Monday, 1 March 2010

Constructing a Skyscraper for my Environment


Skyscraper Tutorial


In order to create a simple skyscraper for my environment, I firstly made a box:





I then altered the box to look like a skyscraper. I did this by simply changing the parameters for the length and width to 20 and the height to 99. This produced a box like the one above.






Afterwards I then added some segments as this would help me create the windows. The segments were 5 for length and width and 33 for height. The reason it was 33 is so that each segment was 3 x 5. This can be shown in the picture above.



I then set all my materials up. Firstly I set all the material IDs I needed to create the skyscraper. These can be seen on the left hand side. There are a total of 5 IDs as my skyscraper would require 5 different materials.



The next step was creating each material. All of them are shown below:





The first one is the frame of the building. I went for a black outline here in order to accentuate the windows on the building. The second is the window colour. I added a raytrace map here in order to gain a reflection effect from the window, which can be fully seen in my environment. The third material is a lighter grey colour in order to portray the rooftop.





The next step was making the windows. I did this by simply selecting all the faces on the building, apart from 6 near the bottom, and using the inset tool. My parameters were insetting by polygon and at a value of 0.25. This enabled me to produce the following:




After achieving this, I extruded the faces in order for it to look as if there were windows on the skyscraper. I extruded then at a value of -0.1 in order for them to extrude outwards instead of 0.1m inwards.





As the polygons for the windows were still selected, I changed their material ID from 1 to 2. This allowed the window texture to be applied to only these polygons. This then created the following:




I then set about in creating the roof. To do this I simply selected the rooftop and changed the material ID from 1 to 3 in order for the polygons to have the grey texture on it.



I then used the inset tool to inset the outline of the roof. To do this I inset by group, so it inset the out line, by a value of 0.5. This created the following outline on the roof:



I then selected the outside of the roof and extruded it upwards by 1 to achieve the following:



I then added some free-lights in order to show the skyscraper rendered. Below is the finished product: