Welcome back to 3D max! starting with - creating an environment

Today we got back onto 3-D max for the first time in ages - so we started having a recap on some box modelling and making textures (512*512 - 72 on Photoshop) (see one below):

after playing around in Photoshop with various renderings (clouds) and diffuse (among others). We then put this texture onto a 200*200 plane (with 100 faces); put our texture onto it and then we could use that texture to effect the environment - strengthening it brought up the environment and lowering it did the opposite. Creating a really sweet mountain-like scene

As you can see form my image there is lighting and a skydome - I added a camera and skylight to make it more dramatic and to add shadows - there was then 2 ways to "make a sky" use a sphere, cut it in half and flip the polygons over, then add the texture. Or you fake it by making a box around the enviroment and slapping the texture on there. Its good to be back on 3-D max and I look forward to learning more.

Planning an environment

My group are working on the area in saltaire - roberts park. It a wide open area, mainly just grass and trees with a few buildings and environmental features. This means, in a fictional sense, we have a lot of room to play with, so using 3-D max can add much more to the environment.
The first image below is the photo of roberts park I based the drawing on:

From that I drew up a very rough sketch, outlining the shapes in the photo and drawing up lines that I could scale the rest of the image from. After a lot of pencil work I moved onto a black fine liner - which I used to add more detail, highlight objects through various methods such as crosshatching. The image below is that drawing:

I then traced this image, and drew lines cutting it into 4 sections. On each of those sections I was to experiment with different colouring techniques (including the fine liner, which is the top left section. The top right section has been done in felt tip, bottom right was pencil crayon and the bottom left was done with pastels. Out of these 4 I really enjoyed using the fine liner, such a simple thing can bring out alot more in an image - the pastels aswell can create a really good effect when rubbed and blended. The image is below:

I can see what i can change for my groups trailer, what buildings or ruins i can add to make it fit the theme, I may even draw up another concept for that in the coming weeks, but form this i can draw up a rough idea of what i can do in 3-D max.