Tell a story with your scene and composition - 3ds Max Tutorial

So before we can jump into 3ds Max and begin the process of making adjustments to our scene, we need to understand the importance of telling a story and why we should focus on that and how we can achieve that. So, first, why should you tell a story with your image? First, it's going to help you focus on what's important. You know what you're trying to tell so you know what you should spend more time developing and what you shouldn't spend that much time. You will focus on what you need to focus because you know the objective. Also it's going to give the scene a reason for being. So, you will know why you need the render, and that is going to help you a lot when you're trying to make creative choices. And those choices will be educated choices because you know what you're trying to tell, so you know what's important. You know what should be up front. You know if you should remove or add something because you know what you're trying to create there. And the overall result will be deeper, will be meaningful, and that will translate over the final result of your image. Also you will have less generic outcome because people can sense when there is a meaning behind it. People can sense when there's intention, so they're going to identify that it's not just another generic, pretty render. There's a meaning. There's a reason. There's a story behind it. Well then, what strategies can you use to tell a story? First, you can insinuate off-camera elements. So when people are creating 3-D scenes, it's pretty common that they just create a box and throw furniture in, and that can feel really generic. So, you can insinuate there's something else other than what you can actually see in your scene. So, insinuate a hallway to indicate that there are other rooms in the scene, for example, and people will feel that there's more reality there. You can also put things in perspective. You can put a shadow of a object that is not in the camera frames. So there are a number of strategies that you can use to suggest something that might not even be really there. You might not need to model a lot of extra details, but if you insinuate that there is something there, it's already enough. Also you can indicate that someone was there. So if you're making a room or a office, people live there. People use that space. So try to indicate that somehow. Maybe something's messy. Maybe there's an open book. Maybe there's a mug that someone left there. So, try to indicate that someone just left. Also try to add hints of life. So, you can add shadow from trees. You can add actual plants inside the room. There are people that add animals to their final renders through post-production. So any strategy that can give hints that there's life there, even though there isn't, is going to help you a lot. And you can also add a little mess. So, the mess is a touchy subject because some people tend to over do it, and when you're trying to do commercial ready renders, so you're trying to sell a chair or a bed, you shouldn't be too messy because assume it should be commercial, but try to add just a little bit of the mess. Try to add just things likely out of place, just to give a realistic feel that a human did that and not a computer. One thing you need to remember is that you don't have to use all strategies at once. You need to keep in mind that your main goal is to keep the image believable, so sometimes if you use every strategy you see in this course, it might be too much, so you need to filter out what strategies are best for each given project. So, I brought an example here. It is an image that I did a while back, so the frames- this is not the art in the frames. I replaced them so that I could show you here, but basically there are a few strategies that I just mentioned here. So, first, we have off-camera elements. So you can see that my plug outlets are not exactly in frame. I intentionally put just pieces of them appearing, and also, there's a hallway there. This is basically just a simple, straight extrusion, but it already creates such another level of depth. People can feel that there's something there, even though there isn't. Also, there's hints of life because I added a plant, and there's a little mess. So you can see that my chair is not perfectly in place. I messed with the position a little bit. Also the cable for the lamp is not perfectly straight. It's a little messy. It's a little out of place. And one thing we can question ourselves here is what's this scene's objective? So, where does your eye land on when you look at this image? So you can clearly see that the main focus are the arts in the walls and the chair, and that was intentional. So everything I did around it was to make sure that the eye would focus on those elements.