OUAN504 - Creating the Farm - Part 1

As soon as the design stage was over and I felt like I had a sufficient outcome that was ready to work towards I began the modelling process using Maya. I've tried to be as thorough as possible with documenting the progress I made whilst developing the model in order to show the way it was made start to finish. Just before I start the final version I did some small bits of experimentation in Maya just to make sure that what I wanted to do was achievable as at this point I'm quite unfamiliar with most of the hundreds of functions that are available in Maya. The kind of things I tested out and tried to work out was the corrugated barn roof, how to deform different planks of wood in a realistic way and other types of barn roofs to see which I liked most.

To initiate the building of the model I took a cube polygon and scaled it to be the shape of a plank, with three segments to it. I then duplicated this plank to create the first of four walls that would make up the barn. It was during this stage I was kind of mapping out where windows would be, and thinking about smaller details I could implement like cracks in the planks, where planks could be missing in the wall, the space for and shutters or windows and the spacing between the pieces of wood that would appear to be natural or naturally worn. Following this I had the idea to build the barn window like a typical shutter, made up of a wooden frame with a piece of supporting wood running diagonally through the middle on top of a piece of wood. Mat showed me what the best way to do this was a combination of using a cube polygon, and several options including the 'Edit Mesh > Edge > Bevel' tool and the 'Multi-cut' tool. After the windows were built and in place, combined with the panels it looked like the wall was coming together quite well.

I started to try and think about the barn structurally and using reference photographs decided to add some thinner beams across the wall panels to hold them together and support the structure overall. To give the barn the old, worn looking I was trying to achieve I started manipulating various panels of the wall using different methods, I played a lot with the vertices of the objects to give them bends or curves as well as make them look as if they were broken or sections had broken off. I also tried to make each unique panel a different size to some extent so it didn't look like a perfectly well crafted structure. In the end the wall was filled with individually unique planks each having a subtle different between height, width or shape. After the first wall was complete I moved on to creating the front section of the barn. The designs I was working with had slanted roofs so I tried to build the panels on the front getting gradually longer until I hit a point where it was to plateau. I also created an entranceway with a section of panels on either side in front of the wall, as if the doors slid shut. I played again around with various planks to give the structure some variation and add an element of authenticity. The next step was extending the height of the front of the barn which would support the corrugated roof. To add variation and with some influence from reference images I made the panels on this section a lot thinner, which would hopefully give diversity to the types of planks and wood used when viewed as a whole. The main tool used throughout the building of the walls was the duplication tool, the more difficult process was manipulating and creating the individual objects in order to produce a rustic and realistic building. I used the same method to finish off the remaining two walls of the barn, creating an entrance way similar to at the front at the side, giving the barn another detail to make it more interesting but it would also allow more light in. Similar to the front entrance I added section of planks to act as sliding doors on both sides of the entrance way so that it can be closed if necessary. Once all of the walls were complete I spent some time adjusting and adding some smaller details.

The final part of the construction of the barn itself was made again, quite simply starting with a cube which was scaled until it was quite flat, but long enough to go form one end of the barn to the other with a little extra to hand over the edge, acting as a shelter to the entrance like normal roofs do. I then duplicated this twice so there was a total of three roof panels to arrange on one side of the roof. The top panel was quite angled so that it created the point on the roof that I wanted, the next was a little steeper and the final almost vertical to create the shape I wanted, that can be seen in the final screenshot. I then used the 'Mirror Geometry' tool so that the roofing was equal on both sides, this saved me a lot of time repeating the process. To achieve the corrugation on the roof panels I used the 'Insert Edge Loops' tool to create edges along the panel, before selecting every other one and pulling them up so that it produced the normal corrugated effect. I also found that when I smoothed the panels the corrugation became a lot smoother and less jagged, which I thought looked a lot better. The final thing I did to finish the barn itself was create a simple fence made of fence posts. They were made by scaling a cube long ways to create posts that could be arranged in a line to create a fence with some going horizontally too. This worked quite well at making a simple fence to finish of the barn.