Learning Project #2: small Maplestory Structure

Gwee

Hey Everyone,

Since my simple pillar project was a bust (I guess) I went ahead to my next one, and for it I chose this small structure from the MMO Maplestory. Here's the blockout I have for it so far. Please, let me know if this is too detailed for a blockout? not enough detail? Should I be adding in all the little things like the purple trims, the rods going across each of the support pillars? or the stone crest on top? Or have I spent too much time already on a blockout




Here's the reference I'm working off of, as well as how the structure itself looks. Please know that I can't really find any other photos of it, even in bigger sizes for some reason. I tried searching, but I can't come up with it. I'm not sure if I'm just not searching with the right words/terms or not the areas circled in red are the areas that give me some concern, as I feel my noobness is going to make those areas hard to tackle for me. I guess the good thing about this being a 2d image with no real art for it anywhere let's me be flexible on how I want the golden bent rods to look, or the purple trimming on top.



This is being built in scale to UDK, so 96 units height for the players, 32 units side to side. Maximum height a step in UDK can be while still being able to walk up is 16, so I based my steps off of that. Maple actually has a lot of cool stuff to model. Would love to see what some of the better, more experienced guys here can do with some of the stuff in this game, especially something like Horntail (google image it )

Let me know what you guys think so far

AimBiZ

Add whatever you feel is necessary. The whole point with a blockout is to get the basic elements and shapes of a piece. I wouldn't call what you have now much of a blockout as you've barely done anything with the shapes yet. So get those down first, like the shape of the pillars, platform etc. You could also drag som tubes around to mark the vines as well as some pink spots to represent the flowers.
This is an important stage and is not about looking particularly good but to resemble the final design. Once you got stuff placed out you'll find it much more doable in term of taking it to the next level.

Gwee

Hey thanks Aim I'll try to put in some more of the detail

One of the problems I've run into already is the steps I want to push this back, however I know that can't simply be done due to the connecting geometry. I've been trying to wrap my head about going about this but I can't find a solution. Basically, I want this to be just behind the last top step, so that the steps flow right to the middle of the structure. Anyone know the best approach to achieve this?

Gwee

disregard my last post I removed the top tier of faces from the base, creating a border around the cylinder of the base up to and around the edges of the steps, and then just used the cap tool, and welded all verts with 0.5 threshold. Seems to have cleaned it up and everything looks fine, other than the n-gon that's been created for the whole top face. From my understanding this isn't a problem though, right? Is this acceptable?