectsofthesametype
until you do one of the following:
• Select an object other than the one you created
most recently.
•Transformanobject.
• Change to another command panel.
• Use commands other than viewpor t navigation
or the time slider.
After you end the creation process, changing
parametersontheCreatepanelwillhavenoeffect
on the object; you must go to the Modify panel
to adjust the object’s parameters. See
Using the
Modif y Panel (page 1–485)
.
As si gning Col or s to Obj ect s
3ds Max is a truecolor (page 3–1121) program.
When you pick a color in the program, you are
specifying 24 bits of color data, which provide a
range of over 16 million colors.
Object wireframe colors are used primarily as an
organizational tool. Object naming strategies,
named selection sets, and object wireframe color
strat egies provide a rich set of tools for organizing
even the most complex scenes.
You can use two dialogs to specify colors:
•The
Object Color dialog (page 1–155) contains
two preset palettes of colors that you use to set
an object’s wireframe color. This is also the
surface color you see in a rendered v iewport.
The two color palettes are Default palette and
AutoCAD ACI palette.
•The
Color Selector (page 1–157) is a generic
dialog that you use to define any color in the
24-bit color range. For the purpose of defining
colors to assign to objec ts, it is available only
through the Default p alette.
Note:
The Layers functionality lets you organize your
scene and can also be used for assigning object
colors. For more information, see
Layer Manager
(page 3–706)
.