modelling classical architecture. tips tutorials required

[chow choppe]

Hi everyone

 

can anyone please help me on deciding how to model details like the images attached.

i have to model a building which has following types of details and i have no idea how ,to maximum extent , i can imitate these in my modeling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Any help, suggestions, tutorial links will be appreciated.

any resources for premade 3d scultptures which can be put in this.

 

thanks a lot in advance

[Peter M. Gruhn]

These aren't classical but that shouldn't get in the way of the modeling ;-)

 

Poly modelling is the way to go. Watch the hard surface videos on the Area (hidden inside the blog of a guy with a French sounding name iirc). I find polymodelling helps me think lower poly so I get a better more efficient model than if I'd just jumped in and started gouging away with micro-polys. If soemthing doesn't look right, it's so much easier to adjust it by shifting 2 edge loops rather than 10,000 verts.

 

Don't get caught up in the vastness of the piece. It's all made up of little bits that you can say "oh, that's just a _______" about. You know how to make a _______.

 

Don't model the building, model the facade, the skin. Don't give the walls thickness, just select the window openings and shift move them back into the building.

 

Ignore little bits of moulding and model only the major changes in form then select and edge loop, extract it to a shape and sweep that shape with a cross section of the moulding. Can also use that shape or a copy for placing repeated elements like dentils using the... tool, it's up there on the tool menu; like snapshot but different.

 

I have run into trouble on simpler models trying to keep the thing one whole mesh. It might be better (though it seems incompetent noobish) to chop the main form up. First story, towers, wings, attic... Watch out especially for places where vertical divisions do not line up across the facade; excellent place to just chop the sucker.

 

Some of the detail work is pretty small. Will you be that close? I like normal maps. Sometimes I like to build the geometry and use render to texture to bake out a normal map for use on a low poly variant. For the fancy carving here though maybe you want to PShop up some grayscale depth maps - Lay down a 50% gray. New layer. Lay down the a 25% broad pits and a 75% broad peaks. Just use a hard brush. Now intermediate tones, now extremes. Blur just enough to get smooth ramps but not so much it starts to flatten out. I think I like to keep a copy of the extreme values on a separate layer with less blur so they don't get lost. Then probably a bit of levels/contrast to round out the ends so the effect isn't a linear ramp. Then the nVidia normal map maker filter. And back in Max, don't forget to use that "additional bump" slot for the fine grain texture.

 

When I started poly modelling I had lots of luck with getting the cut tool to crash at arbitrary times. As I'm learning, I'm making "better" geometry and the cut tool is crashing less. When you start a cut it's like the cut tool goes looking for a vert nearby to make triangles with, you can see it ghosting a line "oh, she's gonna click there, I'll make this one, no there, that, here, some other..." If the geometry doesn't allow the cut tool to guess infinite thin or insideout triangles or some other geometric badness then it seems to behave itself. Sometimes I'll create extra geometry to give my cut zone a sane buffer and then clean up later. I also use vert selection and connect when it will do the job i was going to do with cut.

 

If you are doing radiosity, having geometry meet other geometry at nicely aligned edges seems to be very important. Keeps the shadows from creeping out from under the refrigerator. You aren't doing radiosity. I'm not sure that there isn't a degree of that problem with modern gi techniques. If you put a medallion in the middle of a giant poly, will the ao (actual effect, not renderhack) from the medallion show on the wall if the sampling radius is too high? Is it better to drop some polys or a hole in behind it or even bring it into the mesh and weld?

[chow choppe]

These aren't classical but that shouldn't get in the way of the modeling ;-)

 

Poly modelling is the way to go. Watch the hard surface videos on the Area (hidden inside the blog of a guy with a French sounding name iirc). I find polymodelling helps me think lower poly so I get a better more efficient model than if I'd just jumped in and started gouging away with micro-polys. If soemthing doesn't look right, it's so much easier to adjust it by shifting 2 edge loops rather than 10,000 verts.

