I got the idea for this image, when i had modelled some furniture for architectural vizualisation renderings and then thought about throwing everything together. I carefully moved and rotated the furniture to build a large cluster. This was actually the hardest part. I’ve then added a really simple environment – a room with 3 windows(at the right, not visible).

To make it more interesting I’ve cut a hole in the ceiling and placed a biped on top of the furniture. I first thought about creating an own character, but I didn’t want to spend that much time on this image, so I’ve just used a chrome biped. To add some mood I’ve also added some volume light.

Modelling

I’ve usually started with primitives and then tweaked them, using Editable Poly. I was trying out the trial version of PolyBoost at this time. It provides some awesome modelling tools – Like Polydraw, Flowconnect, Flowadjust, Looptools, very nice Selection tools and much more.

Take a look at some of the furniture stills:
Chair 1 is made of box primitives.

Chair 1

Chair 2

The curved wooden seat of Chair 2 was done using Polydraw then bended with a bend modifier. To give it some thickness I’ve used the shell modifier. The chairlegs started out as splines, were then extruded and again thickend by using the shell modifier.

Chair 3

Chair 4

Chair 5

Chair 3 and Chair 5 were initially Editable Patches and were later converted to EPoly. Using Editable Patches you can easily lay out complex curved shapes. The grating of Chair 3 was done using the lattice modifier.Chair 4 was modelled using a box as a base. I’ve then extruded the back and the ‘legs’.

As you can see on this scene picture the room is really simple. It’s made of a box with flipped normals. I’ve then cut in the windows using ‘inset’ and that’s it already.

Materials & Texturing

Not much to say about materials/texturing. I’ve used photo-textures everywhere; tweaked to my needs. Most of them were free ones I’ve found on the net (mayang.com for example), some of them are from the 3D Total Texture CDs(good stuff!). Don’t know what else to say, but here are some general tips:

Reflective materials(metals, chrome, glas,..) will only look as good as the environment around them. A basic room will make a big differencs already. Also make sure there is something really bright to reflect. White self-illuminatiing planes are great for this. You can also use a HDRI map if you like, but i prefer to create the environment myself in most cases(provides more controll and i think it gives a cleaner look).

Most Fabrics have some short and thin fur all over their surfaces. You can mimic this look by using a material which turns brighter as the surface turns away. In Max this can by achieved by using a fresnel map. It can also be done by using backlighting, but this isn’t that usefull in complex scenes in my mind.

Lighting

I don’t advise to use skylight in interior renderings. I prefer to use Area lights, placed outside in front of the windows.
I think i provides more control and better results. I’ve used one area light at the top (sky.jpg) and a second one at the right (windows.jpg). Those simulate the skylight.There is also a direct light (sun.jpg), which is used as the sun.
Furthermore there are some IES lights, but they don’t add much to the overall lighting and are just used for decorative purposes.

Hey guys, my name is Erik Mjelde and I’m going to show you step by step how to make a convincing reflective shader using max 7.5 and up. The reason you need 7.5 and up is because we are using mental ray’s max bounce option that is only available in 7.5 and higher versions. This tutorial should be easy to follow even if you are a noob, so lets get started.

-Open a clean slate of max.

-Create a plane 5000×5000 and center it.

-Create five spheres with a radius of 50 units and 64 segment. Place them in the center of the plain with any configuration that you want (in my demonstration I make a four point star with a center ball).

-In the perspective viewport adjust the viewport angle so that it is set up like the picture below and press ctrl-C to make a camera.

We are now done with the modeling portion of this tutorial. Easy right.

Next we are going to set up the shaders so that they look convincing when we render them out.

-Press m on your keyboard to bring up the materials manager.

-Click on the first material and name it convincing red ball.

-Change the defuse to a red color (don’t worry about this color too much as it is only a reference color for us).

-In the specular highlights section change the specular level to 200 and the glossiness to 80.

-Go down to the maps rollout and click on the none label for the bump map and choose a dent map. Label this big dent.

-Change the size to 777, the strength to 20 and iterations to 2.

-Click None by the white color swatch and choose a dent map. Label this small dents.

