Making of "Alaskan Waterway House: Part 1" • January 25, 2012
I am creating a "making of" for my "3D Allusions – Off the Grid Challenge 17" project. Since it was a fairly complex scene, I have broken the it into three parts; "Part 1 – Modeling, Part 2 – Texturing, and Part 3 – Lighting, Rendering, and Post-production". This is Part 1, and the other two parts will be posted shortly.
Part 1 – Modeling
The one constant among all of the contestants was a 3D house model provided by the hosts of the competition. We were allowed and even encouraged to make alterations to the house model, but the original structure had to be recognizable in the end. The model was available in several different formats, and I used an .OBJ version to import into Maya.
Original .OBJ House Model
I began making some changes to the original model, being careful however not to change the model too much.
Building the Initial Floating Platform
Altering the Roof, Railings and Building the Greenhouse
Building Corrugated Siding
Final Platform and Greenhouse
The underwater turbines are very conceptual devices, being bladeless and hollow. The idea is that they use the water current to spin the insides of them, like a reverse corkscrew. They are polygonal models that have been subdivided to give them their smooth quality. The steel cable that supports them is a NURBS extrude, twisted around its Y-axis It's a pretty simple technique, and I will be making a how-to tutorial soon.
Initial Turbine Model
Revised Turbine
One of my favorite parts of this project was creating the environment surrounding the floating house. Using reference photos of Alaskan shorelines, mountains, and underwater scenes, I created the site elements using Maya, Mudbox, and Xfrog 3D trees.
Close Shoreline Model
Distant Mountain (Seen on Far-right side of the Main Shot)
Under-water Site
These were the main objects needed in the scene, but I modeled many smaller objects as well. Items such as wooden deck boards, the old shovel and bucket, and the solar stills were integral to the scene.
Wooden Greenhouse Walkway
Old Shovel and Bucket
Solar Still Model
Most of the models, except for the trees, plants, and the original house were custom modeled by me. Part 2 will cover my texturing and material building process for these objects.
Next: Part 2 – Texturing
Copyright © 2012 Justin Traylor Design Visualization
