Week 8 - Modelling a Temple

Our task this week was to be left to our own devices and show what we have learned by replicating this as best we can:

I started with a pipe shape with only 4 sides for the main section. I made a cube on top of the front area and snapped the vertices so it was the same size. I then added prisms as roofs on top of the main sections to get the overall form down to start with and tried to tweak the dimensions at this point so it appeared accurate.

I then added the columns and pillars. I added the base as a series of extrudes in and out to get an approximation of the picture. The pillars and columns were a similar technique. I measured how many were positioned around and duplicated them and put them in the correct places.

I then added the extra areas on the roof sections and cut/extruded areas for the doors by using a combination of the multi-cut tool and edge loops. I also added the middle temple section of two cubes and two more prisms.

I then added windows, and roof details like facias shaped from a cube and duplicated thousands of times.

I then added the extra details like the wooden areas on all the roof overhangs and the decorative pillars on the roof of the temple and the banister-like area on the balcony. I used the CV curve tool in a 2D view to create these. I made the shape of the cross section I would like, edited the vertices to be correct then in the Surfaces menu created a Radius from it. Instead of creating it as NURBS I made it as polygons and did a sub-division to make them smooth. Here is the finished model without textures or materials.

I then went about adding simple materials with a colour for the non-textured areas. I then unwrapped all the roof and wall parts to add the textures. Looking back, I definitely should have unwrapped these much earlier before copying and positioning them as I had to do each one individually. A bit annoying but not too time consuming thankfully.

Finally I found some textures for the doors and windows and here is the finished result:

I was going to add a Sun and Sky with a light source and ground and render it properly with Mental Ray but I ran out of time. Also, I have noticed since that the joints in the roof textures need a little fixing up, Maybe just a thin cube with the wood material added to hide them and make it more pleasing.