This is what I have been working through the day and night for. A freelance project requires me to model Fort Santiago aka Intramuros in Manila.

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9 days with Maya.
13688 faces.
6 maps.

The fort itself in Manila


I learnt alot of things from this project. I mean ALOT. I can almost hear the final fantasy style "RRRRRIIIIIIINNNNNGGG~! LEVEL UP~!" within me. But that hallucination might be due to no sleep for past few days.

Modelling a real building is MUCH harder than I initially thought. When you model a concept design, you answer to beauty of the model. You model a real non-fiction building, you answer to beauty AND accuracy. And accuracy can be a b*tch when you don't got alot of reference photos with you.

Many parts of the building people don't usually take photos of, there is no telling how they form up. Theres only assumption and common sense. And I can use only assumption since I fall short of the latter. Proportion is another PITA. Most of the photos taken are in perspective so its hard to use image plane to make the proportion of the building right. Many parts I have to compare photos with one and other in order to gauge thickness of one object in relative to another. This is where I learnt that no amount of photos can be enough as reference. You never know how one photo that seem pretty useless in showing details can ever help you in modelling proportion.

A low quality but rare photo to show how the walls form. This photo also shows a 5th stone pinnacle on the top of the gate. This is absent in all other photos which left me wondering what was there. It probably broke off at some point of time.


Another photo from wiki that shows it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Intramuros_002.JPG

Seemingless less useful photo but helped alot in gauging thickness of walls and objects. Also the only photo I found that shows the left side of the fort gate.



Texturing calls for just as much beauty and accuracy. You can't rely on low rez photos for texture, so be prepared with a humongous texture library. However for this project, I can't do the best texture for every aspect and several parts are actually low rez photos touched in with photoshop and some even not properly unwrapped. I would really want to do them properly if I had given more time. But right now I rather not look at anymore things with "fort", "santiago" or "intramuros" in it. Nontheless thanks to this project, I greatly improved my texturing skills.

I also realised I am a f**king slow worker (yea like I dunno...). If the industry to calls for modelling buildings like this in a matter of such short deadline everytime, I will be dead before I hit 30 years old. I should start planning my insurance now.

The greatest thing I have yield from this project is the momentum to forgo sleep for work once again. I can easily work with 3 hours of sleep a day with 5 hours every other day to make up for energy loss, and 7 hours whenever I feel like a pig. The best time to work at home will be 3am to 8am. The worst working time will be evening cos everyone is back home screaming with the whole HDB flat TV on. To get best quality sleep, go 10pm to 2am.

The last great thing I learnt is that white coffee works wonder than other types. The only thing that even comes close will be Red Bull Classic.