Maya 3D Modelling - Medieval Castle Tower

This is an account of my experience creating projects in Maya. As such, it will include pictures of my early and unfinished work.

My first project in Maya was a kitchen chair. Seeing as it was my first time creating something in Maya, I wanted to start off with something simple to learn the basics of the software. Once my kitchen chair was finished, I immediately wanted to tackle something bigger. For my second project, I decided to create a medieval castle tower.

I used the UE4 Mannequin to judge scale.

This proved to be a much greater challenge as I started learning about the intricacies of modelling a more complex object. The model didn't look right at first and I realised the scale was off, so my solution to this problem was using the UE4 mannequin as a scale reference.

I found it difficult to model from a single shape and I wasn't able to model the complex features of the tower so I modeled them individually. This allowed me to combine several different tower features, such as embrasure rims, to the tower itself and achieve an accurate look more easily.

Once the modelling process was complete, I created a UV map using the UV editor's 'automatic' function. The resulting UV map was very unorganised and messy, so I rearranged the UVs manually to make them neater and easier to understand. Whilst this solution made it easier to select faces on the model, it also caused some textures to appear misaligned. I was able to fix this problem by recreating some of the UVs using the 'automatic' function.

The early stages of modelling.

Texturing was another tricky process as there were a lot of things that went wrong. Often, textures would look too big and rotated incorrectly. This was due to the UVs being incorrectly sized and rotated in the UV map. Firstly, I resized the UVs using the scale tool and this made the textures appear the appropriate size. To help me fix the rotation problem I created a simple arrow texture and applied it to my entire model. This allowed me to see which textures were rotated and subsequently fix them using the rotate tool.

Certain features looked much better when modeled individually.

The problems didn't end there though, the textures were also missing their bump mapping which gave them a flat look. After trying out different nodes in the Hypershade tool, I found that I hadn't connected the normal files, among others. So, I created layered texture nodes and plugged in my normal, displacement, albedo, ambient occlusion and roughness files. This gave the textures visible bumps and wrinkles and made them look more realistic.

Here you can see the effect of bump mapping on the texture.

Once my model was completely textured I set up an area to capture my renders. I placed a flat plane beneath my model and changed the background colour to grey. Many of my early renders appeared overly dark so I researched how to set up spotlights and make my model easy to see. I placed four spotlights around the model to ensure each side was clearly visible. I made sure to disable shadows for the spotlights, otherwise they would have caused unrealistic shadows. I also added a directional light, which created a shadow on the flat plane, to give the renders some additional depth.

This render comparison shows the importance of a lighting setup.

With the lighting correctly set up it was time to start rendering the scene. Initially, I tried using Redshift to capture my renders, however, using this software displayed watermarks on my renders which wasn't suitable, so I used the standard Maya software renderer instead.

I set up two cameras, one for rendering the entire model and the other for rendering the tower as it appears in the reference picture. Getting the perfect camera angles involved much trial and error as many of my renders looked askew or off-center. When I was satisfied with the camera angles I proceeded to render out my scene using different settings. I rendered my model with and without textures and also with just the normal map to get a variety of different renders.

I then put the renders into Photoshop and created a template where I could showcase all the renders together. I experimented with different colours to see what looked pleasing to the eye and then framed my renders. Going a step further, I created and added my own logo to make my work more professional. At this stage, I learnt a lot about presentation and how effective certain techniques can be when showcasing work.

The end result of my presentation efforts.

All the textures I used are by Quixel. These are the ones I used:

• Slate Roof

• Dirty Brick Floor

• Fort Brick Floor

• Stone Wall

Here is the technical information for my model:

• Verts: 1158

• Edges: 2087

• Faces: 945

• Tris: 2230

• UVs: 2973