balcony shot with updated assets in place

Updated shot, of all the assets I've been working on with my mansion. The mansion is so large in scope, I'm really trying to do it one section at a time. Here I've added in a lot of ceiling molding, extruded walls, arched windows, etc. 

This is a model and wireframe close shot of the arched windows and molding on supporting columns. Window frames are in place and beveled. 

Here we have the crown molding running across the top of the ceiling and also across the extruded walls/columns. 

And here we have the magic lol, but once again thank god for curves. I did a lot of research on molding/wood trimming/ and other designs that I really didn't have that much knowledge about before. I grabbed 2D shots of the profile of these designs and made curves out of them in Maya, after that it was just a matter of placing these curves in place, and lofting them to each other to get what I needed. 

Here are two more screenshots of the balcony section that I am focusing on. The first picture has a lot of decorative elements such as the reeling and rectangular posts. The second picture has some different types of flower pots that are on the balcony. What's interesting is that the flowerpots on the bottom scene are actually the standard 1 mode and note smooth preview. I'm really trying to keep assets looking as good as I can, but without having to go out of control with the poly counts. I am only smoothing what I feel has to be.

decorative_gate

This asset is going to be one of the decorative gates that will go towards the backside of the mansion. Not really an easy asset to make, and part of that is because I'm trying to not take any shortcuts, and want the gate to look like it was put together properly. One of the main things I've been trying to maintain is a sense that a lot of these parts have been wielded onto other parts. If you look at the spear tip part of the fences you will see curved horns extruded from the sides. The strategy I used to accomplish this was that I started out with a plane, and used the multi face cut tool to trace circles within the plane. The nonlinear bend tool allowed me to roll the plane into a cylinder, and now I had a wireframe that had the shapes on the side for which I could extrude for the horns.

The above three pictures here, further show how I was trying to make sure pieces looked as if they were wielded together. With the two piece curved decorative design I could have easily just had the second piece crashing through the wireframe of the first piece and called it a day. But if this was a real piece I had to design for someone looking for a real and true visualization, I wanted to keep it as real as possible. Same thing with the bottom picture, where you can see that the vertical pipes are actually part of the same mesh as the horizontal pipe. 

So after a long break I've finally come back to one of the personal projects I've been working on, which was the Resident Evil exterior of the mansion. Started working on individual assets and really liked how some of them were coming along. The picture above is of a hanging lantern I did. The bottom pictures show both the model with and without the wireframe. Most of the parts were simple shapes that I eventually beveled to give a more depth like feeling to it, which is something I've been doing a lot on this project. Poly count is not something I am concerned with this for this project, as it's my goal to make sure visually that everything stands out, and nothing looks flat. The structural piece at the bottom of the lantern was probably the most difficult part, but ultimately using curves along with the revolve tool was the solution I used.

modeling of a Mansion

Just got back from a job in California and I am very eager to be moving right back into my portfolio work. At this point I felt my demo reel was really lacking something architectural and so I searched out for a project to fill that void. What I am working on is actually a replica of the famous mansion from the first Resident Evil game. I was able to get top view blueprint maps of the structure online and also took screen captures of live footage from the game so I could have real references in terms of scaling, windows, doors, etc.

Some of this I'm going to have to improvise so I plan on doing some architectural research as to when I start adding detail to all the components. Unfortunately no clear images existed of the exterior of the mansion. Either way it's been fun and has really got me into the mindset of working from a module stand point and kind of having to place everything together as if it was a puzzle. So far everything is mapped out and I am now going to start adding the assets and detail into the project.

Two Sculptures I've been working on

For the most part, these sculptures I have been working on are now finalized. These images are both render shots inside of Maya using the low poly wireframes in combination with texture, normal, and specular maps. For the most part I'm pleased with how well the normal maps sat on the mesh.

When I retopologized I made sure to preserve the silhouette as best as I could so that the client will have the freedom to have some closer camera shots if they chose to within the final project.

Next part of the project is to setup bipedal rigs and get these statues in walk cycles!!

Another WIP sculpture

This is just another WIP of a sculpture that I am doing for a client. This was interesting because this was the first time I made a character out of simply just sculpting from one mesh the whole way. Usually I have the main body of a character laid out and have all articles and accessories attached as subtools.

Here, since the purpose was not so much to create a real life looking character, but something that was a little static, I chose to carve it all out of clay. Only had to use dynamesh and quad remesh a few times early on just to get the shape and then from there I'm just sculpting away.