Modelling the Guildhall walls

The initial animation idea requires the exterior walls of the Guildhall to be removed independently from the whole building. Therefore, ground and 1st floor exterior walls were modelled separately from each other and other parts of the building. The original high quality reference images could not be used in a 3D max environment as a texture. The images would not show up in viewports. Therefore, the reference architecture plan images were re-sized in the Adobe Photoshop. The new images were much smaller than original and showed up in viewports as reference planes texture. However, reference image would not show up on the plane when changed. I did not want to loose any detail in the architecture plans by re-sizing them again. The problem was solved by saving the file and opening it again. Once the images were set up modelling took place. The walls started with the basic box. The box was transformed to the editable poly. The elements and vertices were moved to match the reference image. The wall polygon was kept as simple as possible. The wall was extended by extruding side polygons. The length of new polygons were determined by window placement in the reference images. Each window or door (as for other walls) was covered by one polygon group. The reason is creation of holes for windows and the doors. Holes have been created by selecting outside and inside wall polygons and insetting them. Then the vertices were moved to match place of the window. Then the polygons were deleted where they covered the window. The last step was done in border sub-object level. The borders around polygons were selected and connected with the bridge tool. The following method was used to create holes for all doors and windows in every wall.

As the time passed I managed to finish creating the exterior walls. The Guildhall walls consist of separate models of different ground and 1st floor sides. The animation is going to show present and future state of the building. Therefore each wall had to be created two times. Accordingly two layers were created before modelling. One is used for models of present state and other for future state. This allow to keep everything organised and avoid confusion when file is filled with more models. The inside walls were created using same method as for exterior walls. The Guildhall started to get shape after long hours of modelling using reference images.

There is a brick cover at the bottom of the Guildhall. It was created by selecting polygons of the existing exterior wall and shift dragging them to create new object. Then polygons of new object were extruded. After little adjustments the brick cover was finished. The wooden beam above brick cover was created as new box and then edited in editable polygon mode.