The Park
 

I'm starting modeling the park down the street from my house. I just started on a set of bleachers, but there is a whole lot more to be done. Including a playground and a couple more benches for sitting, some large boulders and a basketball court. A LOT of stuff!!

I have reference images and sketches with dimensions for correct size of objects. I have about 150-200 high resolution pictures of the park different angles and some closeups for textures (hopefully) when I get to the texturing.

But here are the bleachers for now. Only including a couple of the reference pictures, because you don't need to see 10 pictures of 'em haha. There won't be close ups for the bleachers in the scene so I'm not adding the bolts as of yet, I might anyway just for the sake of having them.

Me measuring bleachers:
http://img180.imageshack.us/img180/1...pics009.th.jpg

Back side of bleachers:
http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/3...pics019.th.jpg

Model of bleachers:
http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/7...chers01.th.jpg

Wireframe of bleachers:
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/6...chers02.th.jpg


Edit: Putting current progress in first post for WIP Thread Thumbnails.

looks good so far

on an off topic note, what ever happened to your transforming usb stick?

Thanks

The USB stick, well that is something I've put on hold for a while. Still trying to figure out just how exactly I'm going to do it. Maybe I'll revisit it soon and see what I can do.

The merry go round

Reference Image
http://img811.imageshack.us/img811/5...pics035.th.jpg

Render:
http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/2...round01.th.jpg

Wireframe:
http://img32.imageshack.us/img32/616...round02.th.jpg

And here is a sandbox with a contraption in the middle that I don't quite understand. All you can do with it is fill the little digging thing with dirt, you can't swivel around or anything in it, so it seems pointless to me, and a bit awkward seeing kids try to use it.

Reference image:
http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/3...pics071.th.jpg

Render, I added a little bit of color to it real quick just to make it stand out a bit and I did away with the physical sun and sky lighting in the render:
http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/693/sandbox01.th.jpg

Wireframe:
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/1...ndbox02.th.jpg

Looks good man

Why not use textures and normal maps for the bolts and such?

I didn't even think of doing it that way. I'm going to need to learn some of that stuff, it's about time. I went and added some geometry as the bolts for the merry go round today, it looks pretty cool. I'll look into normal maps. Thanks for the idea!!

Not sure if anyone will see this soon and be able to help, hopefully.

Anyone know how I should tackle this slide? Not quite sure how I'm going to do this yet. I was thinking a helix, but I'm not sure. And the hood, should I just block it out with a poly cube? I don't know why but I'm having a hard time figuring this out

http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/7935/slidej.th.jpg

you could use a helix
cut off the top half and extrude the outside a bit. although I dont know how you'd stick the giant pole shape down in the middle

maybe you could start with a cylinder, make it as tall as you need then draw in the helix around it and extrude that out.

although that could be a lot more time consuming than the above and sticking a pole in the middle and then just adjusting the verticies on the pole until it matches the helix so you can delete some faces and merge

the hood itself can be left overs from the helix that you use to make the slide.
so you delete the top half of the helix but leave the end.
i'd show you what i mean better but this computer has no maya

Well I appreciate the help. It's kind of what I was thinking but was kind of hoping there would be a bit of an easier way haha. I'm not too worried about the pole merging with the slide, as long as it fits in there and looks like it could be attached to it. It's not really going to be getting any close up shots, although I would like to make it look as good as I can just in case I want to use this playground for something else at some other time.
As of right now all I have is a pole sticking out of the ground and no slide going around it yet. haha

I'll have to play around with it a bit.

If anyone else has any ideas of how they would do it let me know, I'm open to suggestions.

You could create a cylinder for the middle pole, then from there use a helix as a guideline and add edges in a spiral around, then extrude the edges outwards, then upwards and refine it from there... Would probably be easier to just use a helix and cut off the top half though :p But with the cylinder you would get the smooth transition form pole to slide :ninja:

EDIT: Chirone said all that way better than I did :p

Thanks acid.

I also was told on cgsociety I could give extruding along a curve a try. I've never really used curves before, so that should be interesting trying to figure them out.
Was screwing around with a helix yesterday and it doesn't quite do what I need it to, although I didn't spend a lot of time tweaking things, which I'm sure I'll need to do.

Well I took a short break from this while my dog was at the vet, turns out she has diabetes, but she's back home and doing well with her insulin injections

Anyway tonight I got to the twisty slide. I can't say it was easy, took me forever!! I used a helix and previously made pole that I put into position and wrapped the helix around. I wasn't worried about it molding to the pole like it is in real life because I'm not going to be doing any close ups of the slide.

