Self Evaluation

I'm semi-pleased with my project, although there were some large problems that'll niggle at me now that I've submitted it.

Firstly, my roof line needed more detail - The British Museum didn't have all that detailed a roof edge (not counting the original glass dome), but mine is verging on simplistic, if not there already.

Secondly, I felt my textures were lacking - Many of them were obvious tiles.

Thirdly, my lighting is amateurish at best - I need to do some tutorials and learn more about lighting to better myself.

I think what I've learnt most from this is that I should learn to manage my time better, and try to spread out the work load so that, should I hit these bumps in the road, I can ask for assistance from the faculty and my peers.

Final Video

Have uploaded the video to Youtube. Here's the link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIprCQVQWgg

Render Test

Technically rendered this last night, but my net's been silly so I'm only just uploading it.
This is a 320 x 180 render, straight to avi I made.
Realised for some reason that if I had the whole scene in a inverted sphere like I wanted, my shadows lifted off of the ground like in this video.



Instead, I just decided the black of 3DS Max Space works fine as a background.

Background Settings

OK, I'm not great with lighting, but this is probably as best an I'm going to get.

I also added some background objects, generic buildings, etc.

Going to animate it and render it off next.

Finished Diffuse Textures

Got lots of textures from www.cgtextures.com. Other than that, I used a few Arch & Design Textures, and a few additional textures I made in photoshop from photos I took while at the British Museum.
I've also added a road, expanded the ground, etc, to make the framing look more correct.



I still have to add some better lighting to the scene, as currently all I have is a skylight set with a red tinge which I need to change to it seems less...."salmon", along with a basic spotlight and omni setup.
I also need to add additional maps, such as bump and specular, on areas where it'll be noticable and effective.
That shouldn't take too long. Once that's done, I should be able to start on the actual animation.

Started Texturing.

Started texturing the model.
Added a few lights and turned on the MentalRay Renderer and set it upto HD vid-size.



I'm using a Multi/Sub-Object for the main building. I'll texture the others once the main one is done.

Still need to render it out, then run it through Fusion to get the right look.

OK - Final model. Don't have enough time to model it any better really. Need to texture and light it, then render it out.

I know it's not amazing, but I'm hoping it'll do.



I'm going to go for a dark industrial look, Black Iron, Chrome and stone textures for the most.

Last details

OK, I'm running a bit close to my deadline now, so I think I'll have to stop adding more detail.
Haven't been handling my time amazingly because it took so much effort to get accurate scale plans.







Here's the last few details I added - Put the fence around the building, and added windows to areas.

Fencing

Modelled a piece of fencing - make it uneven on one end so it's easy to repeat as instances in a row.

Most of My Model

Here's my model with more or less everything that's in the original picture I drew.



The image is a bit dark in this render, although that may just be my screen.
I realised after I'd gotten this far that there are still many parts of the model missing.
I need to model fencing, additional stone blocks, windows and ground.

The rest, I think I can get by with Textures.

Finer Details

Went in trying to do higher detail and more greatly match my original image.
Here's a few zoom-ins.

Cogs

Modeled the cog that I'll be using in my building - I'll largely make copies of it to use in my project.

The topology isn't all that great, but it looks good enough in the render.

Have started Modeling my Industrial version of The British Museum. Got the general shape in. Still working on it. Thought I'd post it now though before I continue.

Getting worried because, with the object scaled upto real sizes, 3D Studio Max is getting sluggish on my system...Items keep disappearing...

I've imported the images into 3DS Max on planes and have scaled them, thanks to their scale markers, upto the correct size - My stage is now the same size as the building in Metres, etc.

I've now also drawn out a few plans for how I imagine the Building.


Abstract Style - Based on the Sydney Opera House


Industrial Style - Lots of moving parts


Energy Conservative - Solar Tower and Panels, etc.

I think I like the industrial one the most.

Got some reliable Plans

Ok, Went to The British Museum over the weekend and accessed their archives.
I found plans from 1807 of the building, with a scale, on Microfilm.
Printed off some copies of 25 or so useful seeming pages. (There was over 150 pages...a surprising amount of which were basement images...)
Anywho, re-scanned the images onto a pc, but for some reason they exported from the scanner as a multi-image tif file... Got preoccupied with other things, and only just got around to converting them to jpegs. These are a few of them.

Basic block-shaped out

Based a bit on one of my images which I felt best resembled reality, with a bit of reference to Google Earth (maplandia...?), I modeled a version of The British Museum.

It's based on a slightly older version of the building, hence it's missing some wings, but as it's only a very basic version, it's fine - I was just trying to see how it looks approximately...




-The aim from this is to make it look more complete, get the missing wings, etc,.
-Additionally, I'm still trying to get some proper blueprints and scale information to make it the correct size...
-Once those two points are met, I'll be trying to make it more my style
-Lastly, I'll start collecting textures that I'll need to get everything to look correct, along with figuring out lighting and camera setups.

SOME plans...continued...

Going to see how this goes from here...

SOME plans...

Haven't been able to find very good plans, especially ones with any form of measurement...

Got a few basic ones I can get the general scale from at least. Will try and model something from these, and then scale the whole thing up to real-world sizes when I'm more informed.

Advancing 3D Architectural Project

I'm gonna be building and designing a 3D Building in 3DS Max for my Advancing 3D Coursework. 
Given the choice of The Globe Theatre, The British Museum, Tower Bridge, or St. Alban's Cathedral. Looked at them in class, and I picked The British Museum.

Ok, so I went into London and with my vid cam gathered some pictures and video shots of largely the front side of the building. Can use them as reference material, like to measure how many pillars along they are, how far away in ratio to their own size they are from each other, bit of depth of field as I'm constantly moving. Also took a few close up images which I thought might be useable as textures, although as they were taken with my vid cam they may be iffy-quality. Will have to wait and see how they look when I get to the texturing portion of my project.

Gonna be modeling the whole thing, but I'm allowed to change it as I want, make it more appropriate and/or interesting to the times, although not allowed to go silly, like equipping the building with a laser defence grid...

Gonna be looking for some specific sizes and ratio's too. Hope to see if I can find the plans for it online or something...