Japanese pagoda roof - which method?
 

Hi, I'm new to the board. I'm working on some small architectural pieces in maya and after examining several pagoda roof structures am trying to figure out the best method. Take a look at the pic below:

http://www.kippo.or.jp/culture/build/beauty/hist4_e.htm

This is one of the simpler roof designs. The others would have the bamboo cylinders underneath the roof tiles while the roof itself has the traditional upwards curve at the corners.

I'm just curious as to the best method for working with these pieces? I'm thinking I can make a cylinder for the bamboo or extrude a circle. With the roof, I can make a plane and just texture it with a tile texture but I'm wondering if it would look better to extrude and duplicate small squares for the tiles and adjust them so they're "imperfect" and attach them to a plane.

Anyone have any tips what might be the preferred method (what is more editable or wat is more realistic)?

Any help's appreciated.

--Pete

I would do a plane with a bump mapped texture for the flat roof, and just Nurbs cylinders for the round parts :)

Darkon

I've been going through the tutorials "Instant Maya" that come with Maya because I'm new to modeling but am still having trouble applying it to the roof. My first attempt was creating a poly plane and angling it at 30 degrees or so, then duplicating it for the other half of the roof but I wasn't sure how to join the polys (I'm still learning this). The other was creating one poly plane and trying to figure out how to "bend" it down the center to create each half of the roof. I thought selecting the edges in the center of the plane would do it but It gives me a waterfall effect when I try to manipulate it - where one side drops vertically down like a waterfall rather than like a hinge where I can angle it, if that makes sense. Any idea which would be the better direction to go? 2 planes or manipulate the one?

What about curving the ends of the plane upward? Here's a different image:http://www.web.virginia.edu/asianarc.../byodoin09.jpg. I thought selecting the corner vertices might do it but again it's not happening. Is it about the same amount of difficulty doing this with a poly plane as a nurbs plane? Maybe it would be better to draw the curved roof in 2D and extrude. I'm just wondering what would be the best, less cluttered way since I have an innate tendency to make things way more difficult than they usually have to be.

Any advice would be great.

--Pete

Create two poly boxes for the roof halves, rotate them in place, then instead of having to worry about joining them just run the roof beam on top down the center :)

Darkon

Well, that's the easy part and I had already tried that before I read your reply...hehehe ;) It's the concavity of the plane or cube's faces and corners that I'm having troubles with. This is the part where no matter what I try tends to not work. The thickness of each flattened cube needs to be thinner in the middle as it's curving. Look at the second reference I gave to see what I mean.

Extruding the ends of the cubes, adjusting the position/scaling, then adjusting the same on select vertices sort of worked for the corners but it looked more like a wingtip on an old F-4-U Corsair (i.e., planes in the old Black Sheep Squadron tv show). There has to be an easy way to simply make the faces concave....maybe making one cube, flattened, somehow making it concave, adjusting the thickness in the center of the side face, then duplicating and rotating 3 times to form the roof.

Man...if anything, I'm getting quicker starting from scratch each time. :rolleyes:

try using deformers.... i know its a little bit advanced for you.. but check out the maya docs... they have something on this one... might help... especially on a surface with many curves(concave)

For anyone who cares. A quick 15 minute pagoda test creating 4 curves and duplicating at 90 degree angles, lofting between them and createTube on the original curves to create beams (Yes I know the beam goes through the roof in the front). I'm just testing out methods.