Reference images:
http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/5...pics048.th.jpg
http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/457...pics054.th.jpg
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/8...pics052.th.jpg

Render:
http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/6...round01.th.jpg

Wireframe:
http://img181.imageshack.us/img181/5...round02.th.jpg

you're dog has diabetes? how'd that happen?

good work with the slide

how'd you make the holes in that railing panel thing?

That is good work with the slide, its a pitty the revolve tool does not have a offset as that would work..............dave

She's an 11 year old black lab, could be from lack of exercise, to bad diet, to just old age.

Thanks the slide was a pain right in the ass!! I won't admit to how much time I spent on it hahahh

The holes were just made with creating the edgeloops necessary and then deleting the faces, then I duplicated it for both sides. I also only did the top and then mirrored the geometry to the bottom.

Yeah that would have made the task so much easier if there was something like that. You'd think there'd be and an easier was to model something like this. It would be a pain for one of those large 20 story tall slides they have at water parks. Good thing this was tiny! haha

here is another angle of the slide, a front on view of it

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/9...slide01.th.jpg


I'm looking at my model so far and you know what scares the bejeezus out of me? UV'ing all of it!! I don't know how I'm going to do this at all!! Doing it is probably going to feel like I played with the Hellraiser Box and am stuck in an eternity of torture by cenobites in hell, hahha.


Chirone, here is a close up wireframe of the part I believe you're talking about.
http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/3...ingside.th.jpg
Looking at it up close makes me realize I can delete some of the loops because they're not needed to maintain the shape. So thanks for asking about that or else I wouldn't have spotted it.

Little bit more done to the park. I think I'm done for the night though.

Reference:
http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/3...pics037.th.jpg

Render:
http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/4...round03.th.jpg

Wireframe:
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/5...round04.th.jpg

Some more time spent on this playground. I think this is all I'm doing for the night.
Added the chain link ladder climbing thingy
Monkey Bars
Platform and double slide which is still being worked on.
Just about done, just have to put the finishing touches on the end here where the double slide is and the playground is done!!

With all of the playground so far, including the bleachers, sandbox, and merry go round:
Verts: 50387
Edges: 100277
Faces: 50308
Tris: 99042
UVs: 72018

Render:
http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/3...round05.th.jpg

Wireframe:
http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/1...round06.th.jpg

Render:
http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/9...round07.th.jpg

Wireframe:
http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/4...round08.th.jpg

Yeah UV'ing is scary looking. Too bad there isn't a button I could use to uv it easier.

I have to say I'm pretty impressed with how this is turning out man, great job :beer:

UV'ing isn't to bad, just tedious and time consuming, when I first tried it I was scared, but now it's kind of a relief, like a little break from modeling :p

Plus the end result will be totally worth it :ninja:

Thank you very much acid I appreciate the comment. I actually stepped away from it last night and looked at it just a couple minutes ago and I've impressed myself with this model. I had a ton of measurements that I used to get the proportions right but some of it went off a bit but it's all pretty damn close! haha

I've done uving before, but it's always been a person, or smaller object without so many parts to it, which is pretty easy I think, atleast laying out the uv's. There is just soooo many parts to this it's a bit daunting. My original plan was to lay out uv's as I went along but I got so into the modeling that I never did, and I'm kind of regretting it now hahah.




Questions, comments, crits, suggestions are all welcome!

Here's hoping. Is there any way to select an object and make all normals face in the same direction? I have a few object in this scene with a couple parts of the geometry normals facing the wrong way, and it's going to be a major pain trying to find these specific normals in the geometry and flip them. So I'm hoping for an easy fix. Not expecting, just hoping. Any help would be great, using Maya 2009.

Loving the models so far Mike, and hopefully this'll help your normals problem...

Select all the faces on the object, then select conform from the normals menu. Should set them all in the same direction.

The shortcut is shift, rmb, normals, conform.

Hope that sorts it for you mate!

Thanks Dango glad you like the model so far.
Your suggestion doesn't seem to be doing anything unfortunately. I went to Display>Polygons>Face Normals when I have an object selected. Select all faces of the object tried the shortcut you showed and also tried Normals>Conform and it didn't change my normals.


Edit: It turns out the couple objects were entirely reversed so I just had to reverse the whole objects normals and that seemed to do it. I was under smooth preview (3) and all the normals it was showing was overwhelming. I went down to normal view (1) and it was much easier to identify the problem. Thanks for your help though Dango. I probably wouldn't have noticed this.

