back in my day we never had planar mapping or anything like that, we had to pull the UVs out by hand

actually i never had a 'back in my day' period.....

good to see you understood (eventually) what i said about softening the edges

you're really going hard core on this

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D

Glad it's being well received! Thanks for the good words Chirone. After pulling my hair out for the whole night i still haven't figured it out, good job we have another couple of weeks left!
Here's what i've ended up with so far after 24 hours of fun,stress,coffee and cigarettes, my lungs don't appreciate it! More to come soon...

Yay! Sorted out the problem with the texturing, was trying to rotate the 2dprojection not the 3d, d'oh! That's what i get for trying to learn when i'm knackered! I can get on with it now, thanks to all that tried to help, i guess it's hard to without actually seeing the settings etc.

Been trying out some lighting to work out what colours and textures to use, i know the lights a bit bright but it won't look so bad once some of the white has been filled, probably won't keep the roof tiles, just put them in to see how it looked! Going to have to take a break for a bit before my eyes start bleeding, and it's just thundered here in London, we do have such wonderful weather here....

Just another Wip, thought i'd take a break from modeling and try and learn a bit about Mentalray and final gathering as i've not tried anything but the Maya software renderer before, and here's the results. I think i may be trying to learn too many things at once at the moment but i'll stick with it to the end and see how it turns out! Better to try than never know....

this needs a ground.

i'll have my alcohol straight too

i think you need to soften the edges on the rounded windows at the front there, you can see the hard edge

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D

Another good point Chirone, thanks for pointing that out, i will do that, and i shall start doing the ground today hammer.horror, it does look kind of wrong just floating in the air! Thanks for the comments, it all helps!

Here's my end of the day Wip, still needs loads doing to it but it's getting there, will build the garden walls and some stairs that lead down to a road next, and texture the curved roofs, which i'm not looking forward to! All good fun and learning though!

coming along quite nicely

i wonder why the the curved roofs have such odd lighting to it

what are you doing to light your scene?

also, for your final render you'll want to increase the light's shadow rays in the attributes. But don't do it now, it'll increase your render time a fair bit. do it when you're doing your lighting.


also, out of curiosity, can you post a wireframe of your scene? (check "wireframe on shaded" somewhere in the view panel's menus and take a screen shot)

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D

No problem Chirone, it may sound like a silly question but how exactly do you take a screenshot? I was shown before but can't for the life of me remember...
The lighting is the mentalray sun and sky node with a couple of tweaks done to it, not used it before so really i haven't a clue what i'm doing, just learning from trial and error! Let me know how to do a screenshot and i'll post it straight after. Cool.

if you're on pc then just hit the print screen button on your keyboard somewhere then open up a paint program (like ms paint or photoshop) and then hit ctrl+v to paste it to a new canvas

crop it and then post it

if you're using a mac then you have to take a bit of extra time in the preprocessing step... you need to go open the app Grab, do a few things, and then get a picture of the window
then save it out, hope like hell you have a paint program and open the picture in that, change its file type because grab isn't advanced enough to change the file type that you save it as (unless its hidden somewhere in the bare amount of options you get to use the program, it certainly isn't when you go "save as") since it will save things as a tiff
then save it out and post it

if you're on linux then i assume the procedure is the same as windows

i've never played with the sun and sky node, i think at some point i got told never to use it...
i'd be lighting the scene with a whole lot of directional lights

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D

I'll probably do that then (the lighting that is), i'm just delving into a bit of everything at the moment trying it all out, only got Maya in October so am eager to do everything at once, which isn't always a good thing i guess! Here's the wireframe on shaded as requested...

sharp edges need beveled

I read on another thread about doing that just a little while ago, thanks for the advise hammer.horror, will give that a go! I did do it on the paving slabs but they're a bit small to notice. I'm really learning a lot from being on here so cheers to everyone involved!