3d art

182
Problems and
solutions
The most problematic
modelling element was
placing the vegetation and
grass. I quickly realised my
machine had a very difficult
time dealing with more than
one grass mass at a time.
Each grass area had to be
separated and placed into a
different scene. This eased the
tension initially, but then I had
to place the trees into the
respective grass scenes to get
the shadows to work properly.
Each tree was between
750,000 and 1,000,000 polys or
more. The grass was even
heavier with geometry.
Rendering the grass with
the trees took a lot of patience.
A bunch of render settings had
to be refined because of the
model densities and proxies
used. In the end, I had to buy
2GB RAM to solve the issue,
because I was not willing to
sacrifice sampling values.
b Place boxes to get window
location and size approval
c Roof, window and pillar
creation process
d Use splines, Edit Poly and
the Spacing tool to add the
roof rake
c
b
Beyond the walls
Adding in the main features
02 Cutting out the windows
Next it was time to cut out the windows. This was a bit
tedious, because there were so many. Thinking about my
workflow, I preferred to send Link a screenshot showing the
windows as boxes through the wall. This showed location
and I could get approval without having to cut them out. This
was both good and bad, because once I had the boxes in
place, it was too easy to use ProBoolean rather than cutting
them properly in Edit Poly. About 95 per cent of the windows
were cut using ProBoolean without flaws. The remainder had
to be fixed and welded, with some re-cut in Edit Poly.
ProBoolean still saved me time, but use it carefully b.
03 Windows, pillars and roof
The window mullions, casings and sashes were created using
renderable splines. The stool and apron were created using
Chamfer boxes. An Arch & Design material was applied that
included the Round Corners value activated in the Special
Effects Material tab. I used a box for the glass panes. Next I
placed these sets around all of the other open window gaps.
Some I kept as instances and some I did not, but I kept track
of which were real windows and made tweaks to differently
shaped windows. Pillars started as splines and were lathed.
The roof began as renderable splines for each section. Edit
Poly was added and the roof pitches created by pulling the
top set of vertices c.
04 Roof rake and frieze
For the roof rakes, in Edit Poly’s Edge Mode, I began by
extracting lines from the top of the exterior walls. From there
I created several ridges via renderable splines on the top and
bottom of the rake bounds. The white backboard also started
as a renderable spline, with vertices edited to match the
existing depth. I drew a profile shape for the tooth detailing,
then added another Edit Poly modifier, extruded the shape
and capped the object. Next I copied a previous spline and
matched it to the contour of the walls so that I could use the
Spacing tool to populate the tooth along the spline without
having to place each one. For uniform architectural features
such as railings/beams the Spacing tool is a great device for
saving time d.