The making of 'Winter Light'

Cihan Özkan runs through the modeling and texturing steps he took to create his winter scene in 3ds Max…

At the beginning, my objective was to create an avenue showing old buildings in a rural area. I wanted to set a winter scene, shown in the early hours of the morning with plenty of snow and a sense of warmth radiating from the lights of the houses.

During my work, I used Autodesk 3ds Max, V-Ray render and Adobe Photoshop. The work took about 2 to 3 weeks. This can be described as a work that I made for recreation, by utilizing the leisure time I had between my daily work routine.

So, to start my project, I started to examine related pictures from the internet. I particularly focused on the elements of snow, the piling effect created by the wind and the accumulation of snow on trees.

Sketching

Usually, I draw small sketches for buildings. These form a basis that I use during the modeling process.

Some of the initial sketches

Modeling

Afterwards, I start to create my model by drawing a box from the 3ds Max primitives panel. At this stage, I utilize the flexible tools (Extrude, Bevel, Bridge, Chamfer) offered by Poly Modeling.

After roughly forming the buildings, I start trying compositions by gathering them in a single scene, and in this way I complete my works in broad strokes.

Creating the models and composing them into a scene

Snow on the tree branches

In order to emphasize on the accumulation of snow on tree branches and trunks, I used the particle system offered by 3ds Max.

Showing the particles of snow for the tree branches

Icicles

While modeling the icicles on the eaves, I once again used poly modeling tools by taking the basic box object as a base, and later on I obtained the result through modifiers such as TurboSmooth and Noise

Modeling the icicles in 3ds Max

Scene elements

I also used similar modeling methods for the streetlights, electric poles, the sitting bench and the other descriptive model pieces.

Modelling various elements of the scene

Terrain

In order to create the terrain, I used Mesh Displace implemented on a plane primitive. This tool has provided me with ease and flexibility particularly in creating the footprints on the snow.

Using the Mesh Displacement function to create the terrain

Wire render

At that point, I made a wire render of the scene, in order to prepare for the next stage of adding materials and texture.

A wire render state of the scene

Material

The samples of some of the materials I used in my work can be seen here:

The snow material

The wall material

The glass material

The ice material

Exterior lighting

For general lighting, I used a HDR image in combination with a V-Ray Dome Light. The lighting effect created through HDR helped me in imitating the sunrise in the morning. As for street lighting equipments, I used V-Ray Sphere Light.

Using a Dome light to represent the sunlight

A V-Ray sphere light worked for the street lamps

Interior lighting

In order to provide the interior lighting effect from the buildings, I used orange V-Ray Plane lights.

Orange plane lights were used for the windows

Camera settings

I used a V-Ray camera with the following settings:

f-Number 5,0
vignetting 1,2
white balance Neutral
shutter speed 200
film speed ISO 100

Rendering parameters

For rendering out the image, these were some of the parameters used.

The render parameters used

Post-production

These are some of the adjustments made during the post-production phase in Photoshop. The glow effect was applied on the street lamps, and a general color arrangement was carried out.

The post-production process

The final image

Related links

See more of Cihan Özkan's work
Check out our ebooks for more information on Arch-Viz in 3ds Max
Stuck on particle systems – try this tutorial too