Week 1

For component B I am going to be creating a Greek Temple with a God or Godess. The tempel will be made within Autodesk Maya whereas the statue is going to be made in Mudbox.

Before I began researching which temple and god I was going to create I was shown a cinematic animation for a TV show. Although it didn't have much to do with greek temples, the opening had a good use of cinemtography, which is a part of the module I'm going to need to take into account. 

Game of Thrones Opening 

Next I began looking at various greek temples to see what I want to recreate in Maya. As many of the temples are now in ruins I looked a lot at peoples recreations as well as floor plans. The main temples I looked at were, the Mausoleum van Halicarnassus, the temple of Zeus and the temple of Artemis. Out of these temples I decided I am going to do my 3D model based on the temple of Zeus.

Mausoleum van Halicarnassus

Temple of Zeus

Temple of Artemis

Before I went to begin modelling the temple I was advised that I should use a floor plan. A floor plan will help me create the inside rooms of the temple as I would know where to position the walls.

This is the floor plan, for the temple of Zeus, that I will be using. The 'x' marked on the image is where the statue will be placed. I will most likely base my statue off of Zeus.

The floor plan also shows me the placement of the inside columns and the walls. I want to attempt to have a bit of accuracy when creating this temple.

Once I had gotten everything sorted I made a start on my modelling. I felt the first part of the temple I should create would be the outer columns. This was fairly simple to create. To begin with I created a cylinder with 20 subdivisions. I didn't need too many subdivisions but I needed enough so I can do the next part.















Once I had my cylinder I needed to select one of the vertical lines and use the move tool to indent it inwards. I need to do this for every other line on the cylinder to get a star like shape.

 
On the left is a demonstration of indenting a vertical line. The image on the right is the final product after indenting every other line.

Once I had finished with moving the vertical lines I need to select all 20 of them. After selected I went to Edit Mesh - Bevel and clicked on the box to get the settings. The default settings for the bevel tool is too only add one segment. I wanted to add three as it would make the shape rounder.






















Now that the main shape is created all I need to do now is alter the shape of the column. Firstly, I use the tool 'Insert Edge Loop' and add an edge into the middle of the column. This is because columns in ancient Greece don't have a consistent width. Columns would either becoming thinner or thicker at the bottom or at the center point.

The last part of the modelling for this is to create the top part. Again it's relatively easy to create as all I used was a combination of the extrude tool and the scale tool. I select the faces on the top of the model and then extrude upwards. I'll then scale the faces outwards. After repeating it a few times it gives a curved effect and makes a nice top for the column.