Creating The December Scene

December

Well the most obvious scene i wanted to make for December was Christmas as this would be easily recognized apart from the other scenes.

Creating the December Scene:

In creating the december scene i decided I wanted it to be placed inside a room of some sort where my other two scenes had been outside. So first job was to create the room. This involved creating 3 planes and turning 2 of them vertically so they represent walls, I needed to do them a fair size because of keeping the background filled up:















Adding Material to the plane (floor)















Adding the vertical planes, which are to represent the walls:















Then I decided that a fireplace would be a nice touch to the scene, so I started by adding a box to the scene to represent the concrete base of a fireplace

Here I have added a concrete material and bump map to the base to add realism













Next i need to create the grill for the logs to sit on, this involved using two long cylinders dark in colour:














And then needed several longer but narrower cylinders to go across:















Then i needed another cylinder for the use of the small guard at the front to stop logs falling out of the fireplace, so i create more cylinders and added a bend modifier on them to curve around the front of the fireplace















Then I added the logs which involved creating another cylinder and editing the vertices to make it look like a log














Then I added the turbosmooth modifier















Which was now a created log apart from the material, I used an oak wood bump and diffuse map to create the realism of a log and then cloned the item and scaled each one individually so they all looked different:














Next came the main part of the fireplace, this was created by making a box with about 10 segements each way and then selecting the middle few segments so that you could extrude
them and create almost an 'n' shape:















Then adding a brickwork material and bump map to it














Then i put a box on top of it to represent the mantlepiece















Then I decided to put stockings on the fireplace which were very simple to create, I used a flat cylinder shape longer in length than width. I then added a bend modifier with a limited effect to create the curve at the bottom of it and then just added a material that I found from a picture of a stocking:



















And then just cloned the stocking two more times to create the final effect:







Here is the fireplace rendered now:





The Fire was created by using a particle blizzard system. I followed a tutorial on tutorialized.com to create the fire.







Fire

Create > Particles > Blizzard

and then changing the particle generation and the particle motion along with a few other settings (we'd be here all day if i explained it all but full tutorial can be found: http://www.tutorialized.com/view/tutorial/Realistic-Fire-Using-Particles/33922 )

then you change the fire to instanced geometry, then you need to add a fiery looking material, here is mine with the box selecting it




This material will make it give it the fire texture it needs















Next i thought a photoframe would be a good addition to the scene, so i created the frame in a simlar way i created the fireplace, I made a shallow box and appropriate size of a photo frame, selected the middle squares leaving the outside edge unhighlighted, then i extruded this part of the box downwards to enhance the outer edge. I then added a UVW map to apply an image to the middle selection, the image was of the skyline in detroit. Then I selected the outer edge and added a wood material to it to give the effect of a wooden frame.















rendered image of photoframe:













And now finally the Christmas Tree;

The Christmas tree was created by using a helix in a scene and then a very small circle















Then, using the loft tool in compound objects, with the circle selected, click 'Get path' and then click on the helix, it should then turn the circle into the helix in 3d














Above is the helix with the colour changed, then i added a long cylinder in the middle:














I then added the hair and fur modifier to the cylinder up the middle and the helix (this had to be done at home as the hair and fur modifier does not work currently at the university)















I then wanted to add baubles for decoration:

I created this by using a sphere and adding a raytrace, with its highest reflection setting on it. A reflection map was used which is just a generic picture of a lounge.
The circle on the top was created with a thin cylinder with a bend modifier applied, then rotated until in the correct place, i then grouped the objects together to create the below















here are the baubles added to the tree, I cloned them and used the same material but changed the diffuse colour to adjust the colouring















So here is the final scene for December

Creating the September Scene

September

Septembers image i struggled with a little out of all of them if Im honest because the things I found represented September were quite difficult to re-create in 3d Studio Max. I cam eup with ideas such as. Twin Towers, Going back to school/work, Autumn and sort of getting cloudy weather etc.


Starting out I created a large plane that was green, then, adding some noise to it, I made it look like a landscape, then using a cylinder, rotating it upright. Turning it into an editable poly allowed me to adjust and pull about the vertices. This enabled me to create a tree trunk:




Sometimes it can be quite difficult to model the vertices to make them look good. Below is an example of what can easily happen if you mess up a little bit or just experiment with the vertices:












Next to create the leaves, personally i found creating the whole scene difficult so i decided to keep a kind of cartoon feel to it with the trees and the buildings, which may explain why i went the route for this next step.

The leaves on the trees were created by using a sphere and colouring it an appropriate colour green:
Next, modifying the vertices and adding a noise modifier to it creates this effect:














Which creates my cartoon tree, I then just needed to clone and scale the tree to multiply the object and add to the scene effect:

Next came the creation of the twin towers, I started off by creating a tall box with many segments and using a turbosmooth modifier, it made the edges appear more curved which is what i wanted, but as there were quite a few segments, it didn't put too much curvature on the building at all.

And then after cloning and adding turbosmooth:















Now to add the windows, creating the window involved using a very shallow box and adding a raytrace material to it and i also used full refelction as there was nothing inside the building, then just from creating one, I multiplied and placed them on both buildings:

















Nxt, the background was created by using a plane and rotating it 90 degrees so it is vertical. Then I used a diffuse map of a city background upon it (it is actually Tokyo) to enhance the image
And here is the material being added:














Now to create a book and open book.

To create the book, I started with a box with the normal number number of segments increased but not too much. I then converted this object to an editable poly and added a turbo smooth modifier:

Then:













I then selectected the middle segements on 3 of the sides and used the extrude feature to create life-like pages:
















And then just chose the individual segements and added a material on them to make them look like a book, created a picture of some lines in photoshop and placed the image on the pages to make them look more realistic.

To create this into an open book it was a little more complicated, and i couldn't make one but i thought one would add so much more to the scene so i decided to download one and put it in, I found the book on tutorialized.com website, I did however modify the page and add my own text material to it to make it look more realistic.


This is the book, although I didn't create, it, I do feel it adds a lot more to the scene.











This is the final rendered scene of September;
Which in the end i wasn't 100% happy with, If i had more time, i would've amended quite a few things, for example I would've put more detail into the tree, created my own open book and come up with a better background so this is the one image im not all that pleased with.