As you can see for the image above, I’ve been putting a lot of detail into the model. I’m preparing the model for another purpose in the future. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be putting quite this much deatil into it. It takes a lot of time to get the geometry right.

I’ve also finished preparing the landscaping as far as the walkways and edging go. The next thing I’ll work on with the landscaping is trees.

You’re probably wondering about the black areas around the model. Well, I had to cut the model off somewhere, otherwise I’d end up modeling the rest of EPCOT. Not that that’s a bad thing, I just want to concentrate on Horizons for now. I will be adding a section of the monorail track to the front of the model since the track crosses that area of the landscaping.

I also have adjusted my shaders once again to compensate for the IBL. (Image Based Lighting) I also added a light to simulate the sun.

I also began adding more detail to the back and sides. I still have a little bit left to do, but most of it is there now. I also added new shaders to the backstage area. If anyone has photos of the backstage area, I’d love to see them to help fill in this area.

Here’s another angle of the side of the building.

I’d like to thank Planet7 for his help with Horizons and Epcot photos that have really helped fill in the gaps in my model. He runs a really cool site on the Universe of Energy attraction: http://planet7.home.mindspring.com/energy/ check it out for some really cool info on UoE!

Well, I’ve been busy adding details to the model and correcting minor errors in previous modeling sessions.

As you can see in the above image I’ve been adding a lot of detail to the roof area. Since I’m planning an additional purpose for this model, I’ve built the grooves into the main roof and physically modeled other details of the pavilion.

I’ve returned to working on the entrance and exit areas, adding more details and closing off areas that were left open before.

Here’s a quick render of the side of the building just for the heck of it. I still have details to add here and there and to replace the roof beams with the more detailed versions.

I’d like to thank Planet7 for his help with Horizons and Epcot photos that have really helped fill in the gaps in my model. He runs a really cool site on the Universe of Energy attraction: http://planet7.home.mindspring.com/energy/ check it out for some really cool info on UoE!

High Quality Rendering

The image above is a final quality rendering of the pavilion’s progress. I know it doesn’t look like much, but there have been a lot of internal changes to the file. Let me explain what’s been going on the last few month, and as to why it looks like nothing has been going on around here.

Now for the last two years I’ve been learning the 3D software Maya, at work. So my modeling and rendering skills have been keeping up with the industry, it was just my software that has been left behind. It’s that darn upgrade price that get’s ya. It’s pretty tough to justify $1000 for an upgrade when you do this as a hobby. And because of this, I had been running with an old version of 3D Max for years, the upgrade costs kept me with this old version. The software was hopelessly out of date. It still functioned, but it couldn’t produce nice, realistic renderings and it’s polygonal modeling tools were weak at best. Yet, I kept on because this was the best I had. And besides, I had been deep into Maya now (close to 40 hours a week developing a realistic human model for work) and I had begin to feel more comfortable in Maya than Max.

It’s not uncommon for these 3D programs to *start* at $2000. Needless to say, that kind of price is out of the range of most hobbists.

A few months ago Softimage ran a special promotion offering their XSI 4.0 software at an-unheard of price of $500. Now, at first, $500 sounds like a lot of money, but in the world of 3D programs, this is mere pocket change, especially when talking about a full, new version of the software. So when Softimage ran their promotion I was lucky enough to have just finished a free-lancing gig and had the cash to pick up a copy. Talk about at the right place at the right time. As part of their promotion, they were also offering $200 worth of training DVDs free with XSI, so I got those too.

Sure there are 3D programs out there that cost much less, but their cost shows in their, tools, their capabilities and their renderings. Trust me I’ve probably tried them at one stage or another through the years. XSI it a rock solid professional level 3D program complete with a professional level render engine. I would have been a fool to pass this up, even if I had never used XSI in my life.

So what have I been doing the last couple of months? Learning XSI that’s what. I’ve also been converting the Horizons model over, setting up the shaders, and render environment. All of this takes time, lots of it and especially when you’re holding down a full time job and have a family. Many, many nights I worked my normal job and then came home to work until 1 AM.

But most of that is behind me now, as I’ve finished up most of the conversion process and can concentrate on creating new parts of the model.

