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.

July (Summer)

I began this scene by creating the hills which eventually became the Islands once the water had been added in later on.

Islands - This was done by creating a plane sized 2000 by 2000. I then look a black and white image from photoshop which depicted the high and low areas of the textured landscape. To do this, I click 'Modifiers' and selected the 'Displace' option. Then I chose the image of black and white, and changed the strength up to 200 to increase the results. Then I changed the material texture to a sand type which I had obtained from google. Then changing the tiling to 3 to make the sand more refined.

Water - I created this the same way as I created the lake earlier. I began by making a plane which was exactly the same size as the Island plane. Then I changed the material texture, by selecting 'Flat Mirror' on the 'Reflective' section of the image map drop down box. I then made it more ripply by changing the 'Bump' map to 'Noise' which made it more realistic. Finally, I brought the plane up so the level of water on the Islands looked higher.

Trees - I then began placing trees on the map by selecting the palm tree from the Geometry>AEC Extended>Palm Trees. Then I placed them in interesting position by adjusting the rotation and scale of each of the trees. Then I added a few smaller shrubs for a more realistic look.

Sky - This was created in the same way as previously. This was 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.

January (Winter)

This scene was created initially by taking the water scene I had already created, and editing it to the shape of a lake and making the texture a bit more distorted and ripply. Then I began by creating the trees.



Trees - These were created entirely from my own shapes. I started off by making a long, thin cylinder and then putting a cone on top. Frankly, this didn't look convincing at all. Then I used the 'Convert To Editable Mesh' tool when you right click the image. Then, by altering the spots on the mesh, created a distorted version of the cone. To make it more realistic I took an image of a tree's leaves and applied it as a material through the material editor. Then copied the cone shape 3 times to created more branches and a bushier tree. To finish, I then copied the tree many times and scattered them around the lake.



Snow - This was created by making another plane which was bigger than the lake. Then I edited the material this was on by making it similar to the lake but without the reflection tool. I then changed the colours to pure white and gave it shadows by changing the ambient colour to black.



Lights - The lights were created from an omni light, reached from the create>lights>omni tools. I then selected 'On' for shadows, and placed it on the workspace. I then moved it in a suitable position so that it would give the trees shadows ontop of each other and highlight the features of the snow material.



Sky - The sky 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.



Here is the result:

Water Texture

This was my first attempt at using Water as a texture and giving it a reflective surface. This was relitively easy to do and produced great looking results.

To begin, I drew a plane on the worksurface which was large enough to stretch across the width of the Perspective view. Then I press 'M' and brought up the material editor. Then I scrolled down to the 'Reflection' map and selected 'Flat Mirror'. This gave the plane a shiney look but looked a bit too reflective and not very realistic.

To make the water seem realistic, I used the 'Bump' map and selected 'Noise' to apply a bumpy texture which looked slightly like ripples in water. Then I selected 'Fractual' on the noise type so the water looked even more distorted and realistic.

Finally I added an enviroment of an old holiday photo I have as the background. This gave the reflections from the water even more depth and realism.

Here was the final result.

Seasons..

The Seasons

I have chosen the seasons July, September and January for my 3d renders. These months will be used to show Summer (July), Autumn (September) and Winter (January). July, being the month of my birthday has the most memories for me, and there are a lot of ideas I can use to represent this month, like summer time and holidays. September is the month when the weather starts to turn colder and the leaves fall off trees, and we get closer to winter. I then chose January, one of the coldest months of the year when it snows most often. There is also the New Year beginning on this month, so many celebrations take place.

Fruit Bowl Updated

Here is the finished version of the actual fruit bowl. I have added a bunch of bananas which I created using the cyclinder tool, and then converting to an editable mesh, which I pinched the ends and curved it round so it was banana shaped. I then added the texture of a banana onto it to make it even more bananary.

My Fruit Bowl

Fruit Bowl

This is my fruit bowl so far. Most of the fruit I made was created by using the spherical tool and then adding a texture to it. The bowl was made using a torus which i made very thin, then put a flat cylinder on the bottom, then gave them both a wood texture. I thought about making the bowl by somehow creating a sphere and editing it into the shape of a bowl, but when i tried this it worked better in theory than on paper. I found it much easier to make the bowl with 2 different objects but with the same texture.

With the orange, which was the first piece I made, I drew a sphere and then found a picture of an orange. I then put the image onto the ball, but as a texture. It looked pretty impressive by then, but I added a green top to it, where it would have been joined to the tree. This was an easy way of creating a fruit with little knowledge of the software by this point. The texture was also quite reflective like that of a real orange, and you can see where the light is shining off it.

After this I made the grapes, which took a lot longer. Basically, I began by making a sphere again, but much smaller this time. I then cloned it many times and started moving them around into positions which looked like the fruit would grow in. It took a while to make sure the grapes were touching but not going inside each other. I then used the cylinder tool to make the stalks/vines of the grapes and connect them up. This also took a while as the vines looked like they were connected in one view, but in other views it was clear that they were not. Finally I took a picture of a grape, and, using the image, applied it as a texture to each of the spheres. I also did this for the vines, with a zoomed in image of a vine, to get the correct colour.

Next I just selected and cloned the same bunch of grapes, and rotated them and moved them to a different position to make the fruit bowl a bit more full.

Then I started work on the apple. Initially I tried making it with the spherical tool again, but it was clear this would not work. A much more effective way of creating the apple is to use the torus tool, and then creating it quite fat and tall so it appears not to have a hole in the middle. This creates the groove in the top of apple, making it more apple shaped. I then made a sphere which went inside the torus, but was much smaller, just to make the groove in the top appear stop at a point, so it wasnt too deep. I then took a picture of an apple and stretched it to full size. Then imported it as a texture again and applied it to the torus and the sphere. I then added a stalk to the top to make it even more like a typical apple, and gave it the same texture as I gave the grape vines.

Next I will attempt a banana, which I am having a little difficulty with at the moment.