BA3: Digital Modeling

Designing the Door!

Over the Easter holidays I was trying to come  up with a solid design for my door. I had been looking relentlessly through my God of War art book for inspiration (of which I posted previously) and also watching gameplay videos, pausing at every piece of interesting architecture or door.

The stage I am at now is probably around 95% Maya ready. I am happy with my design and I have drawn it enough on Google SketchUp (another thing I learnt to use over Easter!) to fully understand my door design in 3D which I am hoping will help me with Maya!

Okay so, first things first. I actually bought a sketchbook which was exciting because its been a while since I tried to keep one even alongside a project for personal use. This is where I began my sketches of doors, archways and general architectural designs. I will take proper photographs of my sketches and post them up later. I know the process seems backwards, show you the “finished” product and THEN the designs that got me there but I haven't had time to take the photographs yet.  When I do, I can take you through the ideas for my door and why I am doing them. 

Design 1:

My sketches lead me to my first proper design which I took straight to SketchUp so I could see it in proper 3D. Here are the results. 

 

I really like the door. Something I noticed through watching playthroughs of God of War is that a lot of the architecture consists of archways, there just aren't that many doors so I took inspiration from the door to the City of Olympus which was a simple design with squares that are imprinted onto the door. 

I really do not like the roof, I was really hard to get the triangle to work in SketchUp so I just gave up. A key thing to note is the scale. God of War is full of huge buildings and everything is very imposing. I want my door to be HUGE!

Design 2:

Okay so this is my final (for now) version of the archway which will surround my door (the door will remain the same as in design 1). I had a really quick experiment with the colours & textures that Google SketchUp provides to get a further understanding on how I want my door to look. 

 

Orthographic Drawings 

Top View

 Left/Right hand view

 3 / 4 view

 Front view

Here are my colour experiments, they aren't great or by any means a representation of the final door but I just wanted to have a look to see if it made my design any stronger. The yellow colour is supposed to be a stone which is what the pillars and archway will be made of and the roof is supposed to have a typically Greek orange tile.