Modeling Landscape in Maya

This free video tutorial will demonstrate how to model a Landscape for your outdoor scenes in Maya. After this tutorial you will be able to model scenery with NRUBS plane and Paint Brush Strokes.

In this text and image tutorial you will learn how to model a scenery or landscape with Maya NURBS plane and Paint Brush Effects.

Let’s start Lesson,

1. Open a New scene
2. Go to Create Menu > NURBS Primitives > Plane

3. Scale the plane on XYZ, 38 units
4. Increase the U and V values to 14

5. Fill shade to the plane by pressing the key 5 on keyboard
6. Tweak control vertices to make terrain, follow the image below,

Note: you can also use Soft Modification Tool

Note: when you are done go ahead

7. Right click on the plane and select Assign New Material

8. Select Lambert as new material

9. Select checker swatch in front of the Color under the Common Material Attributes section
10. Choose file from Create Render Node window,

11. Assign a file texture of grass to it, see the image below,

12.Press the Key 8 on keyboard for going to Paint feature of Maya
13. In Paint Feature of Maya click the Get Brush Button
14. From visor scroll down and choose trees

15. Select any tree of your choice and paint in the scene

16.Again press the Key 8 on keyboard to go back to the perspective view
17. Press 6 on keyboard to see the textured scene

Note: Now you will import an image as the background of the scene

18. From perspective camera menus go to View > Image Plane > Import Image

19. Brows the background of your choice from your image collection like sky or clouds etc
20. Close the camera by zooming it

21. Go to the perspective camera view’s Menu > panels > Perspective > New

22. Create two lights from Create Menu > Lights, one point and the other directional
23. Press the key 7 on keyboard for seeing the lights mode of the scene
24. Place both of the lights using all four views on some proper place from where you will render your final scene
25. Pull the point light up above the scene in side and front view

26. Rotate the directional light until you are satisfied from the light

27. Select directional light
28. Go to the Attribute Editor by pressing Ctrl+A
29. Scroll down until you see the Shadow section in attribute editor
30. Switch on the Depth Map Shadow

31. Go to the perspective camera menus > View > Image plane > Image Plane Attribute > Image Plane

32. In Attribute Editor under the placement section > Fit change the position from Best to Fill

33. Click the button Fit to Resolution Gate

34.Again go the perspective camera from panels and render your final scene

That’s it. you have made a very good Landscape in 3d Maya

Thank you very much