Modifiers provide a way for you to sculpt and edit objects. They can change the geometry of an object, and its properties.
Example: effects of the Twist modifier on an object
The modifiers you apply to an object are stored in a stack. By navigating up and down the stack, you can change the effect of the modifier, or remove it from the object. Or you can choose to “collapse” the stack and make your changes permanent.
There are other general things to know about using modifiers:
How Modifiers Differ from Transforms
Modifiers and transforms differ in how they affect an object and the order in which they are applied to an object.
The transform is the most basic of 3D manipulations. Unlike most modifiers, transforms are independent of an object’s internal structure, and they always act in world space. An object can carry any number of modifiers, but it always has only a single set of transforms.
The transforms of an object are expressed as a matrix of values that contain the following information:
The matrix is called the transformation matrix, and its information relates directly to the transforms Move, Rotate, and Scale. Applying one of these transforms alters the values in the transformation matrix.
Transforms have the following properties. They are:
Most transforms produce equal displacement along one or more axes of an object, or part of an object. For Move, Rotate, and Uniform Scale transforms, the displacement is equal along all three axes. When you rotate a box, all sides remain parallel. In general, all vertices keep the same relative position to one another. The exceptions are Squash and Non-Uniform Scale, which displace axes by different amounts.
Most modifiers allow you to perform operations on the internal structure of an object in object space. For example, when you apply a modifier such as Twist to a mesh object, the position of each vertex of the object is changed in object space to produce the twisting effect.
Modifiers can operate at the sub-object level, and are dependent on the internal structure of the object when the modifier is applied.
Modifiers have the following properties. They are:
Some modifiers operate in world space. These use world-space coordinates, and are applied to the object after all object-space modifiers and transforms have been applied. Otherwise, they have the same overall properties as object-space modifiers.
Once you have defined an object, 3ds Max evaluates changes affecting the base object and displays the result in the scene. What these changes are, and the order in which they are evaluated, is called the object data flow.
This section contains a number of topics intended to help you learn how to use modifiers and the Modify panel.
World-space modifiers act as object-specific space warps. They are carried with the object, but like space warps use world space rather than object space for their effects. World-space modifiers eliminate the need for binding to a separate space-warp gizmo, making them convenient for modifying a single object or selection set.
Object-space modifiers affect an object's geometry directly in local space.