Using
the 2-Rail surface, you can create random, twisted
3D shapes with little effort. Fantastic eh, now let's
get started.
 Start
by opening up a new file in 3D Studio Max and viewing
the options under the Modeling tab near the top of
the screen.
Select the NURBS Point Curve Tool which looks like: 
In the Top panel, create one curved
path by clicking around 4 times and then right-clicking
to finalize it. Create another path the same way in
the Front and Left panels.
 Select
the Modify tab on the right side: 
Click the 2-Rail button under the
Create Surfaces menu. In the Perspective panel, click
on all three of the curves and then right-click. A
wild 3D shape should appear.
 Adjust
your view of the shape to improve how it looks. To
do this, use the Move and Rotate buttons:
You can zoom-in and zoom-out by using
the magnifying glass near the bottom on the screen.
Also, you can change the color of your shape by clicking
the color swatch in the upper left corner of the Modify
menu.
To give you object a nice shiny surface,
go to the Material Editor by clicking:
. You can apply a similar effect to
that demonstrated in the Material Editor tutorial,
or apply effects like I did in this example - click
to see. I used the "Reflection_RefMap" material
found in the Materials Library, kept most of the default
settings, and changed the colors to various shades
of blue.
To finally render your image, hit
F10. Make sure to save your image as a PNG file to
make use of the file type's ability to include an alpha
channel. This will make you image appear with a nice
transparent background when it is opened in Photoshop
or another other image-editing software.
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