Over the past couple of weeks I have been working on the tiles in image 1 & 2 that I mentioned in my previous blog post. This included the floors, walls, piers, columns, capitals, groin vaults, and windows of the nave, aisles, triforium and clerestory. I gathered some photos of the nave area of different cathedrals and churches, then made a moodboard to refer to when creating my assets. These photos in the moodboard below show the many variations of piers, columns and floor levels which I have considered using for my own assets.
I started off by modelling the arcade of the nave (ground floor), which could be later be used for the triforium (first floor) as well. Encyclopedia of Art and Design defines an arcade in Romanesque architecture - “an arcade consists of a row of arches, supported on either columns or piers. Columns were either drum columns (if small) or hollow core (if large). Piers were typically built out of masonry and were either square or rectangular.” (ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ART and DESIGN, 2018) I made sure to keep the piers very thick, as they’re there to support the elevation of the architecture. To be clear on what the difference is between a column and a pier, a column is a cylindrical vertical support that usually tapers towards the top in the manner of a tree trunk. Conventional columns that follow the traditional Greek Classical Orders feature a base, shaft, and capital. Whereas a pier acts as vertical supports for masonry constructions such as arcades. (Dickerson, 2013, p.12)
Once I was happy with the structure of the arch, piers and columns on the right, I tidied up this area so it could be duplicated and mirrored over to the left side. I then duplicated the left and right piers and columns together, which were rotated 180 degrees and fitted onto the inside of the archway of the aisle. I made sure that this developed tile was tidied, ready to start on the aisle’s groin vault.
A groin vault, “also sometimes known as a double barrel vault or cross vault, is produced by the intersection at right angles or two barrel vaults.” (Tom, 2012) I found this part of the architecture to be quite challenging and spent a lot more time on this than I thought. I started off with some very basic shapes, to make sure that I had the right proportions to fit both the nave arch and aisle tile. I then duplicated the bottom faces of the arch three times and rotated them to fit the left and right sides of the vault and the back wall of the aisle. I then moved on to connecting some edges from the middle of the vault to each of the arch vertices to create a rounded shape in the vault. I adjusted the height of the vault and the curve of the arrises “(the four diagonal edges formed along the points where the barrel vaults intersect)” (Tom, 2012) to match the reference photos as much as I could.
Once I was happy with the shape of the vault, I started working on the aisle tile and the columns that would support the arches at both sides of the vault. I didn’t need to do much to this tile except for tidy it up so it would fit with the columns and the vault. I planned on creating a window to fit in the middle of the aisle wall, which could also be used in the clerestory tile, so I will be adding this in when the whole tile is almost complete, to make sure the window will fit in the clerestory space as well. Once all the columns and piers were in place, I created a base that connected them together, also with an edging along the top, like you can see in many of the moodboard photos. While building this tile, I have had a cylinder object acting as a player character in the scene, to check proportions of the structure as I go.
Once this part of the tile was finished, I then moved onto the triforium area. As well as having an arcade on the ground level made up of bulky piers, there would also be an arcade on the “second level of smaller arches, often in pairs with a column between the two.” (Spanswick, 2014) I was able to duplicate the tile I had already made, and resized it to fit the height of the triforium base tile. I could then work on a column that would separate two arches, with a barrier along the edge.
With most of this tile finished other than the clerestory, I moved onto creating the left end tile that would be placed at the open edge of this tile. Again, I was able to duplicate a lot of what I had already made to create this tile. Creating the barrier was slightly different as it was connecting to two different sized columns of the architecture, so I took some time to remodel this part so it would work better with the area. Once I finished this left end tile, all I would have to do to create the right side would be to mirror the whole tile.
At the end of this week, I placed the tiles together with a few lights in the scene to make a quick render, so I could check that everything fits together correctly with no open edges. This gave me a preview of how the final modular environment could look for this area of the cathedral.
