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.

Creating the August Scene

August Scene

To start with, two planes were created on the landscape, pretty big planes, about 5500 x 6200 on average for both of them. The purpose of creating these planes were for the beach and for the sea. They had to be big so that when i created the main objects in the scene, there would be enough sand and sea in the background without it being cut off because of it being too short. On the left are the two planes that I created.



Next I needed to add effect to the water to make it look like real water, so i decided to add a noise modifier to the plane and the turbo smooth effect to create waves in the water:

Then a material had to be added to add the look of the water, so i added a raytrace effect and a reflection map of clouds so this it what it would reflect onm the surface, i adjusted the settings until i felt it looked best and also in the material editor i added a bump map of some waves to give it more texture




The rendering environment was also changed for the same image i used in the reflect map for the sea, I used an image of some clouds in a sunny sky.
As for the beach, this was created by literally choosing a diffuse colour of the one that best matched sand and using a bump map of a picture of some real sand that i found on a google image search, here is the finished article for the beach and sea after editing:

Although in this picture you can see then edge of the planes my plan is to use an angle where you can't.

Next step is to create another plane, this will represent a mat where the future items to be created will lay on, it needs to be a hard surface so the texture of it is not going to inherit any of the beach;'s lines or imprints from underneath.





Here is the small plane created, it has no materials on it, it is literally just a grey plane:


but not much of it will be seen after everything has been added on top of it so there isn't much point adding textures and materials to it.



Next I wanted to put a hot tub in the scene because i felt in the summer, a lot of people refer to swimming or a jacuzzi so I thought this would be quite a nice item to implement.




In creating the hot tub, i started with a plain box that i created and then added a few more segments to it so that when it was smoothed it would smooth it nicely, I also used the extrude feature to push the middle blocks down as seen below:






As you can see in the box itself there are quite a few segements, this was to aid the effect we are going to use next, turbosmooth.






Turbosmoothed hot tub:


When 3ds max smoothed the box, it didn't smooth correctly inside of the cube and I had real difficulty in sorting it out. Its the bit round the top lip of the inside of the tub that is more curved closest to the bottom of the picture. But after trying for so long to resolve the problem, I realised this could be a comfortable place where you are sitting down and have you head hang over it, so the shape is like that so it's more comfortable for your head.



Next the water had to be put into the scene, well this was created by making a cube that would fit into the hot tub:

I used the same material effect on this as i did use for the sea, but in a minute you will see that i add a noise modifier that is has more increased settings than I used for the sea because in a hot tub the water is on a much smaller scale so the waves are a lot smaller.









This is the outcome of using smaller waves in the hot tub and then lowering the water into the hot tub will create the final rendered image of the hot tub you see below.














Next came the creation of the speaker. First of all i created a box that was Black in colour:
Very simply just chose the box selection from the main choices and then created a shallow cone that didn't come to a point, it had a flat surface at the top, then I increased the number of segments so i could extrude the middle of the cone. I then rotated the cone so it was turned vertical and placed it flat against the speaker I chose blue as the colour for this object. Next I created a sphere, black in colour, to represent the middle of the speaker:















Here is an image of the final thing created (not rendered):






Once I'd finished this i cloned the whole speaker so i had two exactly the same for my scene.













Then I decided to create a table with a wooden effect to add to the scene, this was a very simple task now with the experience i had gained in 3d studio max and the table consisted only of 5 box shapes manipulated to look like a table, with then an added material effect:


As you can see it is a very simple shape to make and to make sure all the legs were the exact same size, i just cloned them by selecting the object you want to clone, hold down shift then drag it away.

It will then clone the exact item you have just selected

I then added a stock material to the table, just a wood effect with very simple settings, again didn't take too much time on the table because most of it wouldn't be seen.



Adding the map to the table.













