When I initially considered the process or workflow that I would employ while modeling this Pagoda, I kind of smirked and thought "this should be simple enough." I mean all I had to do was build the first floor and then duplicate it 4 times right? I soon realized that this was indeed not the case, once I took a more in-depth look at the proportional relationships in the design of this structure. At a glance one can recognize that pagodas have a pyramidal shape, but there is a lot more to these impressive structures. For instance, the balance between the organic and industrial forms creates a visual harmony, which allows them to sit well in most natural landscapes.

While studying the architectural motifs which were present in the design of these structures, I tried to identify areas where I might run into problems during the modeling stage. I observed that the ribs on the roofs for each level did not get smaller in overall scale as the building reached its apex; they decreased in length as their quantities decreased, along with the relative reduction in the surface area of each roof slice. Since I did not have orthographic drawings at my disposal I took some time to evaluate the mathematical exponent(s), or rate(s) at which certain parts of the real life structure reduced in scale, as it reached its pinnacle. After I had assembled a set of reference images and made enough observations it was time to model away.

Naturally, I started constructing this building with NURBS curves. This made it easy to get the proper geometrical profiles; I drew simple curve lines and then generated the geometry by lofting, extruding, or creating boundaries from multiple curves. The perpetuation of all construction history was crucial for facilitating changes between source curves, and the geometrical solids that were created from them. If I decided to edit the main pie-shaped form on any particular roof section, the smaller elements that were generated from their isoparms would change accordingly. With careful planning, I was able to maintain all construction history, so that I did not have to remodel the smaller geometry if major changes were made to the larger ones, which were at the top of the hierarchy. To make the modification of these solids more intuitive I utilized lattice, wire and non-proportional sculpting deformers.

There were some architectural elements that resembled each other, so to save time I recycled some of the geometry. However, instead of simply duplicating and scaling these parts I decided to modify them moderately, as I strived to mimic the subtleties of the original sources' design. Things became easier once the second level was completed (since the first level was the most unique, I could not reuse much geometry from it). Each modeling session was approximately 1 hour long. To save time and sanity I created UV maps at the end of each session. This directly correlated with my desire to construct this structure in a modular fashion, so that a lot of the texture maps from resembling areas could be reused and slightly modified - enabling one to quickly add the texture and color variations that are needed to create a realistic looking architectural model. The texturing phase should not only be relatively painless as a result of proper planning, but it should be enjoyable as well!!!

Thank you,

Emmanuel Flint

Below is a time lapse of a portion of Modeling Session #7 (sped up 300%).