Envirmonets

[Angara34]

When your planning your envirments for scene or animation what do you plan out first, what do you consider?


Finished modeling character just can't plan out what to do with him

[lockdown2000]

How about that, I am just now working on a outdoorish scene.
Well I will take you through my thinking
1) I draw a concept pic, wadda I want to show.
2) I draw a ton more concept pics from different CAMERA angles
3) I get modeling
4) I pick and set up my 3 best camera angles
5) Now i spend like hours upon hours figuring out where the light is coming from, how intence it is, and how it should "play" with the scene. (This is the longest and hardest step for me)
6) After I have the lighting down, i lock all the cameras and objects into position for fear of me moving them
7) I open up Max material editor and slap on some quick textures and render it out to see what I think
8) I adjust stuff.
9) I start adding little details, Grass, deformed rocks etc.
10) I open up Photoshop and attempt my hardest to make some new textures for my model.
11) I slap those textures onto my model.
12) I activate Brazil R/S and replace the Max light with a Brazil Light, Undersample and render out...ponder what to do
13) I then go back, fix stuff, rearrange try the other angles.
14) I pick a background. Slap it on.
15) I figure out how the IMAGE/BACKGROUND light works and try to manipulate and duplicate that in the 3d scene.
16) I take a deep breathe and render out. Submit it to the WIP section and pray

Well...hope it helps;
Right now I am on step 5
Here are my two angles. I know it aint the best scene right now, but like I described in my methodology, I have a loooong way to go until I finish. acutally I am using BRAZIL and its lights right now.
For the first angle, Textures in that image will be everything. and a good lighting too
For the second, a load of DETAIL will be needed onmy modeling and in the textures or else that camera will be dumped.

OH! P.S. And this will help a lot. Go OUTSIDE, pick up a rock, put it at different angles see how the sun plays off it, take pics of it, bring in the house, your a flashlight and do other lightings on it. lay it down in your kitchen and see how "house" light plays with it. EXPERIMENT!