The finished textured pillars. Top one is downstairs andbottom image is up stairs. Does that make sense??!?!

WHAT A DAY!!

Firstly, today had to be the most topsy turvy day on this project to date. Started off the day really well. Managed to texture the downstairs and upstairs pillars in a fairly short amount of time. Looks really nice after applying some bump textures to them which really brings them out into a more 3D shape.
Then the problem of the day started, when it came to importing the pillars into the master copy of the main entrance hall, maya decided to be mean to us and did not import the texture on the downstair's pillar's base. We were baffled. Even when we re-directed the texture file into the public folder and re-loaded it, it still didnt work. We even tried re-saving the files and importing them again but still no success. Then Josh had a brainwave and suggested the JPEG texture file might be corrupt, which turned out to be the reason why it didnt work. We re-saved the texture file as a targa and it finally worked.
After finally being able to import the downstairs pillars successfully, we then textured the walls donstairs and the arches in the centre of the room. The latest room images can be found on Josh's profile.

finished textured hammer

This is now the finished textured hammer. I am happy with how it looks as a piece. I decided to have a wooden handle rather than rubber as I think it provides a better texture. Concidering this is my first ever textured model I think it looks alright and this time last week I had no idea even where to start on texturing, I feel I have made some personal progress in doing this. I specifically chose this as my first test texture as with regards to our project this object will hardly be noticed as it is just lying on the table. It will not be interacted with and so the texture doesn't have to be particularly amazing but im still happy with it either way

Now I had done The initial blood stains I wanted to include, I decided that the middle of the hammer head was a bit plain and 'clean'. Therefore I just selected the top faces and applied another texure with bloodstains on it to fit with the other textured surfaces. As well as this, I applied more stains to the cylindrical part of the butt to show that the blood had splattered more onto the hammer

One problem I did notice was that the texture cut off on one side of the handle. I did try and alter this but I did not stress myself out too much because the hammer will be lying on this side so it wont be visible on the camera. Therefore its nothing much to worry about in the outcome of the scene but something I will look into for future reference

The next texture I applied was the blood stains on the spikes. This was slightly more tricky for me as I had to take a UV snapshot of the spikes and paint each surface seperately in photoshop. Whereas the others I just wrapped the texture around. At first I only treated this as a trial and error excercise to see what would happen if I used the UV snapshot editor, but after painting and applying the finished textures this was the result and I am perfectly happy with it. Turned out to be the right choice that looks effective

This second test was adding blood stains to the butt of the hammer head. I only applied it to the surface shown as it stretches around the whole thing if I apply it to all faces on the butt and it looked naff. At least if I only put it on the surfaces shown in the image it is quite clear and there are no stretches in the texture

This was the first test I did for the hammer. I painted the blood on the texture in photoshop before importing it into maya. I played about with the UV mapping settings and saw that the automatic map was the best fit as the others were the wrong angle.

This is a sneaky peek of the ladders downstairs. Have still yet to model the actual basement but at least u can see where its going :D

This is a shot of how the study will look with the bookcase slid open to reveal the secret passage. this will then lead to the ladder in the other image to the basement. While modelling though, I'm not sure to have the bookcase slid across to avoid collisions with other props or have it closed. Probably have it open to be on the safe side and move it back when it comes to animating the camera.

Starting the study

this is the start i have made to the study. Not alot there at the moment but well gradually be adding more detail to the room over the next few days. So far in here is the bookcase, Ashley's Celo and the ladder leading to the basement, although you cannot see it in this shot. No real difficulties so far only thing to be concerned about is the size relation to the main room. I solved this by creating a cube to the size of the study and then rescaling to fit with the main room. I then copied and pasted it into a separate maya file and modelling in a new file. this will then be imported into the main room once ready.

The entrance hall to date, with door as well

The finished door

this is what i've done so far in modelling the door. Its only basic but looks good. Its double sided but the same on both sides. currently working on a frame and hinges to get a complete model but so far so good

This is an axe ive modelled. It proved to be a real tuffy to do as i built the shape using isoparms and ive never really worked with them before. But i eventually got there after battling with maya and the second image is the axe in polygon form

slight concern at the moment is determining the gap under the stairs for the archway to fit in. Ive made changes since taking this screen shot to how I think it should be but well cross that bridge when it comes to adding the arches

This is the stage im upto now in modelling the entrance hall currently modelling the door to go in the gap in the wall and to use in other areas of our environment. As this is this room has the highest priority for the team project as a whole, I am constantly checking my progress over with my team buddies to make sure I get it right to make the end result as good as we hope for it to be.

Building the main entrance,


After testing creating textures on the stairs in the file below we found that it was bloody difficult to do. So I went back to the drawing board and started with the main staircase first and added built around it using blocks rather than extruding out the rest of the parts. This has proved to be much easier to understand when texturing each part of the entrance hall seperately rather than one whole object. I have also found it a hell of a lot easier to model the entrance in blocks rather than extruding the surfaces as it is less complicated and easier to control.