INSIDE 3DS MAX® 7 [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Chapter 8. Environmental Modeling

By Erin Nicholson

An essential part of being an artist is to communicate the worlds that you imagine in your head. Many artists are somewhat at odds with reality and enjoy leaving it behind when they create their art. Thanks to the power of computer graphics, the challenging visions of fantasy artists now drive the visual style of our popular culture. From the awe-inspiring architecture of the Lord of the Rings films to the dark industrial designs of Id's Doom 3, the toil and visions of innumerable artists pervade our popular culture.

3ds max 7 gives you highly evolved tools for making your own virtual environments seem as nearly real as possible. Modeling an environment in 3ds max can be a liberating experience, but it can also be a dauntingly complex task if it isn't broken down into manageable steps. With a little bit of planning, the work becomes much easier.

That's how we're going to approach this chapter. First, you'll create the basic environment itself. Next, you'll populate the environment with interesting objects. Finally, you'll add atmosphere with lighting and a night sky.

To do all of this, you will need a good understanding of what's required for the scene. The easiest way to gain this understanding is to use a well-thought-out design. Whether rough or polished, a design is a great productivity tool. Designs can take the form of photographs, composites, pencil sketches, computer paint sketches, or anything else that will provide you with a visual reference for your intent.

Here is a concept that I created quickly using a pencil and paper (Figure 8.1). It indicates the important elements in my scene and how they are arranged, without too much detail (that will be added later).

Once you have the design, you can start to model the parts. As we go step by step through our environmental modeling project, we'll explore some of the core tools in 3ds max, as well as several cool new features in max 7.