Creating my 'December' month

The Room

Firstly I decided to create an empty room to become the basis of my month. I created an empty room, viewing it facing the corner.

I then found a material to use for the walls and used 'M' the material editor and selected the bitmap I wanted to be the wallpaper. Once the wallpaper was up on the walls, I decided to make my Christmas tree which i decided was going to be in the corner of the room.

Christmas Tree

I made the Christmas tree by using the Lathe tool. I first created half the shape of the tree with the line tool. once that was created I clicked on the Pivot panel on the tool bar at the top.

I had to make sure that pivot point was in the centre as this is the most important factor hen using the lathe tool. When the lathe tool was used this is what the tree looked like. I changed the colour of the tree to a dark green. I didn't however think this was a very realistic tree, so i used the hair and fur tool. I changed the settings from 20% hair to 100% hair and changed the maximum hair setting from 1000 to 7000, this means that there were considerably more hairs on the tree. I adjusted the colours of the hair tip and hair root to look like it was a Christmas tree. I really liked this affect

Fireplace and Table

To create the fire place and the table I used the Boolean option. This could be found by changing the drop down box to 'Compound Objects.'

To use the boo Lean you need to have two different objects. One has to be taken away from the other to create a Boolean affect. For both the fire place and the Table I created a square which was slightly smaller, and positioned it where I wanted there to be a hole.

I then completed the boolean.

This was found in properties by selecting the pop down box :

I selected Compound from the elements, and then selected Boolean.

I selected the smaller object that i wanted to be the hole, and then selected the following button:

If its not in the right place you can easily go back and the boolean'd object so that it is in the correct position. This is how easy it is to use the boolean.

I added the finishing touches of the textures by selecting 'M' the material editor and selecting the bitmap I wanted. I found lots of good textures and maps on the Internet.

I used as plain and inserted a picture of a fire to give the fireplace inside.

Presents and carpet

The presents were simple boxes made all different sizes and giving all different textures using the material editor. The carpet was just a plain, which is in the main properties on the right. A material was then added, which looked like a carpet. I then used the bump feature to change the texture of some of the presents. I also used Mesh smooth and selected classic affect and it softened the presents up.

Curtains

For the curtains I used a plain, and changed the material to a material I found on the internet.

Here is what I came up with as my final piece.

I really enjoyed doing December as there was lots to do. if i would have done a smaller scene maybe I would have spent more time focusing on realistic settings, I would have edited the textures more and used more of the different properties. I really liked using the hair and fur tool on the tree, as that gave it a very good texture. I also enjoyed using the bump tool and the mesh smooth as there made a simple boring object have more texture.

Environments, Rendering and Saving images

I am going to look at Environments and what you can do with them. The good thing about environments is that they can save you a lot of time, and complete your image. For example I am going to do a winter scenery.

I started off with creating three rectangles and turning them into haystacks using a material I found.

I edited them by selecting soft selection, and by moving the vertex.(blue dots)

I then selected Environments. You can ind this by selecting 8, or clicking on rendering on the top tool bar and then Environment. I then clicked on bitmap and selected the environment I wanted. When you have selected your image it will show you a preview.

The preview shows you what it will all look like once it has been rendered. As you can see the haystacks need to be moved much lower. After changing the position into the correct place my scenery now looked like this :

This is the rendered image. This is only a simple one to show how the environments work.

It would be very easy to make the haystacks look alot more realistic.

Rendering

Once your image has been completed, you must render it for the finished image. You can do this by selecting the Render button:

here there aqr emany setting syou can adjust such as the ray trace, output size and much more. Once you have edited the settings press the large Render button in the right bottom corner. The finished image then appears on a seperate screen.

My image has a black background as I set it to black. If you set an environment the rendered image will be on he environment. You can then save the imae easily by clicking on the top left corner button of a disk. You can then save the completed rendered image as whatever you wish.

Lighting

Automatically Max has default lights in the viewports which enable the user to see their models in a basically lit environment however you can add as many lights as you want for different affects.

To access the lighting panel go to the Create panel, and click on the small lighting symbol

I created a small scene, and clicked and dragged a few different objects on to it. I differed the objects so that you can see the different affects when using lighting.

I went to the create panel, and clicked on the small lighting symbol.

On the viewport I chose a target spot and placed a position for the light to be.

