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I built this in 3DS Max 2010, it's my first full project and I started on it after learning Max (with no previous experience) for a month and a half on my course at uni. It took me bloody ages, probably about a solid week of work if you add up all the hours, if you don't then about 2 months, and I finished it in the first week of may 2010 (I don't remember the exact day).
The original concept was to create a visual representation of some of the philosophies of Plato (namely the allegory of the cave) and Dawkins (his views on religious beliefs vs. belief in scientific method and understanding), although to be honest it ended up fairly muddled.
Technically there are a lot of things wrong with it, most notably the specular levels not being accurate on all of the materials, the wall texture in particular being kinda hideous, and the pattern on the stained glass window being projected through the light being straight up faked since I couldn't work out how to do it any other way, hence the reason it comes directly out of the wall.
I am however very proud of it, especially considering I'm pretty much still a noob, although I had the best teacher anybody could have asked for. Still, I decided to post it here because I have a lot of room for improvement, so any feed back would be much appreciated, while I'm always busy working on something I would like to go back to this once my skills have improved, and any pointers as to what I could look at improving in the scene and in my technical abilities based on the quality of work displayed in this scene would be very much appreciated.
Sorry if that was TL;DR, but hey, if it was I guess you didn't read this far anyway :P
"while I'm always busy working on something I would like to go back to this once my skills have improved, and any pointers as to what I could look at improving in the scene and in my technical abilities based on the quality of work displayed in this scene would be very much appreciated."
That was the important bit from the mega description (sorry about that) for anybody who suffers from TL;DRitus...
Have you used normal map for the floor and the walls by the way? Because it seems flat and that it needs some depth to it.
I think it is bump mapped but I don't remember how high I set it, your right though it could do with being higher. I probably just left it on the default 30...
What I am trying to say is why not apply a normal map to it instead of increasing the bump map (since bump map is only good for adding details) xD
example of using normal map:
Spiralgraphics.biz
Zellersamuel.files.wordpress.com
there are different ways of making normal maps, but usually you can make one using one of Nvidia's plugin for photoshop (its free) which you can download:
Developer.nvidia.com
hope I helped you out :)
but overall its great for a person who just started using 3ds max ;)
keep it up :)
Oh ok I'll certainly look into that, it looks great. Thanks for the feedback and encouragement.
Do you have any advice as to how I could improve the walls? Cuz I'm a noob and I'd just learned to make a wall texture and apply it planar, then view align and fit, the circular room completely threw me off. Eventually I worked out I had to tile it but my texture making skills are far, far worse than my modelling, so every time I tried to make a texture that could be tiled it ended up looking terrible, either just not matching up or having patterns that get repeated across the wall (which is the problem I ended up settling for).
Have you tried using unwrap UVW in 3ds max and transferring the uvw template of it to Photoshop for editing?
you can use that to create the bricks individually if you want :)
also in the material editor add a little specular to the walls as well
here is a good explanation / tutorial about bump and specular mapping (they used halo 2 as a example):
Earthenrecords.com
Thanks man, that's great, having a go now. Anyway, sorry this reply is so late but I got distracted by other stuff and forgot to check :(
Just letting you know that you're help and advice hasn't gone to waste and I'm very grateful for it...