Hotel Balcony Composite
This render is a final render of this balcony. I have adjusted the camera height so that the focalisation of the scene is from an occupants point of view. This creates the feeling of presence in the viewer and a sense of implicit involvement in the scene. The items in the scene have been re-arranged so that they are used to better effect.
Replacement corrugated panels
I have tested two low poly methods of making corrugated panels. The two are reasonable in their appearance. I have chosen to use the single plane (left) as it looks more convincing than having a visable join of the other method (right). The only thing that I will have to remember with this is that the other side of this panel is transparent. This won’t be too much of a bother – wherever this issue arises I will clone a duplicate and spin it around 180degrees and use it as the reverse side.
Occupational Signals : Models
These are the models that I will use to indicate occupation in the scenes. Some of these items I have created, some I have used (under a free licence for use) from the websites artist-3d.com and turbosquid.com. If I have used your model, please accept my gratitude. 
Memory issue solved
After going through all the materials used in the most recent file that I thought was corrupt and altering them to either 1024² or 2048² as appropriate; the scene renders like a dream. It looks like buying the additional RAM was still a good idea, but at least the file actually renders instead of crashing out.
Lesson learnt.
Occupancy & believability test.
A few months ago I went to the NTU Architecture final year degree show in London “Nott to scale” with a colleague of mine. The one thing that I brought back with me is the way that they superimpose people into their scenery. Initially I thought that hardly any of the students had put any time into this particular part and in some cases it actually took away the effect of some of their amazing work, which obviously is a shame. However I have just spent the last hour and a half or so superimposing and here are the results.
Blimey! not bad at this size, if I do say so myself !
Lets get normal in here!
Lesson of the day: Normals only need to face the camera, period! No need for duplicating sides of corrugated roofing unless animation is involved and there is a distinct chance that the reverse of the normal object may be seen.
Its not that I didn’t know this, its just one of the things that doesn’t get thought of a lot and sits with the others on the back burner.
The current position of the model is interesting in an abstract kind of way.
Friday Night Live
I set myself the goal of modelling everything by tonight so that I could concentrate on the animation from now on. I didn’t hit that target, I went out for a meal last night which was well deserved as I have spent virtually all my non working time since my last tutorial on this. I’ve clocked up 13.25 hrs so far and this is the result at this point. I’m mentioning time because of the large amount of time that this seems to take to create. If I was charging £30/hr this would come to £405 already and the model is unfinished. This tells me that the models for sale on Turbosquid.com are either not up to scratch which doesn’t seem likely or I am spending too much time labouring on trying to get things to look and be right. Maybe its lack of experience?
Anyhow, the following pictures are the current state of play and show the various models that I have wrestled with over this last week or so.
(Hurray for Bank Holiday weekends just before presentations!)
Bob the builder is back !
This is a render of the house that I am planning to animate. I have got to get this all built pretty quickly as the presentation deadline is looming on the 27th which is just over a week away. I think that once the house is done the rest will take just as long, but I am currently planning on having the modelling done by the end of Friday evening. (Just done a mental reality check and yep, thats pretty mental.) I want to push myself to see exactly how fast I can bash this all together without causing RSI and more importantly its got to look the biz. Now that I know more about how to get things to look appropriate I’m not going to slack. I seem to be spending my time: 60% on modelling and aligning things and 40% on getting the materials set up ok.
