December Image

For my December Image I chose to focus on a snow scene and a snowman. I felt this image went quite well and I am pleased with the finished result. I could have maybe added some more elements to this image. Here is how I created this image.

Creating the Scene
I started by creating a thin cylinder with a large radius to sit the whole image on. I then created a box at the back of the cylinder to act as a background. I made this thin but tall and wide enough to fill the entire viewport. I then also added some spheres to the back of the image as small hills just to break up the horizon line a little as it looked very bare without them. I drew out several different sized spheres and placed them mostly below the surface with the top section sticking out over the top.

Creating the Snowman
To create my snowman, I drew two spheres, one larger than the other and positioned them on top of each other. I then converted them to editable poly so I could manipulate the spheres to make them look less like two perfect spheres. I used the soft selection tool and pulled the image around until I was happy with the finished result. I then positioned these spheres above the base so it looked like the snowman was built on the ground.

I then created 4 small spheres of different sizes to use as the eyes and the buttons on the front of the body. I also converted these to editable poly and modified them slightly so they were not perfect circles. I then positioned these and rotated them to the correct position on the snowman’s body.

To create the carrot nose, I drew out a small cone, rotated it 90 degrees and positioned it onto the snowman.

I created a torus to go around the snowman’s neck to look like a scarf. Once I had converted this to editable poly I then extruded a small portion of this to make it look like the tail end of the scarf. I then positioned this around the neck of the snowman which I felt looked quite good!

I created two sticks for the arms in the same way I did the November scene by taking a cylinder, converting it to editable poly and pulling it around until it was no longer straight and a perfect shape. I cloned this and positioned it on the other side of the snowman’s body. I rotated the shape around a bit so they did not look identical to each other.

Creating the Extras
I drew out a small sphere to use as a snowball for the scene. I cloned this 3 times and positioned them so there was a pile of snowballs next to the base of the snowman.

To create the presents, I drew out two boxes of different shapes and positioned them roughly where I wanted them in the scene. I added ribbon by creating small, thin boxes and positioning them to look like some ribbon covering the presents. To finish these off, I added a torus knot on top to look like the bow on top of the presents.

Adding Materials
For the presents in the scene, I took an image of some wrapping paper and applied it as a map to a Blinn material which I then applied to the boxes. The ribbons and torus knot are simply coloured red as I felt they looked ok without any materials or maps on them.

For the scarf, again, I used an image of a scarf from the internet, edited it in Photoshop slightly and then applied it as a map to the scarf. I had to tile the map by 10 in both directions and also rotate the map by 90 degrees. This gave me the look I was after for the scarf.

For the stones in the front of the snowman, I used a stone texture and added that to a material as a map which I then simply applied to the stones and it worked quite well as a texture.

Using an image of some bark like I did with my November image, I created the material for the sticks. I tiled the map by 3 and 5 to get the look I was after for the twigs. As the shapes were not identical, the fitted the material differently and this made them look even less alike which was good.

To create the snow, I found a couple of tutorials to read through. I don’t think this produced the best snow effect but I couldn’t find anything better to use. I created a Bump map which was a mix between a Cellular map and a Noise map. The noise map was just black and white whilst the cellular map consisted of some darker greys as well as white and black. I then applied this material to the snowman and the surroundings. I tweaked the parameters slightly on the material to try and get a good snow look but it was the best I could come up with.

Finally, the background image comes from the internet and is applied to the box at the back of the scene.

Finishing Touches
I added a Target Camera at the front of the scene, quite low down to give the perspective feel which also helped with the hills on the horizon. I played around getting the position of this just right for quite a while!

I added two omni lights to the scene, one at the top and one at the bottom to give the scene enough light so everything was visible.

I also added a Target Spot light from behind which simulates where the moon is in the background image. I turned on the shadow map for this light to cast a shadow on the ground, giving an even better impression of moonlight. I played around with the settings for the target light, adjusting the intensity and focus so it was not such a bright spotlight but a more gentle moonlight!

Final Thoughts
I am quite pleased with this image and how it has come out. If I had more time to work on it I would like to have a go at making a different snow material as I am still not 100% happy with how that has come out.

Overall, I am quite pleased with this image and from comments from others, they like it too!