On Friday the 14th December I took a trip to St Albans cathedral in St Albans and took as many photos as I could for reference. Unfortunately, due to a lack of parking in the area around the cathedral, we didn’t make it in time for the guided tour, but we ended up spending a couple of hours there anyway discovering each part of the building. The architecture was absolutely awe-inspiring and the photos I have taken have helped me solve some of the issues I’ve had while modelling certain parts of my modular environment, such as how the architecture looks at the west and east end, what the old wall murals looked like, ornamental details in the floor tiles and much more. The stone carvings are so intricately detailed which I hope to demonstrate as much as I can within my assets. Below are just a few of the photos I took on the day that I will be using as reference for my architectural design.
After my visit to the cathedral, I became very ill with a chest infection over the weekend which lasted until Wednesday 19th December. In my project milestones, I had planned to come into university during this week to start texturing as I can’t access Substance Painter at home. As I was very unwell, I decided to stay at home instead and rest as much as possible. Regardless of being ill which has set me back, I believe that I still would’ve been behind on my work because I have over scoped for the past couple of weeks. Although this has happened, I believe that I can reuse the assets I have made so far for other tiles very quickly, which should help me get back on track with my next set of milestones. I will be finding a couple of days within the Christmas break when I can, to catch up as much as possible.
I have almost completed the tiles in image 2 from my previous blog post and I have the aisle tile and floor tile finished which were seen in image 1 of my previous blog post. I won’t be working on the other tiles in image 1 for now as they are less important to the structure of the environment, but I will work on them later in the project if I have some spare time. I spent a total of around 16 hours on these tiles over the past couple of weeks. All I need to do with these tiles now is to create a window that can be used for the aisle tile and clerestory wall, check and sort out the smoothing groups and assign material IDs ready for UV unwrapping. I’ll be trying to finish these tasks before January 2019.
Bibliography
Dickerson, M. (2013) “The Handy Art History Answer Book” Canton, MI : Visible Ink Press.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ART and DESIGN. (2018) “Romanesque Architecture: Characteristics, History, Buildings” [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/architecture/romanesque.htm. [Accessed 21 December 2018].
Spanswick, V. (2014) “A beginner's guide to Romanesque architecture.” [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/medieval-world/romanesque1/a/a-beginners-guide-to-romanesque-architecture. [Accessed 21 December 2018].
Tom, B. (2012) “romanesque-architecture-15-728” [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/BinumolTom/romanesque-architecture-14165982 [Accessed 26 November 2018].
Photo References
Farber, A. (2018) “nave_elevation” [ONLINE]. Available at: http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth109/arth109_sl19.html [Accessed 21 December 2018].
Pinimg.com (2018) “b35e348edffbb6f86cbd4155963ae7e3” [ONLINE]. Available at: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b3/5e/34/b35e348edffbb6f86cbd4155963ae7e3.jpg [Accessed 21 December 2018].
Sullivan, M, A. (2007) “0072” [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.bluffton.edu/homepages/facstaff/sullivanm/france/conques/stefoy/int.html [Accessed 21 December 2018].
Sullivan, M, A. (2007) “0093sm” [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.bluffton.edu/homepages/facstaff/sullivanm/france/conques/stefoy/int.html [Accessed 21 December 2018].
terragalleria.com (2003) “fran7594” [ONLINE]. Available at: https://www.terragalleria.com/europe/france/burgundy/picture.fran7594.html [Accessed 21 December 2018].
ujecdent.com (2018) “romanesque-architecture-interior_romanesque_interior_google_search_0_romanesque_pinterest” [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.ujecdent.com/romanesque-architecture-interior.py [Accessed 21 December 2018].
Wikipedia (2018) “Durham_Cathedral._Interior” [ONLINE]. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regional_characteristics_of_Romanesque_churches [Accessed 21 December 2018].
Wikipedia (2018) “Peterborough_interior” [ONLINE]. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_regional_characteristics_of_Romanesque_churches [Accessed 21 December 2018].
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