Sep 30th progress

As far as the exterior of the building itself goes, I think I'm all done modeling the pieces. Now it's just a matter of putting them all together. The rest of the environment, on the other hand...not quite finished with that. But I plan to be before the new week starts.

September 26th

Making progress on the perimeter. I'm looking forward to blocking the player off from exploring too much of the outside >:]

I'm getting there with the exterior modeling (the immediate perimeter, anyway; beyond the fence is going to take a little more time). I need to start UVing all these assets fairly soon, or forever burn in the ashes of my unfinished work.

More.

I thought this deserved its own post. I need to model the remaining 3 floors at the top, as well as the carriage entrance on the north side (not visible from this angle). That'll be it for the building, then I'll move onto the surrounding environment!

A little bit of modeling progress.

Still a skeleton, but I'm making progress on the exterior. Should be done with the exterior of the building and the outside perimeter in 2 - 3 weeks. Texturing all these modular assets is going to be absolute hell.

Left to do of the modeling:

Right side and immediate perimeter. Also, the THIRD THROUGH FOURTEENTH FLOORS. No big. (There are a bunch of missing geometry pieces here. Don't worry, I made some mistakes in the workflow of my modeling, and this is the direct result. I'm wiser now.)

image based lighting

This is me, updating my blog.

I'm finally on top of things. I just needed the first week and a half or so of school to get ahead of my other classes so I can be proactive with this project. I've got a rough schedule planned out, and according to that schedule, I should be completely done modeling the exterior by the end of next next week. Yes, two weeks from the end of this week. Here's a test render, piecing together my modular assets in Maya.

A few asset updates...

For workflow's sake, I've decided to hold off on sculpting until I've finished doing all the low poly models. I'll go back and do that stuff when I know for a fact I'm going to finish the modeling.

the gargoyle that inhabits each peak

scale reference. this is looking up at the peak from eye level.

Updating...

I'm sacrificing food and sleep to finish the work I have for all the classes that don't concern this project in order to be able to work on this more. I have many, many more assets to model, but I've updated the game proposal that I posted earlier this month. AT&T is a terrible waste of space and employment, and has failed to deliver its promised product to my apartment for weeks now, so I have to come to school when I want to research or use the Internet, which is, of course, infuriating.

I'll be updating with some screenshots soon of my work thus far.

pillar progress

I'm abandoning this and moving on to other assets for now. The left side is looking on at the top, the right side is looking up from eye-level.

research and such things of the like

A few days ago, I went out into the world to gather research from places other than Google Images. My first stop was the Detroit Historical Museum, which is closed until November 23rd. However, my next stop was the Detroit Public Library, which had all the photo reference I needed and more, down in the Burton Historical Collection. I was lucky enough, on this day, to get free xeroxes as well, which was definitely the highlight of the experience. Unfortunately, since these interior and exterior images of Michigan Central Station belong to a historical collection, posting digital copies on the Internet seems, on some level, immoral if not illegal.

modeling progress update.

Peaks and pillar caps. All low poly base meshes (except the Z Brush sculpt) rendered using mental ray.

High poly sculpt of the preceding base mesh.

Low poly with normals baked in.

Main peak base mesh

Poster & Game Proposal

some preliminary sketches...

Some preliminary sketches before I start modeling (there will be many, many more of these). Some interior drawings and some of the exterior sculpture in the front of the building.

It has begun!

Here it is. It's my last year at the College for Creative Studies (unless I make a series of grave, irreversible decisions, of course) and I couldn't be more excited to begin my senior project. I already know, right off the bat, I've taken a very serious work load onto my shoulders for these next two semesters. That said, I look forward to evolving as an artist, both digitally and traditionally.

I'll try my best to be a little more consistent with my posts this year. Last year I was anything but consistent. Since I have so much work to do for this particular project, I'll probably be posting things constantly, as much of my work is no doubt going to go through various stages of completion. Ready for action. Let's do this.