The Old Mesh

This is pretty much what the mesh looked like when I brought it into XSI. Pretty messy huh? The mesh was trangulated during the export/import process and there were some edge/polygon errors introduced into the process. These errors would come back to bite me later.

Rendering 05.23.05

Here I’ve started establishing the new XSI shaders. They’re still in the rough stage at this point but that’s cool. I’m still learning how XSI operates.

Rendering 05.27.05

My first attempt at using Global illumination and Final Gathering in XSI. Not very good results. Yuck. But the scene is set, over the next month and a half I’d be tweaking the settings and scene to get the render closer to real. It took a lot of time and I had to put the project down from time to time to deal with real world issues.

Rendering 06.1.05

Continuing to tweak the scene.

Rendering 06.11.05

More tweaks

Rendering 06.23.05

Here I have it just about where I want it. It’s close enough for now and I can concentrate on modeling again, knowing that the model will look pretty good with these settings and I can tweak it later if needed. So for the last week or two I have been working on the structure of the model itself.

The New Mesh

Remember when I mentioned those polygon errors? Well, they came back to bite me on July 2nd. I decided that I was going to clean up the mesh to make it a bit easier to see what I was doing and to optimize the renders a bit. Boy, was I in for a rude awaking.

It seems that during the conversion process the roof meshe had developed two sides. So every pologon who had only one side now had two. And this wrecked havoc with the roof mesh. I first noticed the problem when I went to delete the extra edges creating the triangular polys on the roof. I’d select them and delete them only to delete the whole poly. This didn’t happen when I cleaned up the roof supports. Something was very wrong.

After fiddling with it for a few hours I realized
that the only easy was out was to rebuild the roof from scratch. It would have taken too long to try to find, and select each double poly, delete it and sew back the remaining vertices. Rebuilding was the only way that made sense.

So I spent most of the July 4th weekend rebuilding the roof. But now it’s done and I can concentrate on the rest of the model. I don’t think I’ll be having any more problems like I did with the roof on the rest of the model. The reason I think I’m safe is that I used a different workflow to create the roof and bring it into the model. So I should be able to continue to safely clean up the rest of the model without any more major problems…let’s hope.

Well that does it for this update, thanks for stopping by and taking a look.

And now for something completely different…

Rendering 03.07.04f

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve worked on Horizons and I managed to get quite a bit done in the last two days. I mainly concentrated on the landscaping, out front and on the South side of the building. The south side of Horizons is the right side of Horizons in this picture. In this image you can see I’ve added the sign, chamfered the edges of the center planter, and added the walkway lights. I also added more detail to the planters on the sides of the building and ran them farther back along the sides of the building. But you kinda can’t see that in these images.

Rendering 03.07.04d
But you can see the extended planters in *this* image. The shadows make it difficult to see, but I added the walkways along the North and South sides of the building too. On the South side of the building there is/was a walkway that ran the length of the building all the way backstage. You can see it in the lower right of the above image.

Rendering 03.07.04e
Here is a better view of that walkway. You can also see the stairs that ran from the walkway up to the other South walkway that ran closer to the building. You can also begin to see some of the backstage areas.

Rendering 03.07.04a
Sorry about the bright lighting. It’s just temporary so you can see some of the detail. The grass color/texture is temporary as well. I’m concerned with the modeling still at this stage. I’ll take care of texturing/shaders and lighting later in the project. Anyways, here you can see a better view of the stairs and the backstage area. I still have some modeling to do in the backstage area, mainly adding doors and stuff.

Rendering 03.07.04b
Note the side entrance doors by the stairs. This was an entrance to a reception area. This reception area also led to unload area of Horizons.

Rendering 03.07.04c
More of the backstage area. As you can see I have most of it “roughed in”. But I need to add some doors and other details. I’m afraid I don’t have too much information about this part of Horizons but I’m gonna add as much detail as I can.

Well that does it for this update, thanks for stopping by and taking a look.

Rendering 11.04.03a
Here you can see I’ve added some landscaping to the entrance and begun to modify the elvations around Horizons. It’s difficult to tell in this image, but I have also added lightning rods and the antenna to Horizons.

Click here to see a larger version of 11.04.03a.jpg

Rendering 11.04.03b

Rendering 11.04.03c

Rendering 11.04.03d

Well that about does it for this update.