Starting over

After having a play around today I came to the conclusion (which I had i think decided on a while ago) to restart. My reasons for doing this are that as I have gone along I have realised that errors with the shapes of the walls were going to cause me a lot of trouble later on with rendering and a lot of what I had done had been hacked together a bit as I had gone on to just make it work. The final realisation was that I realised that the reason I was having issues lining up the survey data with my walls was because I had forgotten the walls are not straight! This has come from me remembering (albiet a bit late) that the way medieval ceilings/ floors are constructed is based on *balancing* the edges of beams on an overhang. the following image shows the east elevation and the more mossy strips of masonry show where the line of bricks at the top of each floor before the wall falls back.

So I have started from scratch again to make sure I include this. I started by importing the survey data again but this time grouping it all together and moving it to (0,0,0) as well as aligning it to the grid. This should make future modelling easier than it has been as x,y,z now should be moving either along, into or up the walls of the elevation. I next imported the wall file I had used before which was constructed of basic shapes such as extruded rectangles to create the space of the rooms. I deleted all but the main rectangle as I decided until I had lined everything up and generated the right shape for this basic space there was no need to try and create the tower rooms as they would probably need editting at a later point anyway. I then shrank the wall down to just the basement level. I then created a copy of this shape by selecting and moving along the x axis, than had to just extend it to the right position. I then selected the polygon of the wall and moved this backward to make the wall thinner and generate the step on which the floor would stand. I did this again to create the 2nd floor. This has solved all the problems I was having trying to line up the window guidelines on different levels.

I am now going to start modelling the window on the lower floor. I think this time I will try a slightly different method for creating the right shape as I realised the method I was using wasn’t generating the most even shape.

Lessons in a sensible naming convention

I have been away on holiday for a week and then went on a mini adventure to London to do some important *research* at some museums (I went to the BM, V and A and Museum of London looking for medieval *stuff* to fill my rooms). The trip wasn’t that successful as there is a bit of a lack of the things I was looking for (beds! See http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O9138/bed-great-bed-of-ware/) but it did give me a nice break and the odds and ends I did see were helpful.

Just before I went away I had a bit of a play around with walls on the model as I realised somehow I had made them a bit too deep and hadn’t joined them in a sensible manner to the tower. I have now added them using the probooleon create tool however, I have not done it in a particularly senesible manner. Having looked clsoely at it the walls have not lined up well and not are not smoothing properly. I think the best solution for this will be to start again before I had tried to make combine the two objects and do it in a more careful manner (mainly checking they are lined up before I start). But I am quite happy with the newly edited walls in terms of their general shape and positioning.

My next step was to insert the window object I had made into the walls. I used the create ProBooleeon command again and subtracted the window from the selected walls.

My next step was to begin working on the chamfers that decorate the window. I started on the one on the upper edge of the window. I had to again convert the object to an editable poly and started by experiemnting with applying the chamfer modifyer to the edge. But I realised this wasn’t actually the most effect method to deliver the desired effect. Instead I found that by playing around with the polygons and moving a few of the edges it appeared much better. I started by pulling the outer edge of the curve up. I then took the next line of polygons and moved them clsoer to the outer edge. The only issue is that instead of appear as a nice sharp edge (like the aris on the wall) the edge is smoothing.

The first window!

Having come back from holiday I have since learnt a harsh lesson in correctly naming my files. I have spent the morning running over what I had done to create the previous window on the next window only to find I had been working in the wrong .max file. An error we all make and vow never to make again. I think its time I introduced a more ordered storage method for my files.