Maya Modeling Question

Darahamidi

Hi Guys,

I have a question that might seem a bit stupid but I cant really think of a way to approach it. I need to make a realistic model of the pyramids of giza which looks good in a medium or closeup shot. How can I go about creating the steppy jaggedy look without having to stack thousands of cubes or sculpt so much detail on such a large structure in zbrush ? is there a way to procedurally go about it in maya? 

Thank you in advance

Alex_J

Couple things :

The far shot can be different LOD. Only put detail where you need it.

Do a test first to determine where exactly you'll place your shots, then figure out the minimum amount of high detail objects and materials you'll need.

I don't see how it should be different from any other common environment/building techniques. If you post your reference image and show your proposed plan of attack, maybe some of the more knowledgeable enviro artist can suggest better course of action than what you have in mind. But you got to do leg work to get it started.

Eric Chadwick

Is a game character supposed to climb this?

Closeup would require meshes. I would make a few modular chunks with maybe 10-20 blocks each. Baked from highpoly blocks, the lowpoly can get rid of all the intersections. And arrange/stack them to make the whole. 

For the far shot, either LOD the close-up, or if it's not a continuous zoomout you could just use tiling "brick" style textures.