Low Poly Modelling Finished??

Well, its under 500 faces, it looks slick, its simple, I think it might just work! Now begins the texturing fun....
I pretty much just got rid of the 6 sided poles around the outside and replaced them with 3 sided versions which from a distance look the same. This freed up tons of polys to tinker with, so i threw a window on the door and played around with adding faces here and there to try and solve some shadow wierdness...

Led Zeppelin - House of the Holy

Neil Young's Greatest Hits

Modelling Progress

When they model the exterior then they will have to build three different LODs, high (5000 polys), medium (2,500 polys), and low (500 polys), for viewing at three different distances within the game engine.

... with that in mind, Ive been modelling hte exterior of the building over the past few days... I am enjoying it, the model is pretty simple, just a few extruded faces and then moving the corners to rackish angles. Ive got a pretty good model for the low polycount version now, I think the polys are just over 500, but I can easily shave that down, right now the poles around hte edge of the building are 5 sided, while they can be 3 sided and still look fine from a distance...
I also thought that it would be a cool addition to the blog to just add what Ive been listening to while working, so from now on Ill put a few albums and their names at the bottom of each post....

King Crimson - In the Court of the Crimson King
Yes - Fragile

The Lack of Posting

I thought that it would be best to update with a reason for the complete lack of posting, for the past few days Ive been pretty sick with a bad cold and havent been doing much of anything other than coughing, eating soup and sleeping... Im feeling a little better today, so I might try and walk into college, or I might try and do some basic modelling here at home in bed... Tomorrow Im going hopefully on a trip up to Kew Gardens to look at some locations for a short film Im working on, and then it will back to the daily grind...

Some Colour and Layout Work

Ive spent today working on a side view to model from next week, hopefully making the process easier than just jumping into it without a real reference. Im really pleased with the way its turned out, I think it looks quite nice and the colours I think work well. I used the colour palette posted before, staying with the same shade but changing the colours... Below theres a line view, a colour only nad one of them togehter, and then the same for a night shot with lights...

Colour Palette

Using the reference images from the sketches, and just going by what I think would look nice, I put together a quick colour palette for texturing the final sketch. I think Ill add darker and lighter versions of each colour for a more detailed selecttion when Im texturing for the Maya model.

Sketches!

So, heres a few sketches for the chop shop, Im leaning toward the boxier one....

-This is the first sketch I did, just in the corner of my notebook, and I really liked the look and feel of it, even while it was tiny...-

-This is a larger, cleaner version of the same little building, I think its pretty nice, and Ive enjoyed putting in the detail. Practically, I think that its something I could easily model, and then work on the interior of the office on the right side of the building...-

-An overhead view of the office for the chop shop. The large circles in the center are lights(sketches of which are lower down this post), theres waiting chairs on the right, a magazine table and then the desk with till and spilt pencils...-

-The other kind of look I was thinking about was typical of the period Rt 66 is associated with, large, angular, not paticularly practical. Again, being very angular, I think this one might even be simpler to model, but the texturing would take a litlte time to get just right...-

-Heres an overhead of the more angular building, an unmodelled cafe would be on the right side, with the office in the center of the point, and the actual garage sat behind it.-

-The concept for the overhead lamps-


-A few simple plant sketches-

References

Ive been sketching alot over the past few days, and using quite a few images as reference, a few of whihc ill post here. theres alot that i didnt save though so ill post them later down the line if i find them...

Desert Enviroment Images:

-This is a the Utah Desert, out in the Mojave, and I really like the colours of the sandstone, and the green of the little shrubs dotting the area... When I was driving around the Southwest, we passed through alot of areas like this, large flat open valleys, and I think they would be a good setting for the car shop...

-I think cacti are genearlly found only in Arizona, but I like the idea of having one sprouting up in the back right corner of the lot. ..

Im a big fan of the sign in this image, as well as the sense of openess behind it. Im not sure if I like the really stylised building, might be nice though..

-Ive really like the RT 66 area since I visited a few years ago, and think that it would be a good enviroment for a building, big, open, dry, the building istself could show alot of textural wear and tear, which would look nice

a busy few days, but Ill upload some sketches for the project tomorrow...

The Plan

Well, Ive finally gotten around to starting up the blog for this project, and today have done something pretty productive. I setup the project timetable, starting from today, and ive been able to set things up so that I finish right on time. Sure, it means working on certain weekends and a couple late nights, but itll be worth it in the end I reckon. Anyway, heres a copy of the timetable, Ill update it every week with the percentages and date changes and things...