Monday, 20 October 2008

Week 5 - ' The Halloween One'

*Fast Show reference #2 .. - "This week, I'll be mostly drinking vinaigrette"*

*Phonejacker reference #1 .. - "The names Terry Tibbs - if ya wanna car, ya gimme a call... Goodnight, Godbless, Much Love"*


Right-eo then,the postings over the coming weeks will alternate between each of the three months, basically, so this week is the Gravestone/Memorial thingumabob, next week will be either the Bunch of Roses or the Guinness Glass (whichever inspires me first - READ AS: whichever looks the best with the least amount of effort!)

And so, here is the initial quick construction of the 'stone in question...


Basically, the side pillars are made up of a number of small boxes lined up vertically and horizontally, the top plinth is just another rectangle placed on top and the center slab is fitted neatly between all three. Once I converted the central slab into an editable Poly, I selected the single face of it and tried the 'indent' modifier, which I felt gave it both a sense of 3-dimensional realism and a solid and faceted texture-mapped base to work from later on...


Now it gets a bit hit and miss...



From there, because I had the sense to make the pillars each be constructed from 6 separate 'stones', I could manipulate each one accordingly. In truth, all that happened was me selecting the bevel modifier and using it on the forward-facing faces of each of the pillar stones. Funnily enough, I wasn't even trying to alter anything in particular, and they ended up as the image shows without too much input on my part





I then, perhaps getting a bit overexcited, selected the forward-facing face again, went to the bevel modifier once more and proceeded to pull out the flat surface of the face and manipulate it so that it became a pyramid protruding out from the existing..protrusions!
The gravestone, by now, was beginning to look ever-so-slightly Gothic, but no matter, because I knew that the spirit of All Hallows Eve was there to be captured in this one static image (Note To Self: Must add in atmospheric effects like fog and that!)



Even so, I needed to add a greater sense of depth in each section of this centerpiece



What I did end up doing was making sure one pillar was just what I was looking for - even though it doesn't show up too well on the image, I not only selected the faces of the extruded pyramid and then indented them all together to enhance their forms, I also modified the horizontal plinth with the indent tool to make a good space to add in some semi-integrated text at a later date




With the main structure of the gravestone all in place, I thought about adjusting some textures to temporarily put in place before I get all my ideas finalized
I found a suitable grey concrete texture preset, which I then modified by increasing the bump-mapping and then taking in down to sub level categories by applying it in a box form, so to avoid stretching and distortion of the overall textures integrity
Luckily, it worked out well and now I should be set up to develop further ideas for this scene, including how I will add in a believable dirt mound and graveyard floor (using hillocks and grassy knolls to add realism - its the key word in all of this, y'know!)

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