 

Don't get caught up in the vastness of the piece. It's all made up of little bits that you can say "oh, that's just a _______" about. You know how to make a _______.

 

Don't model the building, model the facade, the skin. Don't give the walls thickness, just select the window openings and shift move them back into the building.

 

Ignore little bits of moulding and model only the major changes in form then select and edge loop, extract it to a shape and sweep that shape with a cross section of the moulding. Can also use that shape or a copy for placing repeated elements like dentils using the... tool, it's up there on the tool menu; like snapshot but different.

 

I have run into trouble on simpler models trying to keep the thing one whole mesh. It might be better (though it seems incompetent noobish) to chop the main form up. First story, towers, wings, attic... Watch out especially for places where vertical divisions do not line up across the facade; excellent place to just chop the sucker.

 

Some of the detail work is pretty small. Will you be that close? I like normal maps. Sometimes I like to build the geometry and use render to texture to bake out a normal map for use on a low poly variant. For the fancy carving here though maybe you want to PShop up some grayscale depth maps - Lay down a 50% gray. New layer. Lay down the a 25% broad pits and a 75% broad peaks. Just use a hard brush. Now intermediate tones, now extremes. Blur just enough to get smooth ramps but not so much it starts to flatten out. I think I like to keep a copy of the extreme values on a separate layer with less blur so they don't get lost. Then probably a bit of levels/contrast to round out the ends so the effect isn't a linear ramp. Then the nVidia normal map maker filter. And back in Max, don't forget to use that "additional bump" slot for the fine grain texture.

 

When I started poly modelling I had lots of luck with getting the cut tool to crash at arbitrary times. As I'm learning, I'm making "better" geometry and the cut tool is crashing less. When you start a cut it's like the cut tool goes looking for a vert nearby to make triangles with, you can see it ghosting a line "oh, she's gonna click there, I'll make this one, no there, that, here, some other..." If the geometry doesn't allow the cut tool to guess infinite thin or insideout triangles or some other geometric badness then it seems to behave itself. Sometimes I'll create extra geometry to give my cut zone a sane buffer and then clean up later. I also use vert selection and connect when it will do the job i was going to do with cut.

 

If you are doing radiosity, having geometry meet other geometry at nicely aligned edges seems to be very important. Keeps the shadows from creeping out from under the refrigerator. You aren't doing radiosity. I'm not sure that there isn't a degree of that problem with modern gi techniques. If you put a medallion in the middle of a giant poly, will the ao (actual effect, not renderhack) from the medallion show on the wall if the sampling radius is too high? Is it better to drop some polys or a hole in behind it or even bring it into the mesh and weld?

 

Thank you peter so much for taking out time to write that much. I really really appreciate that. keeps people like us motivated.

 

it was difficult to understand that much text in one go so i have taken a printout as i need to read this 3 - 4 times more para by para. I wont be modelling every detail in that building. actually i have to model some other project but the client had sent these pictures to make me understand the details which obviously he cudnt make exactly in CAD( but expects me to model in 3d :-) ). But for my knowledge i want to get stuck at modelling details so that i can find out solutions because that is how you learn. i can start modelling looking at your suggestions and will keep you posted on the problems i am facing.

 

Also i have never used normal maps but i have seen a lot of people use them for ornamentation details.

Can u guide me to a good tutorial on normal maps or your workflow to create them. In the meantime i will also search it down on google.

 

thanks a lot for your help

[chow choppe]

cant find any blog of a guy named iirc on the area. are you reffering to grant warwick tutorials on hard surfaces ?

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Oops, my mistake. The guy is Louis Marcoux and he had the entries on revealing a model, not the Warwick tuts which are just in the tutorial section.

 

"iirc" == "if I recall correctly"

 

Glad you found the stuff. Obviously everything he is doing mayn't apply to your work, but those vids are just great. There's extra power in Graphite [sp?] now but I think getting a handle on the tools and ideas Grant's showing is worth the time.