Banking In Style - A Digital Replica, Kind of...

I think it is safe to say I don't want to see a bank unless it is giving me money after this project. I joke, in my opinion this is one of the best models I have created, very stylish very square and very traditional. I have this dire passion to just create 3D models and having this passion during the module helped a lot, because i kept changing how I wanted the building to look. In this blog I plan on talking you through the processes and my thoughts and choices I made when i constructed this "digital replica" of the Lloyds TSB building which is stationed in Carlisle Cumbria. and it looks like something like this:

Lloyds TSB - Carlisle, this is the blueprint I used thanks to Sam Crabtree on my course as my photo was the wrong format, this image allowed me to make the model as accurate as possible by following it as a 2D design. (credit where it's due)

Now if you are local to the guy who writes these posts for your pleasure then the chances are you have seen this building, its a very intricate building with plenty of places to annoy someone who is planning to re-create this in a digital format.

So getting to the point. Our class was set something called "The Industry Brief" and as brief as it sounds we were limited to a 5000 poly count or lower. If you don't know what "polys" are then they are the little squares that create the image and moulded to the desired shape, think of atoms  in the real world and the polys in the animation world, very similar. We had 1 month to do this and that meant a lot of complaints about christmas being cut short however we only had to model the front. (Thank God).

The front of the cash wielding building - shame it doesn't share...

Nearly the whole thing on a weird angle

So my first design choice was to build the base structure of the building (the walls, pillars and then the roof. After doing that the next design plan was to float all details of the building, this is where the details like window cills, door frames and other small building details, although the finished product is one object, its made from lots of other (smaller) modelled objects and then attached together just like Lego.

So into the nitty gritty we have to put this into perspective, we were told to concentrate on the most detail at the bottom and only not as much at the top. Why? because the model is being marked by the makers of the FORZA series. So imagine being in a car racing at 60 miles per hour and driving past the TSB building, you are only going to see what is close to you as you are concentrating on the road and the chances are, you wont even look at the top. This being a factor and a very limited on the poly limit meant we had to choose what would be a silhouetted and which details would actually be modelled, as you can see I chose door frames, window frames/ cills and the bottom of the pillars. The mini pillars on top of the building and the top of the columns on the side of the building have less modelling detail due to the poly limit and was a design choice to leave it to texture rather then spend valuable polys modelling something the audience may or may not see and which required more polys than the limit allows me to spare.

Mini pillars are the cute little things that don't do anything other than make the building look pretty

I had fun modelling these little gits. Not.

Something that is more of a personal taste thing than anything but what annoys me about a lot of video games is that window panes are normally done as textures unless it is vital to the game like you travel through it or it gets smashed, but most of the time it is literally one poly with a picture of some panes and some glass. So I decided to model the window panes and extrude the windows inside to get the details. It just gives the building some life and realism rather then the blank slate look, I promised I wont make a Kardashian reference when speaking of a blank slate... oh wait I just did.

lol window

Even more windows.

I will say this I know this isn't what would be considered industry standard work, I have only been 3D modelling for 4 months, which is the time I have been on my course but finishing this piece of work not only motivated me for my future career but I cannot wait to see what challenges are going to be thrown my way, I think i have to just took my next big step into modelling an adventure. (here's a little bit of extra cheese to satisfy you dairy monsters).

On an off note check out my Instagram to keep up to date with images of work or other things: Cyberdan6 Peace.