Library Facade
An opportunity at my school has arisen and there is a local company that does real-estate visualizations and they're searching for Environment Artists. I've decided to take a shot at their art test just for the experience.
The requirements are as follows:
Above is the reference image that they've provided for anyone that's interested in having a go! If you're interested in giving me feedback as I work, keep checking in over the week. My updates might be spotty but I'll try to keep up.
The requirements are as follows:
-
Low Poly [between 8,000 + 10,000 triangles]
Tileable Textures [512 x 512]
Final Submission in .fbx Format
Diffuse | Specular | Normal Maps
Built to Scale
Submissions Due by October 24th
Above is the reference image that they've provided for anyone that's interested in having a go! If you're interested in giving me feedback as I work, keep checking in over the week. My updates might be spotty but I'll try to keep up.
Replies
I've gone ahead and taken the measurements that they've provided and done a quick map of what dimensions are paired with what part of the building in a way that makes more sense to me. I'll continue to do break-downs as I start assessing how I'm going to approach the modelling portion of this.
You've now posted 7 times and still haven't shown us a model, where's the model man?
Now that's out of the way, what are you going to school for?
And personally I believe you may be over thinking what you're going to be building, a little too much. I'm not saying having correct measurements in any way is the wrong way to approach a project but, realistically you could be building out all the major forms while hunting for the true dimensions.
Just build the facade based on proportions and then before unwrapping, re scale everything to it's proper dimensions.
My current role has me building parts that need to be precise and I can't tell you how may times I've build a tool off of a picture and then just re scaled it later.
Know that you will not always have dimensions to work from.
But given the circumstances it's caused me to focus more on the things that I typically am not bothered with until I go to call it done. It's a new work flow for me so I'm still trying to find out what works and what doesn't.
I'm going to school for video game art and I'm focusing on the environment side of that.
But finding a good game dev. program is difficult and I find I learn much more at home through personal projects anyways so I may be done with all of that soon..
Finishing up doors + windows too.
Showing an image with your wire frames on also helps if you're concerned with critiques on your geometry, especially if it's supposed to be low poly.
Most of your actual detailing will be in the texture work itself for a piece like this, not necessarily complicated modeling. The building has a slight drop on the right side behind the tree, which isn't currently present in your model.
Focus on the overall shape/silhouette of the building and block out the larger extrusions/holes/shapes like the hallways and stairs.
You might be able to model out the handrail but for a polygon budget of under 10,000 you'd be better off making the railing composed mostly of planes with opacity/alpha masks, except for a few pieces like the top rail and end rails which can be modeled out to further the illusion.
But for something like this, your texture maps and UVs are going to make or break your model.
Best of luck!
I'm also going to take you up on your suggestion to do the railings as opacity maps. I had been considering it, but with the time restrictions I'm finding it may be best since it's a bit higher poly now than I had originally anticipated and that saves me some room for the windows and doors.
The drop in the photo vs the drop on my model that you mentioned: I went and took a look at the actual building on campus and that drop isn't actually there. What they did was take multiple photos and they've Photoshopped them together. You'll see that half of the tree in the image was cut off. It was odd for me at first looking at it, but I've noticed at least 3 or 4 different photos spliced together to form the one. (If you're referring to the drop that you can see on the roof of the building in the reference photo I posted).