-Change the size to 100, the strength to 5 and the iterations to 2.

NOTE: Putting a dent map inside of a dent map will break our shader up so that it looks more convincing.

TOPICS COVERED:

1. General Scene Setup
2. Material Settings
3. HDRI for reflections only
4. Environment Lighting

Global Switches Settings

- Default Lights are off
- Everything else is basically default settings

Irradiance Map Settings

- I set the preset to custom and used the settings shown on the left

Note: I like to enable Show calc phase just so I can see the Irradiance map calculation.

Global Illumination Settings

- Global Illumination is Enabled
- Irradiance map for Primary GI engine with a multiplier of 1.0

-Quasi-Monte-Carlo for Secondary Bounces with a multiplier of 1.0

- Post processing settings are all default

V-Ray Environment Settings

Note: There are no lights in this scene…as in zero. The only thing lighting the scene is the environment light shown on the left.

- GI Environment Skylight override is enabled.
- Reflection/refraction override is enabled.

Note: I used a HDRI map for the reflections in the scene but the the HDRI map does not contribute to the lighting. I could easily use the HDRI in the reflection slot to light the scene by dragging “Map 15″ into the “None” slot of the GI environment.
For this particular scene, basic GI environment lighting worked well so I chose not use a HDRI map in the GI environment slot.

The Ground Plane

In order for the shadows, reflections and GI bounces to render over the background image we need an object in the scene to catch all of that data. For this we will use a matte object.

Note: To match the perspective of the background image I simply rotated the camera by hand until a suitable match was achieved.

Matte Object Settings

Note: to access the V-Ray properties dialog box select an object in the scene and right-click in the viewport. Select V-Ray properties from the quad menu.

- Matte object is enabled and shadows are checked.. This will make the selected objects invisible at rendertime but things like shadows, reflections and GI bounces will still show up.
- Notice you have control over many options like reflection and GI amounts. This is a very useful dialog box because you can control how V-Ray treats scene geometry on a per-object basis.

Here is a closeup of the red metal on the tractor. Notice all of the nice subtle hightlights. This is a combination of the material settings and the HDRI reflections.

Starting off

In this tutorial I will talk about some of the processes I have used in the creation of Anhells. I will not go in deep for evey aspect of the image, so i´m assuming you have a good knowledge of your favourite 2D/3D software. I used 3dsmax, photoshop and combustion as the main programs. Mental Ray and Vray are my rendering engines for almost every project. I like both two, so I use both.

This image started as a polygonal head modeling at my job place (it was for something totally different to what it is now) and after some more hours playing with polys I decided I could end up with some cool character to include in my portfolio. Later, for some reason I decided I would do a more complex scene, so I started doing things here and there… One of the most important things I would like to transmit you with this tutorial is that YOU MAY NEVER START WORKING WITHOUT A PREVIOUS DRAWN CONCEPT. What I did is start with only a few blurred images in my mind of angels, demons and hells, and believe me, it is very easy to send it all the work done to the trash just because you are lost in the middle of a creation without knowing where do you want everything placed. So, ever, ever, ever, do some hand drawing before to clearly see what you are going to create in 3D.

The first thing I created for this scene was the main character. Every anhell uses the same base but with some minor changes.
Here you can see the head in two development states. One thing I had pretty clear was that there was not going to be animation or intense texturing, so I did not take too much care about edgeloops and stuff.

The hand was done with a base mesh I use as a start for all my modelings

The upper part is almost complete. As with the hand, I used for the torso a base mesh I did some time ago.

The legs came from another character I did some time ago. They were fixed and reworked to make them look better.

The Fugitive is full 3D scene done with 3D Studio max for modeling, Photoshop for drawing textures thathave been done by me and afterburn for final effects and Vray for rendering

Modeling
Start modeling BMW Z4 using Poly Modeling
Start by plane using Edge and take edge but edge to create the front.

Detach parts and add some details

Add more details

Making BMW materials

Modeling bell Jetranger using Box Modeling

Drawing bell Jetranger textures

Modeling CLS interior BoxModeling