Advice on modeling architecture

aajohnny

Hey, I am a 3ds max user and I am having trouble modeling architecture. I want to make windows,archs and doors cleanly and extruded into the mesh, but I have issues doing that.

Similiar to this:

http://www.visimmo3d.com/img/accueil.jpg


What are some advice or tutorials on how to make windows and arches like that?

Thanks.

mortalhuman

This is about as basic as it gets, so you may be trying too hard/thinking more of it than need to, slowing down your progress. Without modularity in mind, it's just basic vertex manipulation and polygon modeling. Practicing with those tools will lead to what you seek, there is no magic trick for this stuff you ask about, it's just doing it.

Unless I miss a part of your question :P

As for those arches or arches in general, you always wanna make your key shapes then build outward from them, as opposed to cutting them in.

So, you'd make a primitive of some kind that fits your need and use just the edges that you need and extrude out from it, rather than extrude them into walls, you creat walls off of them. There are a million ways to do all this, it'll be something that strikes you when you figure out "your" way of doing it, and it'll all be easy from then out. Looking at any modeling tutorials will lead you to this point, because the rules in circumstances like this are the same for anything pretty much.

That curved wall with rounded arches was probably build flat and then bent.

Arcanox

The graphite modeling tools have some great features for handling arches and curves of any sort. While you can start with cylinders and such, building a plane>Geopoly (do this to square it out so subsequent operations aren't made rotated)> add 1 vertex to each edge, geopoly again and you have a round curve. For more complex curves you can use Loops>Looptools and use the curve functionality to make a variety of curves.

If you do all this, you can construct all sorts of curves that you can start building a topology out of, or floating geometry.

As others have mentioned, the bend modifier or even FFD modifiers are great for making large bends or alterations to your mesh.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, F1, and experiment with the techniques discussed here.