I finally finished the Pagoda I've been working on today! It was by far the most technically difficult model I've ever created; it put up quite a fight when I was working on it! Thankfully the texture work was quite quick compared to the time it took to build the model itself, but I'm very happy with the result!
Here's the final Marmoset render, including a wireframe without the diffuse textures:
All said and done, it's one 1/8 pagoda slice duplicated 8 times - that is, it has rotational symmetry for 8 sides, and it clocks in around 10k polygons. Most of the polygons are in the roof, as you can see in the wireframe. It was quite complex and difficult to build, though I love how it came out!
Here are some building shots through the whole process:
 |
| Initial block-in of the pagoda, checking the rotational symmetry and getting the silhouette down |
 |
| Creating one "slice" of the roof and blocking in the individual roof tiles in Maya |
 |
| Blocking in the "ribs" of the roof and the end pieces, using reference pictures of Chinese pagodas |
 |
| Sculpting detail and weathering the roof tiles |
 |
| Roof tiles retopologized and baked, with the final version of the normal map in Maya |
 |
| Sculpting and weathering one of the end pieces in ZBrush |
 |
| All of the pieces of the roof in place with normal maps - main tiles, ribs, and end pieces |
 |
| The full pagoda's normal maps are finished, finally! |
 |
| Sculpting the floor tiles and weathering the stone |
 |
| Final normal map for the cloud end piece |
 |
| Final diffuse map for the wooden parts of the pagoda; red columns, red-and-green paneling, and white-and-green "cloud" detailing |
 |
| Normal and diffuse maps for the stone floor |
 |
| Normal and diffuse maps of the tile roof |
