Computer Science 3710

The Taj Mahal

Claire Fritzler

In all of my schooling this project comes pretty close to one of the more fun ones. I decided to model the Taj Mahal. I have always had an interest in architecture, and buildings aren not anywhere as difficult to model as a biotic being. I decided on the Taj Mahal because I find it to be a rather beautiful building, and it provided more of a challenge than most modern architecture that we see today (ie: the Empire State Building).

Step 1: Install Blender

Step 2: Watch multiple YouTube tutorials to figure out how to do anything...

Step 3: Modelling:

I started my modelling off by making the domes. This was actually fairly simple. By removing the bottoms and stretching/scaling the tops of the spheres I was able to produce these domes. I made the large one, then copied it and scaled four more. All of these domes where then added to cylinders.

To make the main body of the building I took a square and remove the four corners. I then made a face using the remaining sides. The five domes were then attached to the body.

Next came making the arches. After much trial and error, I ended up using a torus, cut in half and scaled. I then added the torus to three rectangles to make the frame. I then copied this piece and joined one to each side of the main body (I also learned that all four sides of the building are the same).

Once the main part of the building was done, I made the four towers (well, I actually made one, and made three more copies of it). This was done using a cylinder, which I stretched and scaled. I added three toruses to make the rings. The top, again, was a sphere which I cut the bottom off of and stretched the top of to make something similar to the domes.

I finally added some small details to the rest of the building. These were made with a stretched and scaled cylinder and smaller versions of the domes that were attatched to the body of the buildings.

Finally everything was added together to get this:

Now to make things look pretty by adding colour and lighting:

And Voila!

This was a very interesting project, the hardest part of this project was deciding what to make. I Enjoyed working with Blender and learning how to use Blender was surprisingly easy, especially once you learn how to use all the hot-keys.