Creating a meditation garden
3D artist, Sérgio Merêces, shares the 3ds Max workflow he used to create the calming Meditation Garden
I created Meditation Garden as a 3D render project, I wanted to design a place in the woods where we can be among nature and the animals; in a total peacefully, almost a secret place, with our family. My main inspiration for this piece is nature herself. In this making of I will show you how I created the image by discussing composition and light for the landscape using HDRi light.
Step 01: Modeling
In 3ds Max I began by modeling and designing the terrain, I made base shapes with traditional splines. I then added a plane to represent the water and shaped the terrain to make islands. get all the terrain design I create base shapes with the traditional splines. I began to add a plain that represent the water and then I began to shape the terrain islands. With all the shapes done I used the Extrude Modifier to give them form, followed by the Populate Terrain script which gives the shapes better geometry and topology.
Step 02: Vegetation
For this environment I spent the most amount of time working on the different varieties of vegetation, such as the grass, flowers and trees. To make the grass I used the Forest Pack preset in 3ds Max, for the trees I used Evermotion and Mentor plants. With all of the assets created and on screen I got on with designing the environment using the Forest Pack plug-in - with all of its features you can do almost anything! I created a Forest Pack modifier for each of the different types of vegetation such as grass, bushes, and trees.
Step 03: Camera and composition
To work out the composition and find the best possible camera angle of the final image I like to do a rough sketch on paper first. With the terrain modeled and rough composition planned, I can spend some time working out different configurations and positions. I use the rule of thirds as a base for all of the composition.
Step 04: Light and rendering
With the modeling and composition done I moved on to lighting my scene. I only used a V-Ray dome with a HDRi - when you use an HDRi it is important to increase the dome samples in order to get a nice, clean result in the final render. For the render settings I use the ones in the image and I set the final image resolution to 8000 pixels to get a great definition for the small details.
Step 05: Post-production
Doing some post-production is always important, as it allows you to get nice color corrections! Doing render passes is also very important to give your work a polished finish. All my personal projects are done in 3ds Max, so at the end I only need to do a small amount of color correction in Photoshop. I use Curves, Levels and the Photo look plug-in for Photoshop. As a final touch I added all the animals and people in the post-production phase.
Related links
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