Getting Started on the Project

For my building I chose to do the outside of a chemical plant. I plan to add some fire damage to the buildings as well.

For the vehicle I decided to make an old firetruck. I ended up using the plan for the Opel Blitz 1.75t fire truck from 1955 for the blueprint.

I also looked for a picture of the truck so I could have an idea of what it looks like in 3 dimensions. I was unable to find a picture of the actual vehicle but I was able to find a toy model that was of the same make and a same or at least similar model even if the year may not be correct.

I very roughly laid out where each building would go. The shapes are not yet set to scale and aren't in their exact positions.

Working on setting up the camera.

I finished setting up my camera and fixed the position and scale of my buildings.

I also roughly blocked in the wooden platforms under a couple of the buildings as well as adding the rough shape of the triangular roofs on 3 of the buildings.

Adding Textures

I selected the door frame and the oval window frame on building A and assigned a Phong material to them and I then applied a wood texture to the material.

I created a new Phong material and under color I uploaded a photograph of a door.

I selected the railing on top of building A brought in a blinn and under the eccentricity setting I set the texture to mountain to make the railing look somewhat rough.

I created a lambert and under the color setting added a picture of a brick wall. I selected the front side of the building and applied the material. I then went under bump mapping and added a file to make the brick look more 3 dimensional.

I created a phong and added a file to the color. Under place2dtexture I bumped the repeat UV to 8x8.

I added a picture file of a manhole cover to the manhole in the middle of the alleyway like I did for the door earlier. I then selected my pebble material for the alleyway, created a layered texture, detached the pebbles from the color material and linked it to the layered texture. I then dragged the color texture into the layered texture. I created a 2D file texture linked a dirt map, dragged it into the layer texture and put it over the color texture.

I created a lambert for the blocks. In the UV texture editor I took a UV snapshot of the blocks UV. I took that snapshot into Photoshop and layered it over the texture for my blocks. I used the snapshot as a guide for where to use the burn tool on the texture. Once I was happy with the results I took it back into Maya and added the new texture file to the lambert and then added the lambert to the block.

In Hypershade I opened the existing brick wall material. I created a layered texture, broke the link between the color file and the brick. I linked the layer texture and the brick and connected the color file and the layer. With 2D projection selected I created a file and put a picture of graffiti into it. I selected the layer texture and linked the projection with it. I created another file texture and inserted the file graffiti alpha. I combined the projection nodes into one thing.

I scaled the projector up and rotated it 90 degrees to face the wall.

I created a lambert and applied it to the archway and then added a stucco texture. In the hypershade I covnerted the stucco to file texture. I repeated the same steps to get a snapshot to use in photoshop as I did when working on the corner brick.

In photoshop I added some damage with black paint as well adding a paint chip and crack on the stucco.

I made a lambert and added texture to the roof tiles and I applied a displacement map.

On the inside box of the first building I applied a room render image.

On the back plane I made a blinn and then applied a picture of a buidling to it.

Laying Out the UVs

In hypershade I created a lambert texture and then applied a checker image to it. I selected all the items in my scene and applied the texture to all of them. With the sidewalk selected I turned select UVs on and then unfolded the UVs fixing the distortions on the two sidewalks. I then selected the road portion of the alleyway and projected the image up. I then cut the UVs seperating the vertical part of the road and the horizontal part. I adjusted and scaled the boxes up in the UV texture editor to add resolution.

On the underside of the manhole cover I selected the bottom edges and in the texture editor cut the cover out. I then moved the manhole cover in the texture editor to the 2nd quadrant and scaled it up to add more resolution.

I selected the faces on the left side of building A that were part of the law, not including the cornices and then projected the checkerboard image onto it. I selected the course around the middle of the building and the molding at the bottom and used automatic mapping. I then cut and sewed edges together where ever it was needed.

One the roof I did a planar map in Y and on the top cornice I did an automatic map. I also did an automatic mapping on the front and back side of the building.

