CPSC3710
Brad Tudor
001127420
February 12th, 2009



The Calgary Tower

(in the middle of nowhere!)






Introducton



After briefly trying Google Sketch-Up, I switched to Blender 2.42 to create my model. When I was first given the project description, I tossed it aside and didnt worry about it for quite some time. About 3 days till the due date to be exact! I had my work cut out for me, as I underestimated the time I needed to spend on this project. I ended up hard at it for the next 72 hours and spent about 15 hours total on it. For such a simple model, that is alot of time. However, this was my first time using any kind of Ray editing software, and most of that time was spent learning how to actually use it!


I obtained the source pictures from varios websites and will display them in links below.

Source Picture #1
Source Picture #2
Source Picture #3

I obtained the textures I used from varios websites and will display them in links below.

Shiny Green Base #1
Shiny Blue Window
Concrete Floor
Cloudy Sky

My Experience



I must say, I quite enjoyed my time learning the Blender software. I kept finding out new techniques on how to do things which made me start blazing through my model. I only regret not starting this project sooner, as I would have had more time to tinker around and learn more functions that could have helped me out and made my project better. I really enjoyed the building aspect of it... The lighting, camera and all that jazz, I have no clue what im doing, but the building of the model was actually fun.



Satiscfaction



Am I satisfied with my final renders? NO, I am not... for one, i think I did too many things the improper way and wasted too much time doinig things the hard way, which ultimately didnt make things look any better. Another thing that really irked me was how I would put tiny details into my model, and they would not show up in the final render! Here is an example:


Notice how I put the (railings) around the outer edge on the brown platform?



Look how they turned out in the final render... Nothing!



I also found things quite tedious and was probably doing the task "the wrong way". Here is an example:


I am selecting each face one by one to be colored black... this took me about 20mins as I also had to do both black(grey) parts too. Again, there was probably an easier way to do this, but I did not know how and wasted time.



Conclusion



When all is said and done (and I hand this in exactly at 12:00!), I will look back on this experience and remember my struggles with getting things to work properly, and the tedios tasks I had to do. However, I will also remember my excitement when I discovered something new, and how I enjoyed the majority of the project! :)



Original Source




Final Render