Alright I'm pretty sure I'm done modeling the playground area, I have a few picnic tables to model, probably model just one and duplicate it since they're the same picnic tables.
Then once that is done I will begin laying out UV's. I'll probably have everything laid out together according to color, since the whole playground is just red, blue, and yellow. Might have to separate the metals from the plastics so it will be easier to create the bumps of the plastics. Not sure yet

Anyway here are a few renders so far with the basic settings of maya physical sun and sky lighting. Camera is at about the height of 5ft or so.

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/6...round17.th.jpg
http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/8...round16.th.jpg
http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/8...round15.th.jpg
http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/665...round14.th.jpg
http://img257.imageshack.us/img257/1...round13.th.jpg
http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/377...round12.th.jpg
http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/2...round11.th.jpg

looks pretty cool from this distance

you should put a ground plane in there. it looks so weird seeing floating playground items

I have a ground plane, just forgot to unhide it for the renders, and didn't feel like rerendering all the pictures again.
Thanks for the comment. The final scene probably wont get much closer than these renders. Although I probably wont know exactly until I get to the animation part of it all.

I have all next week off from work so I'll probably get a bit more done, texturing and possibly start modeling me and/or my dog. Always have issues with people drawing or modeling I just can't get it to look as good as I picture, so here's hoping!

you going for an accurate representation of the park? or you going to change it slightly? maybe like slum it up or make it look super new or something

I was planning on going for a semi accurate representation. Definitely don't want to slum it up, maybe a bit dirty but not slummy. I don't want to go into super fine details but I don't want it to look too cartoonish or childish either. It's hard to describe the way I'm seeing it in my head.

wanted to just make an update so I could have a thumbnail preview on the main page. Still working on UV's. Shouldn't be too hard since it's just a lot of cylinders and cubes, but I'm sure it'll be highly time consuming. Not sure how to tackle the twisty slide UV's though, maybe auto mapping?

edit: moved image to first post

I think you have to put it in your first post.........dave

Is there any way I can lay out UV's for one of my cylinders and copy it over to all other cylinders that are the same size?
I have a bunch of these cylinders and am thinking there has to be a way to do this so that I don't have to lay out UV's for each and every one of them.

Mesh, Transfer Attributes that should do it................dave

Edit:if the parts are going to be animated you need to delete the history after you have done the transfer

Thanks dave! It seems to work. I noticed if I want to move all my uved objects I still have to delete history so they don't jump all over the uv editor (highlight all in UV editor and select the move to, move them and they get all jumpy and don't move smoothly until I delete history).

Put the settings to
Vertex Position: off
Vertex normal: off
UV Sets: All
Color Set: All
Sample space: Component
Mirroring: Off
Flip UVs: Off
Color Borders: Preserve
Search method: Closest to point

Sorry I just remember after posting to delete history, went back and edited the post, quite funny if you are doing a animation with all your textures going haywire.......dave

Thanks for the help dave, I just did a bunch of UV's in no time due to this helpful tip. Works good... so far anyway!

I have officially laid out the UV's on everything except for this part

http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/2308/chainsh.jpg

I was wondering if I should even bother laying out the UV's for this or if I should just apply a shader for it. What do you guys think?




Oh and here are all the UV's laid out, probably not the most detailed UV screen shot, but there it is. I will do the merry go round, sand box, and bleachers separately from the main part of the playground.
I separated them, yellows, red's, and blues blacks and off-yellow. I will have to add another square if you guys decide that I should lay out the UV's for the chains.

http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/5522/52054348.jpg

Well after about an hour of sitting here thinking whether or not I should lay those UV's out on the chain, I've decided I'm going to. Just so I can add a bit of rust to them. Now I have to try and figure out where I can fit them in my huge cluster of UV's.

some of them you could reuse.
you could layout 4 or 8 and then only have 4 or 8 different chain rings and the same texture would be repeated on some f the rings.
you just have to give some of the rings the same UVs


also did you put the uv's in the negative quadrants so that you could see all of them at once? or do you have them in the positive quadrant normally but just changed it for the purpose of this screen shot?

well Ive just been transfering attributes to each one. Is there any way I can transfer attribute to multiple? Or could you point me in the direction of how to do what you said with only laying out uv's to 8 of 'em and transferring that over to the rest? I just spent about 30 minutes laying out one of the lines of chain, there has to be an easier way.

I set them up like that to show them all off. I'll put them in the upper right box as I take the screen shots. Hopefully it works, I've never done this before. I know moving UV's around after you take the screen shot usually screws with what you did, so to be honest I don't know what I'm doing from here.