Whilst I may not have enjoyed the actual reality of architecture as a career path during my time as a Part I student, my love for architecture itself has not diminished, and the project that I have chosen to give myself for this self-directed module of Computer Arts Practice is directly borne out of that passion.
For years (4 as it happens, shameful really – as you’ll see) I have had a running project of sorts – to fully model a science-fiction style cathedral design that I first finished over 4 years ago in Google Sketchup. I foolishly lost that original file so have been recreating it from some handy line-render images of said original in Maya. I’ve always felt it’d make a good portfolio piece, however, due to the complexity of the design – and my own lack of experience in Maya at the time – I’ve never quite been able to see it through to the end. It’s become something of my own ‘Moby Dick’, though in truth, and indeed to my shame, old Captain Ahab was a good deal more relentless in his pursuit of his than I have been of mine.
Perspective view of original sketchup exterior model
Over the summer though, I had a wonderful internship at the small architectural visualisation studio Shove Media in Edinburgh, and I enjoyed it so much that it has single-handedly convinced me that arch viz is the right path for me when I leave. Over the course of the 7-8 weeks or so I spent there, I learned a lot about how to model, texture, render and post-produce to make high-quality architectural visualisation images. I feel that now, I finally have the right set of skills to tackle this white whale of a project and make a piece I can really be proud of out of it.
Current progress of the model in Maya
Over this semester then, I’m going to finish the modelling of the cathedral, before testing compositions and concepting the surrounding area it will be a part of. Then that shall be modelled, and the scene UV mapped – a key learning outcome for me is to learn how to UV map more complex architectural forms like this well, as even when on the internship, most mapping was of much simpler geometry. Then appropriate lighting will be added before texturing and applying materials, then rendering in V-Ray with final post-production being done in Photoshop.
The final deliverable will be the finished architectural visualisation, along with an extensive display sheet showing contour render(s), wireframes, close-ups and the various different render layers that went into the piece. If I have time, I’ll also try and do a basic turntable animation of the model (not sure if it’ll be of the textured or untextured scene), and if I really have time, I’ll try my hand at re-lighting it for a night-time version of the visualisation. This is doubtful I’ll admit though, as night-time scenes generally involve much more lighting work and can be tricky to pull of well – at least compared to day-time scenes anyway.
Stuart McInnes 