Black Park Studies

I decided to do something different today from my usual 3D modelling and instead do some drawing work. The first image is just a pencil study of a swan in Black Park lake. For the second image I felt like I should try drawing a tree and the branches. I find them difficult to draw due to the complexity and randomness of all the fine branches. I thought this would be a great opportunity to get some practice in with my graphics tablet and try experimenting with what can be achieved.. I enjoyed working with colour and trying to add some texture. I feel like I captured the crisp autumn weather in this image.

Church Sketches

Here are some of sketchbook studies for my church environment. I tried photographing these the other week but the light was poor and my camera couldn't pick up the detail of the line.

I haven't done much architectural drawing before so this is a different challenge for me. There are a few nice sketches but I need to refine my line work more.

Bell Tower Construction

Here's an update of my current project. It's taking a while to build so I thought I would show some screen captures of the 3D model. I have just finished these ornate stone windows which sit on each side of the top of the bell tower.

The main arches were very challenging as they have a lot of detail in the ridges. Here I've built the main areas and I'll include the finer details in the texture and normal map. I have to keep tweaking areas to all the pieces sit correctly against one another.

With the arches finished I now have to integrate them into the tower and then mirror the sides correctly. I love using symmetry to quickly build up the model. That's definitely a positive of architecture that you re-use your pieces to build the larger structure and have a massive jump going from just having a few detailed pieces to having this huge intricate structure appear within minutes.

Gate House

I've started a new piece focusing on practicing my architecture and building skills. I've chosen to build a church and graveyard. I wanted something old with a lot of history and traditional building materials. The pictures above show the small gate building to the graveyard. I'm really happy with this how this turned out for a first go at a structure. The polycount is really low with all the details baked on using high poly models.

The tiles are really effective and are completely built from scratch. I built a full set of tiles which I spent some time rotating and moving them to give the random appearance. I then painted the tiles using some brushes.

I created the wood effects using several wood tiles and overlay with a few details such as the carvings taken from photo reference.

There is a gate that I've modelled but is not textured yet. It should be relatively simple to add that in tomorrow. My next goal is to build and begin texturing the clock tower.