La Corbiere lighthouse |
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| [November 2] It's been two months since I posted a screenshot and this is the first once of the lighthouse interior. It's taken this
long because I don't have any good reference photos of the interior--I've found three photos of the upper stairs and two of
the upper tower but none of the main interior.
The first problem was figuring out the tower's interior diameter--does it follow the exterior slope, or keep the same diameter
from bottom to top? I do know that, at the top, the stairs match the diameter of the upper tower. If the interior walls follow
the exterior, they would have a slope and it seems that it would be difficult to build the stairs with a constantly decreasing
radius. On the other hand, if the walls kept the same diamter the lower walls would be very thick.
I finally decided to keep the interior diameter the same all the way down--I do know that there are two sets of entrance
doors, so the extra wall thickness would allow for this. The window wells are also much thicker at the bottom; a couple
of the reference photos bear this out.
The next problem was how many stairs there are, and where the first stair is located. I know where they start from the
top, and one photo shows how many steps there are to the first window below the upper tower. I had to quess at the riser
height and stair width, but once I had that it wasn't too difficult to build the stairs. |
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| [November 9] I finally figured out a way to get the stringers built, so most of the stairs aren't floating in space. They'll be
missing the under-stair detail (the stringers aren't a solid thickness) and the visible details will be done via textures. With
the two base cubes in place, it's little more than extruding the leading face to match each stair's edge, rotating the face
to match the stair's angle, and raising the face so its top edge lines up with the stair's bottom edge. Easy!
The floor of the upper tower has also been started; it needs a real thickness and a more efficient mesh. Otherwise,
everything's lined up except the entrance interior--it didn't scale correctly and this didn't show up until I added the doors.
It's been scaled a bit, but it'll definitely need more tweaking. The last problem with this area is how to line it up with the
exterior mesh, and which parts of the vestibule belong to which mesh... |
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| [November 10] This is a shot of the staircase from the main floor; the treads don't have their supports and the platform (just
behind the pole in the center) will need its stringer reworked--each new set of stairs rests on the platform. With the stairs
in place, it's time to figure out the physics--should each stair be a separate object, like in La Tourette, or should I remove
collision detection from the stairs entirely and add an invisible ramp instead? |
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| [November 23] This is another view of the stairs, from another point of view and with the landings a bit more finished. I'm still
not happy with the stairs (even in this unfinished state) so I'll probably redo them once the lighthouse is resized--the stringers
look too thick and the stairs are too shallow. |
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| [November 23] A view from the upper part of the tower. The stairs look substantial here, but they're actually cast iron with
perforated treads--the final version'll have an alpha'd texture so more of the lower stairs will be visible. |
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| [November 23] This is another view from the newly resized door. The entry stairs have lost their sides--they only have a
railing--and I've removed one of the stairs to make the tower base shorter. |
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| [November 23] The decorative base of the tower itself was too tall, so it and the windows have been lowered a bit, along with
the door--it looked to be close to 9' tall. There's plenty of detail work to do around the doors and windows, and I'm planning
some secrets bits to give the user something to look for. |
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| [November 23] The current view from the base of the island. The ramp in the center will soon be stairs and the rocks will get a
few more details before they're textured. We're up to 13k verts so far (I thought it was about twice that) so I can add in a lot
more details--La Tourette had around 40k and ran smoothly. |