Thursday, June 18, 2009

Final Polished Map Fabrication - Trailer and Extended Trailer



Final Polished Map Fabrication - File Fronted Level

http://files.filefront.com/Cenotaphzip/;13908894;/fileinfo.html

Final Polished Map Fabrication - Final Images









Final Polished Map Fabrication

Our final “polished” fabrication of The Cenotaph has finally come to fruition. A progress of constant assessment and development has enabled our team to produce a combined and cohesive environment and structure. This stage of our design has seen produced a product that has based itself upon closely depicting the intent of the original architect Boullee’s design. He’s simple drawings and plans have been scrutinised with much debate and we believe our interpretation of he’s Cenotaph has been upheld and honoured with much effort and caution.

Through continuous design re-evaluations we’ve managed to realise our basic outcomes and design goals that we set out to achieve from day one. We out a major emphasis on our very basic design of the building because essentially this is the hero of the fabrication. Its size, design and context have all contributed to effectively create a classic and elegant building. The building context as a monument, a landmark and also a place to honour one Sir Isaac Newton has encouraged us to push for a design that depicts and illustrate such a structure.
We’ve incorporated elements that have merged to relate and complement each other. Examples of this can be seen in :

  • the buildings overall elegant design (including structural vegetation, textures, shape, lighting and scale)
  • the emphasis of a spectacular light display (holes in the dome ceiling, generating stars, our sun/light feature and virtual night sky)
  • our theme of a graceful memorial resting place for Isaac Newton (sarcophagus, light display, monument)
  • Our environment context (Set in a significant place in Regents park, London.) This location portrays and demonstrates a series of divergent worlds. A huge classical landmark in the centre of a central business district, a parkland that encroaches into a populous city and a virtual night sky that is create inside during the day.

Up until now Boullee’s vision has forever been left unrealised, leaving this pivotal work in the imagination of all those who admire it. Here we have tried, at least in part, to realise this buildings virtually in a contemporary context so that it might finally have a life in the virtual world even if currently, it is still practically impossible to realise physically. We’ve illustrated this productively using Crysis as our paintbrush/pencil. We hope that with our design, we’ve encapsulated what was intended by Etienne Louis Boullee but also push the boundaries of what a real time environment can be.

Project Progress

These captures are of our final textures that have been applied. Our buildings final complete design, that includes all exterior and interior components. At this stage we are finalising the model so that in can be imprted as a layer into our environment.








Saturday, May 30, 2009

Exporting and Texturing

This was the process of exporting indivdual components from max then into Crysis. Once this was completed we assembled the objects into our building. From there we were able to recreate textures and apply them as materials to all objects.


Project Issues & Amendments

During me and Pui Pui's development of the new model. A few obstacles have occured once they hasve been placed into Crysis. Some functionality issues have developed and so we've made a note of these so thet they can be recreated in 3ds max, and then re-exported in Crysis.

Here are those issues:
  • Bottom slab underneath slopes need redoing as they do not match in size with the models shape - diameter
  • The entrance stairs are too big. The steps are far too big for the Crysis character to travel up
  • The railing on the circular platfrom are too high. Compared to the character, the railing is almost triple in height. Unabling anyone on the platfrom to view downstairs.
  • Some elements such as the information boards and railings need to be broken up into smaller components because they cannot be exported successfully. Also with the information boards, they need be individual elements because they will have individual images displayed on them.
  • The sun/light feature needs to be reimported. It did not work as an animation, but only as a still object. Using a recently found animation tutorial video. This should be easy to do.
  • The lion statues need re-exporting. Crysis refuses to import the item as there are many degenerate faces, and multiple item errors. One solution could be, split the statue in halves by cutting it in max using boolean cut. Then reassembling the halves in Crysis.

Team Meeting

Today, Pui Pui and I met up in labs at 12pm to work on our design.
In yesterday's studio class, our group had had a meeting with Jeremy, Graham and Stephen Peter. We discussed our intentions for completing our final stages of the assignment and how our our team was progressing. During this meeting alot of design issues were debated and resulted in some design changes. Careful comparisons with the 3 images obtained by original architect Boullee allowed our tutors to outline what steps we had to take to improve our design.

Pui Pui and I began working through this issues systematically and drew up a plan on how to start. Once we pinpointed all the vital points put before us by our tutors, we proceeded to develop them in 3ds max. We worked deligently throughout the day and sorted out all the design improvements. It was about 8pm when we concluded our team meeting and broke down all the components of the model, so that the next stage of exporting it into crysis could be initiated. We plan to again meet next tuesday, where we will start the crysis fabrication.

Later that evening I stayed on in labs to work our our team blogs and also updated my own individual blog. I also managed to manufacture some other elements of the design such as the sarcophagus and the gargoyles from sketchup during this time.

Design Progression

After our first session of redesigning, some further improvements and design development was needed to then allow for exporting. Some of these design modifications have resulted from exporting into Crysis then discovering items did not function well or that objects either clashed with other items, and also that some new elements to be created to combine all components successfully. Again with decided to redesign in 3ds max because we find it easier and additions and alterations would be more efficient as we have drawn in max previously.















Friday, May 29, 2009

Redesigning model in 3ds max

These screen captures are of our work in redesigning the model using 3ds max. We had alot of new features and design issues in our last design. With these new components, we've carefully divided and progressed the design to more accurately depict a building that would not only be successfully applicable to our new environment, but also mirror that of Boullee's original design.