Awesome start mate....

Looking nice man.

agreed. That is outstanding looking - does this mean that once you've textured it.. you're done? Wonderful!!!

No, not at all. I'm just getting started. I have a lot more to do. I'm only at 3,200 polys(yes, that's with it triangulated). My limit is 50,000. *grins*

Remember youve got to make a few rooms.

I know. I'm pretty much done with this big room. At school I drew out some designs, so I'm going to get started on those here soon. I plan on creating several different hallways that can be easily linked together like a puzzle as well. If you've ever messed with a level editor like the one in Time Splitters II, you'll know what I'm talking about. I might come back and add a few more details to this circular room later.

Hallway completed, 3-way junction completed, 4-way junction completed, ramp completed, basic hallway structure begun, bottling room begun.

This is looking awesome!!!

Really impressive!

The hallway pieces took the longest to do because I was forced to model them twice. The first time around, I thought I was doing good, but when I tried making a hallway from one exit of the circular room to another, it didn't match up properly. I could have easily scaled one of the hallways a little longer, but I wanted all of them to be the same size to I could apply the same texture to each one in the end and so it would be easy to create multiple hallways without fuss.

I found out the hard way that it is best to model the hallway pieces so that they all cover the same amount of units in width and length to assure that they fit together correctly. Also, because I had originally modeled the exits as squares, and because my new hallways were octogonal, I had to redo the thresholds, which took an eternity for several reason I will not cover in this post.

Just a piece of advice: Keep the majority of edges and vertices on a grid line when you are modeling several objects that are required to be hooked together. (snap them) This will save you a lot of trouble in the end.

Guess what? I'm going to have to redo the hallway stuff yet again.

I had just finished up modeling the bathrooms and added the ceiling last. I took a look at the vanities and said, "Hey, wait a second. That looks way too big. I couldn't figure out why it looked so big because i the demintions were that of a real vanity. Then it hit me - my ceiling was only 6 feet high. I made it this way in order to match the hallways which were also 6 feet high. I thenrealized that most hallways were around 8. I had modeled everything 6 ft high because of Mike's suggestion to make sure all thresholds were at least 4x6. I had unconciously taken this as a standard demintion for all doorways, room heights, and thresholds.

So, the next task was to make everything higher and wider. This was no sweat. All I had to do was select all hallways, freeze transformations, then scale the X and Z out. Obviously, this now causes them all to intersect each other because I had already placed them where I wanted them to be. The time consuming part will be to move them all back into place so this doesn't happen. What I'm really dreading is modifying the exits and entries on the circular room to ensure that the hallways match up perfectly, which I have already done once before.

Anyway, I'm sort of glad I made this little mistake because it has deffinetely been a learning experience for me. I have discovered so much so far. You wouldn't even believe it. I have found that I absolutelu love modeling in low poly. I view it as a challenge and it's actually really fun to try to make an object when you have poly limits.

One thing in particular I have learned much about is normals. Before, I was totally in the dark about this. I was always frustrated when some of my models had weird black spots on them when I smoothed them. Now I know how to fix them perfectly. Another thing I have learned is how to move several dozen objects a certain number of units on an axis without having to move each one individually. You can either group or select all, then freeze transformations. This really helps when I have to move 50 hallway pieces to fit something in somewhere else.

Although I don't have an image to show just yet, I have completed the toilets, vanities, stalls, and urinals for the bathrooms. Every secret base in the mountains needs a bathroom doesn't it?

Heh, cool stuff, Darkware. :)

What I meant by 4x6 was the minimum deminsions of doors themselves... the room they open into can be as big as you deem necessary. :)

Oh yes, I realize that now. I knew the rooms could be as big as I wanted. It was just the hallways I messed up on. The doors probably will be 4x6, but they'd look weird if the hallways were the same demention. I want my hallways to be a bit roomy instead of squished - even if it does mean doing a lot of stuff over again.

Anyway, here's an image. Although I don't plan on keeping the terrain, I included it in this image to inform the viewer of what parts of the base will be seen and what parts won't from the outside. Still have lots of work to do on the outside seeing as how I plan on doing them both.

And oddly enough, I built a little walkway around the exterior of the building a lot like Traveler did in his entry. Great minds think alike I suppose.

Ok. Feeling good now. Due to the fact that I did a good job in modeling the hallways (probably because I've spent so much time working with them, discovering errors, and fixing them), I have been able to completely resolve the hallway problem extremely quickly and am back on track making progress. I have created a few more hallways, done some major tweaking, and have decided to design and model another circular room, which will be placed directly above the one I have already made. I'll probably finish designing the bottling room first, then another layout fo a bathroom, maybe another main room, then do the circular room after all that. Currently, I am working the hallways up to the rooftop so players can access it that way. Also plan to build two helipads which will be placed on the opposite side of the mountain with the twin terrets.

KILLER job so far bud!