Target Spotlights are very useful for mood lighting, there are two types of spotlights, free target spotlights free target spots can be used when you want a small area to be lit. A good example of this would be for a cars headlamps, streetlamps etc.

Above I used directional lighting. This is good for creating shadows.

You can change the lighting in the parameters to Omli or Directional.

Omli light radiates light in all directions this is perfect if I were to need a lamp or a light above such as a simple light in a room. The light radiates from the one source. There are other lighting modes such as directional lights use a cone of illumination and the sides of the cone are parallel rather than radiating from a single source like spotlights. You can change the light to either an Omli light or Directional light easily.

I decided to create an empty room and see the difference with one room with the Omli light and another without.

Here is a room with normal lighting. There are two white walls and a cream carpet and a brown door.

I am now going to add an Omli lighting and see what differences it makes to the room and the colour in the room.

After selecting Omli lighting I positioned the light right in the middle of the room.

As you can see. There is a lot of difference between a plain room lit by 3Dmaxs default lighting and an Omli light. The Omli, makes the room look much whiter, and the floor look lighter. It looks much warmer and more realistic.

Creating own Map material

In order to make your own materials to import into 3DS Max, I used Photoshop
Here, I made a new file, 3x3cm. I created a small image using the paint brush. I saved it as a bitmap.

Back in 3DS Max, I clicked on the Material Editor (M). I clicked on a material slot and . Next to the slot is a small box. Click on this and it reveals the material editor. At the top of the material editor is Bitmap. Click on Bitmap, then you can search for the file you want to appear.

After this you can drag the material onto the teapot. You can also do this using 'Multi Sub Object' Using different Maps that I have created to cover different parts of the teapot.

The image will appear in the material slot. Click and drag it to your object.

Reflective knot

Here I tried to create a reflective material. I selected a knot to do this to:

I selected 'Create', 'Extended Primatives' and a 'Torus Knot'

Once I created my knot on the screen I selected the Material Editor. I learnt you can do this quickly by selecting 'M' This is a shortcut.

I selected dark pink as my colour and selected the shader. For the reflective look the best shader is perfect for metal materials. I clicked on the diffuse button and changed the colour to a dark pink. Make sure that there was a high specular level of around 60 and a high anastrophy rougly around 80.

I then dragged the materirial from the material editor onto the torus knot.

Textured planets

In today's lecture we learnt how to use materials on shapes. We learned what the shaders were and experimented with the textures. I really like experimenting with the layers as there were so many options to choose form and so many different affects.

To create materials, you select 'rendering' from the top menu and 'material editor'

This is the material editor tool panel. Each of the 6 panels you see to the left are templates of your materials There are many more when you scroll down its very easy to experiment and use many different textures.

By clicking on the first button below the panel of 6 you can choose pre-set materials. There was a very long list, from a brick effect, to marble and grass.

Below I decided to use the 'sub object level' where you can split and object up into different parts so that you can texturize them differently. I chose a tea pot and split it up into its four different parts.

I did this by first clicking on the tea pot from the 'object type' menu, I right clicked it and converted it into an editable polygon. I then selected 'Element' in the 'selection' tool in the polygon properties. This then allowed me to select different parts of the object and name them (give them a tag). I named the four items, the spout - 1, the pot - 2, the lid - 3 and the handle 4.

Now it was time to change the material,
I clicked on Standard in the Material Editor, to pull up the proceedural map menu, I then choose Multi/sub object material and then OK.
10 material slots then appear. You can add materials or maps to the first four slots. Click on Material#standard and either add a map or make your own material. These materials then appear in the sample slot.

Instead of the basic shaders, and the preset materials, you can create you own texture by selecting 'Map' in the 'Material Editor' and importing a Bitmap. This is very easy and means you can have whatever texture you want.

July

This reminds me of Holidays, Beaches and the heat. Above is my mood board for July. The sun is in the center of my board as I think this is the most important image.

I Chose July as its the hottest month of the year, and if the sun isn't out wherever you live, many people go on holiday this month.I have the image of a beach in the background also representing this. It makes me think of calmness and tranquility and relaxation.In contrast to this when on holiday we love to let our hair down and the fishbowl cocktail in the bottom left corner represents this.

To the right of the image there is a lady coating her self in sun cream this also represents the heat and people wearing bikinis and wanting to catch the sun while it is out.