Creating an Environment With Cloth in 3ds Max

I've long had issues with creating a random looking environment to hide the horizon in my scenes.  the easiest solution is of course mountains in the background.  3ds max however isnt great at creating something that looks natural.

In the past, to get relatively random looking environments, I've utilized spline lines and then terrain which often results in inconsistent geometry and harsh edges that needed to be re - topologized after the fact. you can see this technique in the mountains of the delorean and ecto 1.  Good for far away blured out backgrounds.

Recently, while working on a kitchen model, I was simulating a cloth over the back of a chair and noticed some very natural shapes being created.  This gave me the idea to utilize cloth in a sort of vacu-forming of an environment.  Using basic geometry I create a simple form structure that follows the basic shape of mountains and valleys.  This is where you would define the different areas of your shot, foreground, background.... room for a building etc.

here is an example of the original mold for the environment.

Create a rectangle spline, add garment maker, adjust the density to something relatively complex depending on how smooth you want your environment to feel.  if its nice flowing hills and valleys you would want more tessellation, if its newer mountains that are rocky and rough you can go with a less dense cloth.  Add the Cloth modifier, add the mold object to the cloth as the collision object.  maybe play with what sort of fabric the cloth is simulating (will get different results depending on how stiff or soft the cloth is)  make sure to turn on self collision.  this stuff will bunch up like a son of a gun.  Then run simulate local and see how you did.  sometimes upping the gravity on the sim will help the vacu-form technique work a bit better.  as you can see you get something with relatively evenly spaced geometry for doing general tweaks with max free form modeling tools

Here is another example that was my first attempt at this technique, you can notice where I've pointed out those natural features that first drew me to the idea

Let me know if this was useful.

Andy 

Ecto 1 Exterior Modeling Finishedish

The exterior of the model is finished for the most part. still need to texture all the gadgets on the roof. as you can see all the doors where modeled and all that is left is to build out the interior.

Comments and ideas are welcome

Back to the future

the Delorean model has been one that i've had an interest in building for quite a while. the release of new back to the future Blu rays may have been the catalyst for me to finally get into it. I did quite a bit of research and built the base car before adding the the bttf details. the body work was unique due to the shape of the car, straight sharp edges were fun to create.

For the clay renders, i added a simple grey with a high / sharp specularity to identify issues with topology. As you can probably see, by the strong line running through the middle of the model, I keep the model mirrored for most of the modeling process. You can never be too sure when you may need to make a large edit to the topo.

the final texture used is as simple as it gets. we all know that the delorean is made out of stainless steel. "The way I see it, if you're going to build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style? Besides, the stainless steel construction made the flux disperal... " however if you actually take a few minutes to look at the car you notice it looks quite soft. a simple shader with a focus on the specular did the trick. a bit of lighting, including the flux capacitor finished the project. im using a daylight system with final gather and global illumination.