First 3DS Max Attempt

Thanks for the input. Have never really had good luck with ACA renderings, of course I never really dove into it like I'm trying to with max. I do have photoshop, just haven't learned that either, like I said, just getting into the 3d world. Is there a place that I can download a free tree just to see how it works before I go buying a ton of products? Did you do this rendering in just ACA or did you also tweak it in photoshop? If you tweaked, can you post the before and after? Thanks again.

Not a bad start. The modeling looks good. Have you tried rendering within ACA? I've gotten some pretty good results with it in the past. I'm not suggesting you give up on Max as it is a far superior rendering software, but you can get a handle on rendering in general using what you have. You're definitely going to have to invest in some type of post production software. GIMP is a free one if you can't splurge on Photoshop. I would estimate that most artists spend about 15-20% in post production. So get learnin'. RPC's are junk in my opinion. If you're using Max, I would look into 3D plants, trees, etc, (Evermotion?) or when you get more into photoshop, you can add them that way. To give you an idea of what ACA is capable of, here is a rendering I created using it. About 10% was done in post.