Final Product

Here’s what we are going to create:

Step 1

Create a cube that has dimensions set to 135 x 327 x 68.

Step 2

Press F3 and go to Right view. Here choose B-Spline and draw a spline around the cube just like below.

Step 3

Create a Rectangle spline (Width: 4cm, Height: 130cm).

Step 4

Create Sweep NURBS then drag and drop both Rectangle and previous spline, we have just drawn, over the Sweep NURBS.

Step 5

Now resize the main cube object to fit in the border line. Here is the final result of main part of arm.

Step 6

Now create a sphere with 30 cm radius, over that arm.

Step 7

Press F3 to jump the right view. Here draw a shape with “Linear” spline tool like below.

Step 8

Now create a “Extrude NURBS” and make that spline the child of it then use the 9.5 value for movement of Extrude NURBS

Step 9

Copy that part and let them to hold the sphere object between them.

Step 10

Create another cube object as body (145 x 355 x 210)

Step 11

Now with rotate tool (R) turn the arm and connect it with body. Then copy that arm to create left arm. Here is the final result so far.

Step 12

Select the body cube and make it editable (C). Select the bottom face and apply extrude inner action with 6 cm offset.

Step 13

Now select the outer face of the bottom and extrude it just like below. Repeat that action for other 3 parts.

Step 14

Now right click over body and choose “Knife” tool, then choose the “loop” mode in the options tab.

Step 15

Here slice the bottom part of body twice as below.

Step 16

Press “U” on your keyboard then “L” to activate the “Loop selection” tool. and select the middle line, then squeeze it with “scale tool”.

Step 17

Now copy and resize the main part of the arm to use as leg. Here is the wireframe view.

Step 18

Create a new cube object as head (260×295x490)

Step 19

Make that cube editable (C) then select the face bottom of the cube and with “Extrude inner” tool create a new face (8cm offset).

Step 20

Now extrude it to inside.

Step 21

Select knife tool and change mode section to “loop” to make slices on corners. Do this for every corners which exist on top side. Every corner should look like below.

Step 22

Now create a “HyperNURBS” and make the cube object child of it. Then under the settings of hypernurbs give “3″ as value to “Subdivision editor” section.

Step 23

Create two cylinder and a triangle geometry like below to use on face.

Step 24

Now create a “Boole”object then drug these geometries and the cube object, which we created as cube and make child of the hypernurbs, but be sure that cube object comes first and other geometries stay together in a group file. Objects tree should looks like below.

Step 25

Copy these geometries and paste them same place but this time they should be thinner.

Continue to next page below!

Light Effects

Here is a final image preview.

Step 1 – Light Paths

First of all open up your 3ds Max (or any other 3D application) and create a few paths like on the image below. Their placement is random. I’ve created around 20 of them. These will be our light strokes.

Step 2

Select each one and make each renderable. In order to make them visible in renders go to their propetries (to the right in your sidebar) and select “Enable in Render” as well as “Enable in Viewport”. You may also change “steps” under “Interpolation” to something like 16. This will make each light stroke smoother.

Step 3

Hit ‘M’ on your keyboard to get to the ‘Material Editor’ and select the first material. Use the setting below for this material and apply it to your light strokes. You may also modify it a bit if it doesn’t look alright.

Step 4

Scale your light strokes in one direction (like on the image below). Move your camera around and find it a good placement (see my example).

Step 5

Once you’ve done everything render your scene. I used VRay here with Global Illumination turned on. Other rendering engines should work fine here, too. Here is what I got (originally I used 1680×1050px resolution).

Step 6

Once all that is done save your render as Targa or Tiff image (*.tga or *.tiff – I used .tga) in order to have your alpha channel baked into the file. Use Adobe Photoshop to open it. Desaturate your render and use its alpha channel to remove black bacground. To begin with fill the background layer with pure black color.

Step 7

Use ‘Type Tool (T)’ to create a ‘light effects‘ text. Go to its ‘layer styles’ and decrease its ‘Fill opacity’ to 0%.

Step 8

Duplicate this layer and go to ‘Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur’. Use 0 degrees for angle and around 40 pixels for distance.

Step 9

I’ve pasted a star field image in the background and used a ‘Hue/Saturation…’ layer with hue set to 87, saturation to 58 and lightness to 0. Alternatively you can use your ‘Brush Tool (B)’ to paint some lighter areas in the center.

Step 10

The image is ready but you can improve it even more by adding there some light strokes created with brushes like these available on ColorBurned – 46 Stunning High Resolution Photoshop Light Effect Brushes.

Conclusion

I hope you like it. Click on the preview image to get the full size image.

Final effect

Tunnel Tutorial – 3ds Max and After Effects parts

Adobe After Effects plug-ins used in the tutorial:

• The Foundry – Tinderbox
• Red Giant Trapcode Particular
• Videocopilot – 3D Orbit

Final Result Preview

This is one of many possible versions of the image that we’ll be creating.

Step 1

Open up 3ds Max and go to Create Panel -> Splines. Create some kind of a text in the front viewport. Decrease the Leading and increase kerning a bit.

Step 2

Duplicate your text and set it to renderable spline. Add an extrude modifier to the first spline and set the amount to something not really high. Go back to the second spline and use the scale tool to scale it in Y axis to make it deeper.

Step 3

Create some kind of a box in the background and apply it a pure white color. Also, apply a pure white color to the front part of the letters.

Step 4

Use the following setting to create some simple glossy material for the letters’ borders.

Step 5

These are the settings I used for lighting. You can use almost any HDR image to create some environment because you will most likely end up with something interesting. I chose the first one I had on my HDD . You can also decrease noise treashold under settings tab. And don’t forget to turn off default lights!

Step 6

Render your scene with resolution set to 1280×800. Try different HDRIs to see what works best for you. Obviously you can render your scene differently. Feel free to create your own amazing composition here and maybe use a different perspective!

Step 7

Once you’ve done all that open up Adobe Photoshop and create a 1280×800px document. Paste your renders with alpha maps into it.

Step 8

Now there’s important part. We have to create some nice looking background. You can try to create something on your own or you can follow the next steps to create background similar to mine. First of all I used circle pattern available on http://pattern8.com/free-repeat-patterns/mono-circles-2. Simply paste it into the Photoshop and go to Edit -> Define Pattern… to create a new pattern. Then create a new layer and fill it with black. Once you’ve done that go to Layer Styles and use Pattern Overlay with your newly created pattern. Also, decrease an Opacity of this layer to around 35% and Fill Opacity to 0%.

Step 9

Paint some lighter and darker dots on a new layer with soft big brush. Lastly desaturate them.

Step 10

Create a new layer and again use your brush tool to paint some splatters in the background. You will have to cut out your text and move it on top of everything in order to paint some splatters beneath them. Render Alpha Mask with text and use it to cut out your letters. Splatters can be done by brushes available on the Internet. Truly, I don’t know what brushes have I used there but I’m sure they are free. Try to look for some similar ones. After you paint some splatters decrease Opacity of the layer a bit.

Step 11

Finally, we can paint some lines in the background. My ones were made in Adobe Illustrator. Simply draw two curves using Pen Tool and use Blend Tool to create some more lines in between. If you need more steps simply go to Object -> Blend -> Blend options… and change Specified Steps to something like 16. You can leave background color set to white (like I did) or set it to transparent. Paste your vectors to the Photoshop and place them in the background as I did (see the final image).

Conclusion

This is the end of this simple tutorial. Try to use the techniques you’ve just learned here to create your own cool compositions . I hope you liked it! The next tutorial is coming in the next few days so stay tuned!