1. Fist I started with the x and z drawings crossed in the middle. The drawing is only a guideline and I may change a few things on the way. I started modelling a box with the width of the x and z drawings (so while I build on the x axis the z axis will follow)
2. I went into the x perspective camera to get the basic shape of the object that I am creating. Extruding layer by layer and highlighting the side vertex’s and scaling them to make a curve.
3. I continued the process but deleting one side because later on I will special duplicate this side to the other. I made a leg and thought on how to construct the round bottom to the leg.
4. I switched to the z perceptive and cut it in half again, leaving a ¼ of the object left. Then I shaped the object to the characteristic of the drawing. I started to realise how to construct the leg whilst allowing like the drawing to still flow. I went back in to normal perspective to view what I had accomplished so far. The z archway wasn’t exactly inline with the drawing so I had to carefully improvise a solution.
5. I extruded both sides at the same time to keep it symmetrical but this did conflict slightly with the z axis but as I started earlier there are only guidelines.
6. It was made by grabbing the centre in cave and pulling it out like an inside out pants leg. Then I just carefully shaped it to the curve and shape I wanted. There are many ways of constructing or building shapes, I could append to polygon or make it into a cube and shape it that way but I just went with the flow. (Trial and error)
7. Bevel……. It gives a really nice edge to the object but later on it can turn out wrong. I bevelled the object not thinking that I could put the bevel in the normal map and texture instead. This maybe corrected earlier on in the process.
8. I began to append a polygon, the archway to reconstruct the leg.
9. I was in a bevel mood, so bevelled the archway. (later on this will bite me in the ass because bevel should be used as a last resort or for huge building structures)
10. Fixed the foot of the clock and tried to make the mesh smoother.
11. I began to plan out where the clock face would go, lining it up with the X axis drawing but I am not attaching it yet.
12. Before I attach the clock I used the special duplicate function to increase the ¼ to a ½, then merged the two.
13. This is the part where I attach the clock face to the base. But before that I had to make sure the clock face is in half as well and combined to the main mesh.
14. Just for my own reassurance I used the duplicate special function to the other side to inspect if it’s right. Then I put it in another layer and set it to Trace and made it not clickable. I then decided to do the hands on the clock and made them a simple plane, so I can change them to alphas and add a normal map/bump map to add more definition.
15. I started to reduce the polys by deleting unneeded edges and faces.
16. I continued to reduce the poly count. Made tris and worked out the least polygon construction but I had to be careful because if I deleted the wrong edge it could effect the other arch or cause other problems.
17. I continued to reduce the poly count by looking very carefully everywhere to see were it could be reduced.
18. Clean up. This is one important helper because it finds all the mistakes such as 4+ sided shapes, bad geometry and other problems. The options are to fix the problem by using the automatic function or just highlight the faces that are wrong. I always select the highlight face, because I can take note what mistakes I made and fix them myself. I don’t usually trust the auto because sometimes it fixes the geometry badly.
19. After the clean up I started to duplicate the other side, then select all the centre vertex’s by using the scale tool to tighten the distance between vertex. This will allow the centre vertex’s to line up with each other in order to merge the sides together.
20. After gluing them together I deleted the part of the line that joins them. This was for reducing the poly count again. (The reason I didn’t UV map the clock at this stage was because I didn’t want the wood grain to be symmetrical with each other and with the clock face.)
21. Just to recap on all this reducing of polygons. It used to be 1168 faces and 1064 tris but now it’s 485 faces and 832 tris.
22. Time to make the glass for the clock face. This will be an alpha and there will be a slight engraved pattern to the sides and middle. I made a cylinder then deleted all but one side and then I extruded the edges around the circumference of the circle so it became a template to rearrange the polys.
23. I finished block mapping or have I?
(My project has changed because of Distance of object? Paragon Trickery! MipMapping and depth-of-field?)
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