I also cut and sewed pieces of cornices where required.

I selected one of the corner blocks and did an automatic map and then sowed the pieces together.

With the mapped block and an unmapped block selected I used transfer attributes to map the second block and repeated the process for all the other blocks.

I converted the oval window from from a NURBs to a polygon and then unfolded the shape.

I selected building C and did an automatic mapping and then sorted, cut and sewed pieces as needed.

I auto mapped one of the roof tiles on the archway, sorted, cut and sewed pieces as needed. and then transferred attributes to the other tiles.

Finishing the Alley Details

I created a large box inside the front left building that covered the window. In hypershade I created a blinn, made it transparent, and applied it to the windows. I deleted the face on the box facing the window so it looks like there is a room behind the window. I duplicated the box twice for the two other buildings with ground floor windows. I turned off two sided lighting and had to reverse the normals for the boxes so they weren't blacked out.

I created a long rectangular cube and stretched it, then added an edge at either end and extruded the ends to make caps. I created a cylinder to make up the rungs for a ladder and then duplicated it to get the other rungs and then duplicate the cube to get the other side of the ladder. I rotated the ladder and laid it on it's side against a building.

I created a cylinder, selected the top faces and extruded it. I scaled the extrusion in and then extruded it downward into the cylinder. I created a nurbs torus to form the handle. I dragged two isoparms to either side of the handle and then detached surfaces.

 I created a cube and flattened it into a board shape and put it in the oval window and then duplicated it a few times.

I created a cube, added 6 edges around the cube and selected every other face and extruded the faces out to create an antenna.

I made a subdiv plane and adjusted it along the side of a building to make it look like dirt had gathered.

Finally I created a plane and put it at the end of the alley to represent a building facing the camera.

Adding Details to the Buildings

I created a 12 sided cylinder and lined it up with the back beveled corner of my back left building. I then duplicated the cylinder, dragged the duplicate below the first cylinder and scaled it outward and repeated the process one more time.

I added some resolution to the front right building and deleted the back and bottom faces of the building. I extruded the faces in the middle of the building that were created when I added resolution. I then extruded the thinner faces again. I added edges on the side of the building so I would be able to tell where to put my doors and windows. I selected the faces of the windows and extruded them backwards slightly, I then extruded that face again, this time just scaling it in and I extruded it one more time backwards. I then extracted the window pane faces. I grabbed the two extracted panes and moved them forward slightly and scaled them up slightly. I extruded the door faces to create the door frame. I extruded the door face inward slightly and I then extruded the front faces of the door frame out slightly.

I added some edges to the bottom of the building and selected the faces at the very bottom of the building and extruded them out slightly. I grabbed the edge in the middle of the door, moved it down slightly and extruded it slightly to form the kick plate of the door. I added some near the top of the door where I want a window to be. I extruded the window face inward, did another extrusion and scaled it inward and then extruded again backwards. I then extracted the window pane and moved it so that it intersected with the window frame. I selected a face right below the window and extruded it out to create a sill.

I duplicated the door knob plate on the other front building to use on the new door. I created a sphere and rotated it so that the pole pointed towards the door. I selected some faces starting from the middle of the pole closest to the door and extruded them out. I extruded it a few more times to make where the knob fits into the door. I added two vertical edges to the middle of the plate and selected a middle face and extruded it a few times to make a slot for a keyhole. I moved the pivot point to the right side of the door and rotated the door so it looked like it had swung open.

Adding Detail to the Arch

I added resolution to the archway under the window with the insert edge loop and then I used the interactive split tool to draw in edges where I wanted my first crack to appear. I then selected the faces of my crack and pushed them in the Z axis.

I added some edges to the left of the window so I had more points to draw the second crack on and then using the interactive split tool I drew my second crack. I selected the faces of the crack and extruded them in ward in the Z axis.

