3D Max Skybox - 3D environments

Today we developed off what we learnt last week, but learnt how to create a skybox. Its pretty much the same process as before, but on a sphere, rather than a plane. I built a sphere around my plane and deleted the bottom half of it - I then flipped the 'normals' and put a sky texture on the sphere. When inside the sphere, you got the illusion you were in a world.

3D Studio Max environment texturing and landscaping

In today's lesson with Chris, we were taught the basics and fundamentals of creating an environment - starting with landscaping by applying a texture we created in photoshop. We first created a greyscale image with black being the 'low' ground, and white being the 'high' ground. Starting off with the landscape as black, and gradually working through the greys to get a white, I managed to create a birdseye view of what I wanted my landscape to be set out like. I then smudged the whites and blacks together to get indentations in the 'raised land' (which I will now refer to as mountains. :))

I then created a plane in 3D Studio Max, changed the segments to 200 (so it looked alot smoother and less 'blocky') and placed a displacement modifier on the plane. I imported the texture that I created earlier into 3D Studio Max and used the strengthen tool to raise the land, which the transformed the landscape into a mountainous landscape. I used the smoother to make sure it looked as authentic as I could.

To create an actual texture for the mountains and the valley, I kept the original version of the greyscale texture, and modified it slightly. Where the 'valley' was (the black bit) I sprayed it green and then changed the blending mode into something suitable, added noise, multiply, and then added a white disolve layer that would look like snow. I then imported it and it looks lush. <3


To import a background I simply went to rendering > environment and imported it. :)




[less than three]