17/10/23
Moving away from the gazebo, I started blocking out the rest of the environment, starting with the bridge.
I based the bridge of the image on the right. I really liked the zigzag shape but I wanted another area that could look out onto the water so I added a bigger area on one side. In that area, I plan on putting some sort of light source and a bench or two in the corner.
The base of the bridge was very easy to make; I just flattened a cub and extruded it to the shape I wanted. The sides, however, took a few tries to actually get what I wanted. For no particular reason, I decided that I had to make the sides on the same object as the base, which is why it took a while. Using loop cuts, I cut out the outline size of the sides, I started at the end closer to the gazebo as I wanted to connect the sides of the staircase and the bridge together. I made the sides of the stairs straight, then tried my best to measure the same distance for the bridge for the loop cuts, it wasn’t exact, but I could fix it later once the whole thing was made.
UPDATE: I didn’t think it would be an issue at the time, but I ended up with a lot more edges and vertices than I needed because of the amount of loop cuts I was using, which ended up causing a very big issue later on with the UV and texture.
I did the same thing with the bridge, using loop cuts to create the side from the base. There was a bit of an issue adjusting the angle of the curve when I put it in place, as I had modelled it in the centre. I was using soft select to flatten the curve on thebase,e but it ended up changing the curve of the sides completely wrong, losing that nice curve I initially made so I ended up spending a bit too much time adjusting the individual vertices.
I did some research when I was looking at different types of stone lanterns, and I found out that for stone lanterns, there is a proper structure you’re supposed to follow. There are 7 components that make a stone lantern.
From the top, we have the jewel (hoju), support for the jewel (ukebana), the umbrella (kasa) covering the fire box (hibukuro) below, the middle platform (chuudai) that the fire box rests on, the post (sao) and the base (kiso) at the bottom.
I used the same method to make the umbrella as I did with the roof of the gazebo, creating loop cuts from the centre to the corners and then extruding up.
For the fire box, I thought I’d try to use Boolean, as I thought it would be easier than trying to model the corners physically.
I was proved wrong when I tried it the first time, and I got this result. Even after assigning a new shader, it didn’t change, so I decided to just try again. It took 4 tries to actually do a Boolean successfully. I wasn’t actually sure why it had done this, and I was a bit concerned that I would have to end up making the firebox physically.