Wierd Mine

[Sixpack]

Hi,

This is my first attempt at a scene in 3ds. I'm taking a class so I'm definitely a noob (started this week). Anyway, I'm trying to create a sea mine that looks more modern and sinister. Any suggestions on what I could do to make the image cooler?

Best regards,
Sixpack

http://hem.wtnord.net/k01627/mine.jpg

[OpticalDeath]

Is this really the first scene you have created in Max?? If so, its pretty darn good for a first attempt. :)
The water and lighting are very nice. The only suggestions I would make would be to add some particles to the water(you know, debris, plankton etc), also I would make the mine more worn looking by increasing the amount of rust in the texture and adding a good bump(and specular) map to it. Also even though the lighting in the water is nice, the mine doesn't seem to fit into the scene correctly if you know what I mean. The underside of the mine should be darker in my opinion.

[Sixpack]

Thank you! Yes, this is my first project, but this has taken me quite a few hours this week. A lot of trial and error, because I don't know my way around the software yet. There is a whole world of fascinating buttons that I don't have a clue about. :)
Hopefully I'll learn during the course. Our teacher promised to cover basic modelling, lighting, texturing and rendering.

Thank you for your suggestions. I'm taking care of the light that affects the mine from below. I'll post some pictures later on if I manage to improve the scene.

[Downup]

Well i like it alot.. maybe something missing.. some fish? =)

[sarN]

i think you should add more segments to your sphere to make it a bit smoother. Maybe a few more mines off in the distance? Thats usually what its like in mine fields :) Nice lighting, ive been working with max for more than a year and a half now and still cant get volumetrics like that lol. How did you make the water?

[Sixpack]

Fish? He he, one day I might attempt to model a fish. Right now it would probably look like a cube with fins. :)

I'll look into the segmentation of the sphere, or what's left of it. I kind of went nuts with the polygons. A mesh smooth could probably work things out.
The water is a QuadPatch textured with a raytrace material. I tried a few things in the bump slot. The current setting is a mix between two noise maps and a texture with some waves in greyscale. I used this mixture as a projection texture on the light, which of course makes the scene kind of heavy to render.

When I get further I might add a few more mines before I make a final render. Or maybe I should really add more rust as suggested by OpticalDeath and make this scene about the one mine that was forgotten. :)

Now, I have to find a way to create the plankton. I have a particle system in the scene, but the settings need some tweaking. What kind of geometry would be best for plankton?

[OpticalDeath]

For the particles:
You could maybe add some volume fog to the scene and mess around with the noise settings (hi and low thresholds, and size) so that you end up with small "bits" of fog to simulate debris in the water.
Not sure if this will work though. But work a shot! :)