So, this is the deal. I'm loving the occlusion renders and the more time I work on just the model, the more I like it and want to tweak it out in dozens of different ways.

Oh, and one thing RE the two frames above, they show a slight difference in how the back of the clock mechanism is treated. In the top one, the clockworks are fully exposed. In the lower one, I've built a back plane for the clockworks. My thought behind that was that it might mellow out the complexity somewhat and allow the clock faces to read as coherent shapes. I don't know if it works at all.



But I get a little bit worried when I throw it into the scene. I've got to take into account that the level of detail on it vs. the rest of the buildings is huge, but sometimes I wonder if it doesn't fit.

In the last three frames I threw on textures that were already in the scene, but that are by no means final textures. I guess that helps a little bit. Still, the whole structure is so spindly and intricate and....just plain odd. Of course, it's supposed to be odd. It's a different object than all of the others in the shot. But there's a line between being different and being part of a different world. I'm afraid that I'm really close to that line.

One last note is that the camera move may need to change a bit. The last frame is not from the active camera and it's really the only one that lets us see the tower.

Hmm. A lot of second guessing, a lot of thinking that sometimes your babies are monkeys. I'll explain what that means a little later.

Clocktower Updates

I'm too tired to talk much about these. They show some improvements but also need work. I'll get on that as soon as I can.

Modeling Clock Faces

I jumped from the rough clock face Illustrator designs into the modeling and I'm okay with the results. I'm not through the moon, though, as the scale on them probably needs some tweaking. It's hard to tell how much of the detail I've put into these is going to show. If it's just going to get lost, all those beveled edges and extra gears are gonna have to go.

I'm also wondering if the style I picked is too complex for where the tower sits in the scene. I'd been thinking that as it's so large (to scale the clock face is a good 5' tall), I could use one of the more detailed clock concepts. I'm not sure that that's the case, looking at this first pass. Still, I don't have the back of the clock faces figured out, nor are there any textures on these. There's probably a lot I can do to make these current designs work a bit better in the scene. I will try and do some of that tomorrow. No promises, though, as it be a holiday and all.

Cheers.

Oh, one shout-out I wanted to toss out was to Davvey, over on Highend3d. I used his pretty amazing Gear Generator MEL Script for some of the cogs in the clock face. I didn't dive too deeply into it but what was great is that it gave me correctly interlocking teeth on a couple of the cogs. Thanks, Davvey!

Clock Faces, Round One

I'm too tired to type much, so I'll let these incomplete clock face explorations do the talking.

Cheers.