I selected the column of corner blocks on the front building, combined them and made a duplicate of them. I rotated the duplicate so that it lay horizontally, scaled it down slightly, and lined the blocks up with the left side of the arch. I made duplicate of the blocks and moved it to the side of the first set of blocks so that it reached completely across the arch and I also combined both lines of blocks into one. Under the animation tab I went to create deformers>nonlinear>bend and I rotated the resulting deformer 90 degrees in the X axis so that it lay horizontal to the blocks. I then rotated it in the Z axis 90 degrees so that when I adjusted the curvature it would make a vertical arch. I set the curvature to -.5 and lined the blocks up with the arch. I duplicated the blocks to and moved them to the other side and adjusted them to line up with the arch.

I created a pipe, set the divisions to 12 and then deleted the bottom 6 divisions so I had a half pipe. I added some resolution to the pipe and then made a duplicate of it, rotating the duplicate 180 degrees. I adjusted the two halves so that they were interlocking and then combined them. I created a nonlinear bend deformer. After adjusting the curve of the pipes to the roof I used duplicate special to make multiple copies.

Building the Arch and Windows

In side view I selected the front two buildings and combined them. Using the cut faces tool I cut two edges into the two buildings. I adjusted the edges to the height I wanted the arch to be. In the front view I used cut faces again, this time cutting two vertical lines into the buildings. With my view in the middle of the alley, I deleted the middle faces on the two buildings so I could then make a bridge to form the arch. I used bridge to make the arch with the divisions set to 6. I adjusted the curve of the arch and then snapped the top vertices to a grid to make the top of the arch flat. I added two edges to the top of arch. In vertex mode I selected the vertices in the sides of the arch's top and moved them down to round off the top of the arch. In front view I selected all the vertices attached to the arch and moved them up slightly.

After adjusting the bottom vertices a bit I added two edges using the insert edge loop tool and then selected the middle face and hit extract. After hitting extract I moved the face back slightly to create my window pane for later.

Using the edge loop tool I added some edges to the back left building marking where I wanted to make another window. I selected the faces for the window and extruded them inward.

 

 I selected the back alley facing edge of the rear left building and beveled it.

After deleting the unnecessary back faces of the two rear buildings I added some edges to make more windows. I selected four faces on the front of the left building and extracted them inward to create a ledge and I also extracted the four faces.

I selected the edges around the window on the arch and extruded the edges back. Also on the window on the building right under the arch, I extracted it's face as well.

I created a pipe primitive, reduced the divisions to 4 and rotated the shape and adjusted it until it fit the shape of my window. I then used the cut faces tool to create the start of the posts. I added an edge so the posts would start in the middle of the windowsill. I deleted the faces in the center of both the windowsill and the cuts so I could bridge the two sides of the pane with the bridge tool. After bridging the sides to get the posts I created a cube to create a windowsill to stick out from the building slightly. I combined the window pane, frame and windowsill into one item and duplicated it for the 3 other windows. I adjusted the edges in the building itself as needed.

I duplicated the window frame and pane and moved the duplicate over to the window on my bridge. I re-sized it to fit the space width wise and then duplicated the frame and pane again and moved them under the other pane so they overlapped.

On the large window facing the alley I added an edge to the ledge. I selected the inside faces of the ledge and extruded them to create frame detail. I duplicated the sill of one window and dragged it down to my large window to create a windowsill there. I added some edges. I duplicated the windowsill and moved the duplicate to the top of the window. Going back to all the windows I selected their panes and duplicated them and moved them back behind the window pieces so I have somewhere to apply a UV map to later.

I created a pipe, set the subdivisions to 4  and made it into a rectangular shape to start the base of the shutters. I brought in a cube and reduced it down to the size and shape of a shutter and rotated it slightly so it sat in the frame at an angle. I used duplicate special to make the rest of the slats. After combining the slats and the frame I re-sized the shutter so it would be half the size of the window. I moved the pivot to the top corner of the shutter so it would move more like a regular shutter would. I duplicated the shutter and moved the pivot point on that shutter to the opposite corner of the original shutter. I moved both shutters into position at the sides of the window.