Now the DJ decks were to be created for the final addition to the scene. This consisted of creating a shallow box again with many segments added so i could manipulate this later, I chose grey in colour and then using almost the same trick i did on the speaker, created a very shallow cone with a flat surface (not pointed) for the top and cloned it twice to represent the place where the records would sit. I then chose to turbo smooth the box i used for the decks to give more of a curvature for an edge.


Then I used the extrude tool to create 6 dips in the right hand side that would allow me to make it look like there were slider buttons on the decks, turbosmooth kinda made this look a little worse but i wanted to keep the turbo smooth effect on for the effect that it made overall.








Creating the sliders consisted of a cylinder to put inside the extrusion and then i chose to use a box and add a bend modifier for the top of the handle on the slider which made the box curve in a slightly different wya to normal. I then added a material known as raytrace with refection set to its highest with a reflection map of sky/clouds so they would look like chrome






I then used a long box again to create the needle arm and a short sharp cone for the scratcher part of the needle and thought the same chrome effect the I used on the sliders would be nice for them. Here is the final rendered image from the DJ decks. You can also see some of the table in this shot as well with the wood effect.





So here is my final rendered image for August


Out of all of my images this was probably the quickest image to create but was quite fun at the same time. I feel it represents August because people like going to the beach, swimming, relaxing, listening to music (Although why you'd have a hot tub on a beach i don't really know!) Hopefully this images creates the feel I want it to.

Material Editor

This blog is to show how I learnt to use the material editor.

This is the material Editor with the button you need to press circled in red to get to this menu up:

and here on screen you see 6 spheres at the top with all these options, its very copnfusin to start with but not too bad when you learn the basics.

I will create a various shapes to show the differences in textures with the options






On your basic parameters you have 8 options of different types of shading:

Anisotropic
Blinn
Metal
Multi-layer
Oren-Nayar-Blinn
Phong
Strauss
Translucent shader.


To start with I will demonstrate the Anistropic function (I will keep this post brief-ish because otherwise it could go on forever, this is not complicated once you do it once):

So create any shape, I will use a sphere and open up the material editor again, choose Anisotropic from the drop-down list and I will change the Ambient colour to blue and specular colour is left white, choose whichever you wish for this example.

These are the settings i chose;

Specular Level: 121
Glossiness: 53
Anisotrophy: 43
Orientation: 0

That is all I have changed, now if you click and drag the sphere that should be blue onto your shape, it should appear something like this:



Blinn

The blinn effect, well the only thing I will change here is the colour used and the shape the effect is put onto: the rest will be left exactly the same, so here is the effect:

Metal

Next I tackled the metal material. I created a Chamfer box from the extended primitives list and changed the Ambient colour to a very light blue. i changed the Specular level to 82 and the glosiness level to 72 to just mediate and show the effect.

Here is what is created:

Now in my opinion it doesn't really look much like metal but it is probably the closest you will get with the default options, the best option to get a metal effect would probably be to upload an image map and display that instead but this does for a rough representation.


Multi-Layer

For this I created a Torus Knot shape to demonstrate with, clicked on the multi-layer option and we have a large array of options come up with different settings that can be chosen - well I don't want to complicate things so we'll keep it simple. I chose a plain colour, green and adjusted the diffuse level to 120 change the first specular colour to Blue and the second specular level to pink to demonstrate what this does, (I can't personally imagine any scene where i would actually use these three colours together on one object but there we go) Edited the Specular colour levels (Both of them) to 100 and both specular glosiness to 20 and dragged material onto shape.

I also added a self illumination RGB factor of R:161 G:57 B:0 but this is up to you, the self illumantion colour changes it drastically:


Here is what we are presented with


Which I think is quite a cool effect but you can mess an item up using too many colours sometimes, i feel this almost has a feel of Gold to it and i've only adjusted to colours, if i was to turn up the glosiness, it probably would look like gold but there is a lot of different options you can play with on this one.





