'BRYHER' - MODELLING MY MUM'S HOUSE

(Click here for TEXT only)

It's really late at night, so I'm only going to say a wee bit about this now...

THE HOUSE

FIRST OF ALL, THESE IMAGES MAY BE A BIT BIG FOR YOUR SCREEN! TRY CLICKING THE 'IMAGES ONLY' LINK TO SEE THEM WITH FULL SCREEN.
For some (quite idiotic) reason, I decided to create the whole wall-structure from a single mesh - instead of modelling the walls separately - which would have been LOADS-LOADS-LODAS easier!!!
So, the walls are all in one piece, with two layers to the roof. I used an ARRAY modifier to model the tiles - so they're all separate mesh structures, but created using an automated process (just gets tricky around the windows!!

PARTICLES

I used PARTICLES for the grass, for the gravel path, and also for adding a bit of realism to the earth in the flower-bed. For the grass, there is a special type of particle creating (actually designed for creating hair and furr). Unfortunately the garden was so big, it got a bit heavy for the computer!! ...and also can look a bit fake when viewed close-up. For making gravels, I modelled a hand-ful of different gravel-type stones, and set the particle generator to link to these objects. By using random elements for the size, and rotation of the objects, a fairly good path can be made using 3 or 4 particle systems, with an earth, noisey material underneath. A bit more could have been done with the path had I not used up so much power creating all that grass, and all that foliage!!

IVY and TREES

The Ivy and Trees are created algorithmically (I didn't sit and model each leaf and stem myself!!). From the Blender book 'Bounce, Tumble 'n' Splash' - a truely fab book on Blender's physical simulation processes (Fluid Sims, Soft-body dynamics, Plants, grass, smoke and fire - and even a bit on using the Blender Game Engine!). The two processes I used here were 'The Ivy Generator', and 'L-System' (for trees and plants). These two systems are great, and SO easy to use.

THE IVY GENERATOR

The Ivy generator is a separate program in which you import a mesh from Blender (or where-ever), and literally 'grow' ivy on your mesh, by setting some basic parameters, and specifying a starting 'seed' for the growth. The package (which is free, by the way!) includes some quite effective materials and textures, inluding colour, normal, specular and bump-mapping. Check it out!! (Googling 'Thomas Luft Ivy Generator' should get you somewhere near it... or I can recommend the book 'Bounce, Tumble, 'n' Splash, which I got from Amazon. Thank you Thomas!!

L-SYSTEM TREES and PLANTS

All the trees and shrubs in this model were created using the L-Systems script by Armagan Yavuz; another piece of free software that I got with the Blender book (B, T 'n' S). L-Systems works within Blender-3D itself, which is ideal. L-Systems are formal grammars; algorithms that use basic rules, with incorporated random processes. Formal grammars are used in loads of things, such as the grammar-checking you find in Microsoft Word or Open Office, and for algorithmic music creation. The parameters used in the L-System interface are really pretty simple to use, but flexible enough to get some great results for a whole garden of different trees, plants and shrubs. Highly recommended! Thank you Armagan!

RENDERING

I took some digital photos of walls and pateo tiles n stuff, for use as textures and materials for the model. I also modelled the main bulk of the house by using Blenders BACKGROUND IMAGE feature, which allows you to project an image onto the background of your modelling area, so you can get everything to scale.

The main differences in the different renders are in the lighting. The SUNNY DAY renders use Blenders SUN LAMP - which creates parallel shadows, to simulate the sun being so far away. I also used some low, deep angled lamps for late evening lighting, together with the HALO lamps from the building's interior, to get that light-beam effect. Sometimes it was necessary to add 'filler' lamps, which cast no shadows - just illuminate shaded areas as if light was bouncing around all over the place, enough to make out the shaded side of the house.

It's really really late, so I hope this has made sence, and that there aren't tooo manny speling misstaykes...

ENJOY BLENDER-3D!! IT'S ACE!!!!

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