September (Autumn)

Ground Texture - This was done by creating a plane on the workspace, and changing the material to a bumpy texture by selecting the 'Noise' option on the 'Bump' map selection. Then went onto photoshop and used the leaf brush and printed leaves all over a 600x600 selection of workspace. I then imported this into 3D Studio Max and used it as the texture of the floor. This produced quite an interesting result. I then altered the tiling number to make it look more realistic. After this, to make the horizon look more realistic, I cloned the ground plane and made it slightly rotated backwards so it looked steeper. This gave the appearance of a slight incline.

Trees - These were imported from the AEC Extended menu and positioned all over the plane in interesting positions, and by altering the scale slightly.

Compost Mound - This was created by making a sphere and changing the material to a much more bumpy texture. I used the 'Bump' map with the 'Noise' setting again, but I changed the tiling to 10 and the Noise style to the maximum. Then I used the same 'Noise' setting but for the 'Displacement' map which then made it even more jagged. Then I used the 'Convert To Editable Mesh' tool on the sphere and altered it even more to make it more distorted. Then I duplicated the sphere by using the clone tool and making the scale larger. Then I moved it under the initial sphere to give the whole image more curvature and look like a proper mound. Then I added the same material from the ground, to the pile of leaves.

Lighting - I created the light by including an 'Omni' light, in which I made sure the 'Shadows On' button was ticked to give shadows to all the trees and the compost mound. Then I moved it into the best place to highlight all the features of the forest.

Sky - This was done by creating the whole image inside a dome, which then had a material applied to the inside of it. The enviroment colour was initially set to a pale blue colour, so now all I needed to add was the clouds and texture. To do this, I made a material which was completely white, but in the 'Opacity' field on the maps drop down menu, I chose 'Noise' meaning the sky would only show parts of the background colour through it. I then changed the noise style to Turbulence to make it more patchy. Then I altered the other options like tiling and noise threshold to give the best results. Finally, to add the fading background to the sky, I duplicated the dome, and made it slightly larger. Then I changed the material to a new one, on which I changed the 'Opacity' map to 'Gradient' so the white parts of the sky will be stronger in the distance, like in the real sky.