Oren-Nayar-Blinn

Next I created a teapot to try this effect on. I took self illumination off. Changed the ambient colour to Black and the Specular colour to red. Turned the diffuse level up to 166, the Glosiness up to 14 and the specular level to 832. I also turned up the softness to 0.43 and we have this:




Not a bad effect but can't really think of a situation where you might use it, maybe something thats refelcting a lot of light ot it like in a summer scene. the best thing about this effect is that you can also adjust the opacity and make the item go half see through.






Phong

Next phong, ambient colour to yellow this time and specular colour to blue. I added a self illumination colour of Blue and used the following settings:

Specular Level: 98
Glossiness: 41
Soften: 0.69

I also used a touch of opacity on this shape just so you can see the effect it gives:






As you can see, you can almost see through the tube at the end because of the opacity effect i have used on it.







Strauss

Next I have used a cone to demonstrate the strauss effect, its a matt like colour so not much glosiness here, i chose a dark purple for the colour. Settings are as follows:

Glosiness: 35
Metalness: 50
Opacity: 100

I have ticked faceted as well to add a different effect:



the faceted effect creates the vertical lines down it, and its quite a suitable effect for walls and flooring surfaces that doesn't really reflect very much although if you want to add glossiness you can.






Translucent Shader

and finally, the translucent shader which basically makes objects a bit see through, here I will use a box to demonstrate this effect on:

For all of the colours, Ive used very dark shades of each colour, with a specular level of 60 and a glossiness level of 10. My opacity is set to 25 and Ive used a rendering background of a sky scene from the 3ds max directory to show that the object is translucent:

Here is the result I am left with:


I feel this result is quite a cool effect that could be used in some nice design instances.

Cameras and Angles

This is what we learnt regarding camera angles.

Camera angles can be used to get that fixed position that you can return to if you want to constantly change the angle you are looking at your object, for instance, I will import an object into 3d max (a perfume bottle i made on a tutorial):

and to place a camera on the scene you have to Create > Cameras > Target.


Place the camera in the desired location, it does not have to be exact, you can adjust the positioning to finer detail later.

Enter your particular settings to filter your personal properties and preferences.

So if we were to place the camera here for example:












Your desired viewpoint can be seen by right clicking in the top left corner of each viewing square and selecting Views > Camera 01

And this should come up:

Table Cloth

I followed an online tutorial today which I thought was worth sharing. It was a tutorial on how do create a tablecloth effect over a table. I downloaded the table from the website www.tutorialized.com and then followed the tutorial to create the cloth draping over.

To create this:


You need to click on the top view port and create a rectangle that is square over the table and evenly distributed over the edges, (you'll understand a bit better later as to why) Then apply the garment maker to the rectangle and you end up with a meshed rectangle, you then need to add a cloth modifier.

To get the cloth to interact with the table, it needs to be transformed into a collision object. To do this click 'Object Properties' on the modifier panel and change the properties on the cloth so that it is 'cloth' as opposed to 'inactive' and the preset is set to 'silk'. Then click add object in the same window and choose the table, then you need to highlight this object and choose it as your collision object at the bottom of the window with a depth and offset preset of around about 5. This will then be able once OK'd to demonstrate a cloth draping over the table simulation which will then be the final image (remember this is not an animation, just a simulation)


To go back just click the slider bar back to the beginning of the simulation and click 'reset simulation. You can then move the table cloth if you want to the side and it will probably fall off the side (which is why it needs to be in the middle)

For example:



(Tutorial came from: http://www.tutorialized.com/view/tutorial/Realistic-Table-Cloth-Cover/38235 )

Environments

This week we learnt about environments with our finished item. Here is what was created as an example.

To start with as i was creating this for an example to just did loads of different shapes like donut sphere box etc and then used the process i described for week 3 on editing shape colours and integrating them with a bitmap. Then I clicked on the rendering menu option then clicked on Environment so that it brings up a box where you can change the background colour. Under background, click on map and i chose planet, it then modifies the background as above. A very simple procedure really which i found very easy yet creates a cool effect, although not suitable for all scenes obviously. I enjoyed using this effect overall and there is a lot to play with option wise, you can just select different backgrounds really easily.