Clonmore Shrine

building the shrine

The build for this model was interesting and a bit of a challenge. The shrine was recorded using only flat photography and RTI recording. Without a massively high poly model to start from this project allowed for a measure  of creativity. I started by tracing high def images in photoshop to create stencils for the models of each face. It was important to be diligent while tracing the faces as these stencils would be the only reference I'd bring in to 3DSmax. I also had to fit these images exactly to the faces of the model, so any mistakes would be glaringly obvious.

In 3DSmax the stencils were used to create each wall of the shrine. The end results had surprisingly high poly counts, though given the complex borders it was necessary. After modelling the walls they were UV  unwrapped, this was done manually to ensure there was no distortion of the walls faces and to facilitate applying the textures. 

The RTI photography provided highly detailed Normal and Diffuse maps of each wall. These were brouht in to photoshop and placed on to stencils of the corresponding wall pieces. These textures were then exported and used to create the final model seen above.