3D Halloween Scene

Before I started to model anything in 3D I first chose the months on which I wanted to base my models. I chose June for summer, October for Halloween and November for bonfire night. I researched these 3 holidays/months of the year and created mood boards in Photoshop to base my 3D models off.

To begin creating my first 3D scene for Halloween/October I came up with the idea of having a creep landscape with a scary castle, dead trees, gravestones, foggy atmosphere and eerie sky. I started on building the landscape first. I made a hi-res 3000px by 3000px displace map in Photoshop which I imported into 3Dsmax. I created a thin circle object and applied a displace modifier on it. By increasing the “strength” option I was able to create a realistic grassy landscape. I chose a circle object instead of a plain because I didn’t want any edges on my landscape. I then applied a mesh smooth modifier to smoothen the whole landscape.
I then began building my castle. I built my castle object out of simple box, cylinder and pyramid shapes. I used a Boolean to create the battlement shapes on the top of the castle buildings. I applied some simple stone and brick textures to make the castle appear more realistic. I also used the line tool to create the pathway up to the castle, which I extruded to make it 3D.


Once I imported the castle into the landscape scene I placed the castle into a good position.

I made my tree objects out of using thin cylinder objects with a bend modifier applied. I created the texture within Photoshop using filters and changing the colours. I cloned my tree object a few times and placed them where I wanted them within my landscape.


I also created my gravestones using a box object and with the text option typed out what I wanted on the front of the gravestone. I again cloned this object a few times and placed these onto my landscape in different areas.


To make the sky I created a large sphere, cut it in half and place my whole landscape scene within this sphere. This creates a more worldly and realistic render. Within the materials section I applied a texture to the inside of the sphere and changed the colour to a crimson red to make it more Halloween like. I also applied a noise texture over the top.

Lastly I wanted to create a fog like atmosphere around the landscape, so I added a couple Omni light sources and a camera. Within the atmosphere and effects panel I added some fog. I decreased the density and the opacity of the fog so It would be a subtle effect.



These are the final Halloween/October images.