Japanese Style Gate WIP
 

Hello, here is my WIP of a Japanese Stye Gate. It is my first non-tutorial project in Maya. Thought I would post here to get some pointers and tips along the way. My goal is to realistically replicate the actual picture while learning as much as I can along the way. Comments and crits are most welcome.

Quick Update.

man that's great, are you going to do the environment too? I gotta say, it amazes me when I see people doing their first project with this much expertise, it took me 18 months before I came near that level.

cant give any pointers until we see where you are going with this, its too early to say anything but.., wow!

Thanks for the comments.

I should clarify that it is my first non-tutorial project. I did the haunted house tutorial from SM and it got me started and so now I've decided to take on a real project where I have to do my own problem solving and don't have my hand held throughout the project. ;)

I do plan on attempting the enviroment as well, but not quite sure how I'm going to go about it. I'll start with the ground and the rock and go from there.

must say well done. hard to find any faults yet. I like your idea of just doing your own project now after afew tuts - you`ll learn alot that way and anythink u get stuck on just ask or remember what it was and find a tut after the project.

although something with that much greenary may not have been the best project to start with. hehe never mind

again great job

Looking very good so far ive got to say. No crits so far, keep it up.

Thanks guys. Here is the completed model of the gate and fence. Now for the ground and rock, then I'll try and tackle the flora and trees.

absolutely amazing model so far. i'm gonna beat the bunch and say 'hey could ya post a wireframe'?

oh, and good luck with the texturing!! :beer:

Impressive mate, go for it.

Here's the wireframe.

There is a lot of geometry in there, hard to see anything in the wireframe. Modelling each shingle was the only method I could think of. It is looking the way I intended it to look so I suppose that is the only thing that matters as it is only going to be a still shot. I can't think of any other methods where I might have be able to model with this amount of detail and have a lower poly count, there may be many ways I'm unaware of.

Note: Since I had originally planned to have this as a still shot from the same angle as the reference picture, I haven't modelled the shingles on the non-visible section of the roof. A simple copy-paste will fix that if I am in need of even more shingles. :)

Here is another view, hopefully you can see more details in this view.

I have ran into a problem which I cannot seem to fix and it is poor shadow quality. I've tried changing the resolution of the shadows and its improved the quality, but still not fixed this problem.

The boulder is proving to be challenging as I try and figure out which method makes the most realistic looking boulder. Currently I used a nurbs sphere to shape it then converted it to a polygon and fine tuned it. Still not happy with it, but would like to fix this shadow problem in the meantime.

you might try this MEL from highend, haven't tried it but I just downloaded it

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downlo...kGen-1540.html

good luck

nice subject, wish I had the time.

looking good so far :) keep it up

what is the problem with the shadows?? too much to little??; you know you can pull light out from the scene by setting the intensity to a negative value.

play with spot lights at strategic places, one here and there as needed, they can be as big or small as you want. use spot lights or area lights or your render times will kill you (and the computer).

group a dozen spotlights together all with differant intensities getting less from the centre light out to the edge lights, you will get a nice shadow effect that way.

use very very dark blue until it looks black in the 'shadows ' settings to 'simulate' shadows in day light. Study real light, from a book and from the things around you.

yes, a good scene can be ruined by bad lighting and a bad scene can look OK with good lighting. (so I hear :) )