How do I add an "enviroment" to my scene in 3ds MAX?

I'm Currently working on a scene and i cant seem to find infomation as to how to make a setting for my scen. Its basically a street with buildings on either sides. about 开发者_StackOverflow社区500m long. I want to put it into a city "enviroment" for animation. Also there will be camera movements so i dont think simply adding an image as a background will work. what i want to know is, Is there a a way to achieve what i want without actually building a small city? any help or a pointer in the right direction would be great. thanks in advance

A cubemap might work. http://wiki.polycount.com/CubeMap

There are applications which will generate a city for you, based on criteria you enter. You can enter the building types, sizes etc. I've used one called City Engine - I used the built in wizards to create this but you can create one from scratch even specifying the road layouts: Youtube Video

3ds max has predefined models within it's system,

For example a tree: This tutorial is great: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-cfF2ep2DI

look into "AEC Extended"