What I have done today is created a 3D environment on 3DS Max which was something new to me as I have only done models in the past. I started off in Photoshop creating a new picture, 512 pixels by 512 pixels with a resolution of 72 which is for viewing purposes, the next thing I did was select black and white as the standard colours to have the positive and negative effect in Max. The next part was selecting Filter, Render and clouds/Different clouds, the reason for the black and white is because in max when you apply this to a plane the white parts will highlight it to rise up and the black will make it go down, think of it as a negative and positive. what you can do is mess around with the colours and patterns to what you want then save it as a JPEG, the next step would be to open 3D Studio Max and create a plane any size, dosn't matter about the size, its how you use it, so after creating the plane remember to change the plane segments to the same as the pixel in Photoshop which was 512.
After doing so go to the Modifier, or the metallic rainbow is what I call it as it is easy to remember, to modify it click on the list and select Displace and the right side bar will change and will say bitmap and a box under saying none, click on it and add your saved JPEG to it and put the strength up to 50 as it will show the effects of it, from there you can make it higher or lower and blur it to make it smoother.
If you are wanting it to have a texture then go back to Photoshop and make a new picture using what colour you want and save it, venture back into 3D Max and press M on your keyboard as it is a shortcut to bring up the Materials options, from there you can add your texture onto the environment (remember to click the rubix cube icon to view texture in perspective view) and from there you can experiment doing different environments.
this is one of my final renders that overall looks pretty good for a starting point.
