October

Background

This image is consist of a tract of wheat farmland, the bird (wild goose) flying away from northern to southern of China, a scarecrow who is standing there for protecting the wheat, and a big windmill which already stops there in that time.

The time of this image is a night of October, the scarecrow stands there alone, he has no friend, he feels fear and unhappy, the only thing can company with him is that big windmill but now it has stopped working. Suddenly, he sees some wild gooses are flying over his head, how he want to talk to them and make friend with them, he is looking and looking and he want to say: come down let’s be friends, but they won’t stay.

So I would like to make the feeling of scarecrow, the whole environment is silence, dark, and a little bit desolate, and the moonlight is on his sad dismal face, behind of him is that big tract of wheat, but who will remember him after the harvest.

Wheat

Firstly, build the body, drag a box and covert it into Editable poly, choose polygon, and bevel the top face bigger, and bevel it several time, build the basic shape of the seed. Last step is with the same method to create a long tail of the seed. I use 4 times bevel to do that, and then go to vertex level and adjust it to get a better shape.
Secondly, create the full wheat body, rotate the seed about 30, go to Tools-Array, choose 3d dimension and give account number 10 and a value for the Z,because I have tried a lot of time to get a convenient value, I can say which value I have to set ,it depends you size of you object, and I got the value 89,and then go to incremental and rotate the whole object I just bulit. I got 35 as its value

so by now I created one wheat,and then I will drag a cone as a stem for it,clone several wheats and bend those stems for creating different shape of wheat.

Bird

My home town is on northeast of China, so when the autumn (October) comes there are a lot of birds fly to southern China, the main kind of birds we call them wild goose, but I am not going to create every detail of it, because the wild goose are flying in the sky, we can not see the very clearly.

Firstly, drag a box as the body of the wild goose and covert it into Editable poly, create the tail and head parts from the left and right polygon. The main method is bevel. Go to polygon level and choose left polygon, bevel it smaller, and then extrude it, and extrude the left and right polygon to make the width of the tail.
Go back to the body box and bevel the right polygon, bevel once for the part connecting neck and body, and then extrude the long neck, and bevel several to create the shape of head.

Go to the vertex level to adjust the whole shape of body, especially the shape of the tail, I follow the shape from the real picture, and I pull all the head a little bit higher, like flying.

Create the wing, go to the body box, choose the front and back polygon to create the both wings, go to the edge level and connect the left and right edge on the front and back polygon, and extrude both sides of the top new polygon twice. Go to vertex level adjust the shape of the wing.

Choose the meshmooth to make the whole bird smooth.

Clone more wild gooses, and adjust the shape of wing to create the different faying wild gooses.

Windmill

The windmill is a simple but a big part in this image
Firstly, the main body of the windmill, drag a cone and covert it to Editable poly, delete the top and bottom polygon and choose the border level, select the top border, press shift button on the keyboard and scale it bigger, select the bigger border and pull it up by press the shift key again, repeat once, and close the last opening with cap.

Secondly, the base of the fan I made from a box, covert it to Editable poly and cut a line on the top view and pull this line up.
I made the axle by the same way, just this time I will cut two cross line on the front view, and go to the vertex level to choose this cross point and move it to the left on the lift view.
Hide all the object I have done, the fan is consist of the small box, clone them and put them at the right place.

Rendering
The body of windmill is rendered by Multi\Sub-object, there are two parts, roof and the body, and go to polygon level to give a number 1 to body and 2 to body.

Gloves
Drag a box, length segs: 4 width segs: 3, because I am going to bevel 4 fingers on the left view and one thumb on the front view.
Covert it to Editable poly, choose polygon level, select one polygon on the left view, I going to use bevel to create the finger, especially the joints. And all the finders are not same long, for create it easier I took my hand photo, so I can create the glove fallow my hand.

After finishing those 4 fingers, choose the right polygon on the front view and extrude it, then choose the new polygon on the left view and bevel it like last 4 fingers.



Last, go to vertex level and adjust all the points.
Go to Meshsmooth path to get the smooth shape, and clone other hand.

Scarecrow
The idea of creating the scarecrow is rebuild from the real human body, the basic method I use to build the scarecrow is from the box to create the shape of head and body.

The body:

Drag a box, I set the lenth segs: 5, width seg: 10, height segs: 9, but those values depend on how detailed the scarecrow is. I just want to make a simple body.

Covert it to editable poly, and here I am going to use a method called symmetry. With this method I just need to create half part of body, so it easier to make a balance body.
Firstly, go to polygon level and delete the right part of the box. Go to tool bar choose Modifiers – Mesh editing—symmetry, and select flip in the right panel.

Now go back editable poly and choose vertex level, first thing I would like to create the arm part with the bevel method, select 9 polygons on top of the left view, bevel it, here I create a joint in the middle, and cut twice with the Quick Slice as a cuff part, and go to polygon and scale it bigger.

Go to vertex level to adjust the body, the chest part, choose 9 points and move them a little bit right on the left view, and modify the point on the wrist part, and the neck on the top view.

The leg is the same like the arm.
Go to Meshsmooth path to get the smooth shape.

It is rendered by Mul/Sub object, two parts, coat and pants.

Straw
There are some straws out from the scarecrow’s body, one of straw is created by line and give it a thickness value, after that just clone several of them and group them, and copy 6 groups like this and put them to two arms, two legs and two as hair.

The hat

drag a cone,and covert it to the Eidtable poly, and go to polygon level and delete the top polygon on the top view.

go to border and choose the top border,and scale it smaller by click the shift key.

and push the shift key and pull the new border up on the front view,and scale it smaler.

repeat twcie, and close the last opening by clicking the cap.

go to vertex and adjust the points to make a old hat.

The final scarecrow

merge all the objects together

Snow and first final product--January

Snow
By now, I have done all the objects in this image, next step is merging them together, and here is the important part for this image, the snow effect and the lighting.

My idea making the snow is pulling all the top parts of the objects up and copying all of them, and rendering those new objects as snow. But the lake is different because snow is different when it covers on the lake. So for the snow on the lake I intend to make it by different way.

At first,Open the material editor, select one sample slot, click standard button to choose Top/Bottom map for bulid snow. Change all colour into white, especially ajust the value you like,I set 49, and adjust the highlight, second,Add a mask map in bump path, and in mask parameter choose cellular for map and noise for mask.
On Top/Bottom basic parameter justify the blend to 21 and poison 53.

Give it to snow object.

The lake I made it by displace,so I can set a bigger noise here, firstly,drag a plane as a lake,set a value, and I set the length segs 88, width segs 88 for getting the noise effect easily. choose the displace function in the panel,and give a strength value 20, to get the size of noise, and click the map in the Image, set it to noise.

Lighting and environment
The time of this image is around noon, so I put two target spots lights one on both side, but one higher and stronger than other. So there will be shadow at noon.
And the winter environment, especially after a heavy snow, the weather is like having fog, so I add a fog in atmosphere, and change the colour by white.

Final product

And I took this picture by camera, so it will be easier to view from the convenient angle.