I was inspired to model some sort of timber building in the Chinese style one day when reading an architectural book and it became my first project in 2.8. I have begun without deciding on the purpose of the building nor its overall layout (which may be a bad idea).
Modeling began on a section of the front facade and I started from the cylindrical pillar up. The building’s internal structural elements would be modeled along with the exterior as I hope to present a more complete and detailed representation of the architectural style. Mind that the layout of the support frame is based on Chinese architecture during the Ming and Qing Dynasties as the two periods are much closer to present therefore more structures of that style are preserved which I may draw reference from. However, the look and feel of the structure will be closer to the architecture of the more ancient Tang and Song Dynasty and perhaps even Japanese seeing as they are more rustic and have a more modest yet graceful look.
Note that I do take liberty in altering the design as I see fit since this is an artistic interpretation at its core and not an architectural recreation.
Started on the corner, I copied a section of the facade and begun work. Note that the distance between the corner pillar and the adjacent pillar are two thirds of the distance between the. I used the distance from one bracket stack to another as units of length, between pillars of the facade there are two bracket stacks and three spaces and on the corner it’s one bracket stack and two spaces.
Heres the main framework in place, also touched up the beam tips to match their shape in my reference. Time to move onto the insanely complex corner bracket stack.
I went through a few Chinese articles in order to understand how these brackets work, I took a considerable amount of time just tweaking every individual piece so that they look balanced. it was quite an effort but I’m very happy with the results on it at the end.
Begun work on the roof support beams, apparently one of the hardest tasks in this project.
The uniform section was made with ease by array modifiers after modeling one element, but the challenge lies in the corners.
To summarize, every round beam on the corners fan out from one pillar, the end cross-section is round and each piece is distinct.
I attempted to use modifiers, curves, and lattices but none of the results out of these methods are satisfying so I began to do them individually by hand.
Building upon the second roof level (basically copied the first level)
Stone column bases are one of the most important components as they keep the timber at an elevated position from the ground to avoid rotting from moisture. I can use these bases to visualize the layout of pillars in the model. Here is an image I took in the Forbidden City as reference:
The bases in the Forbidden City are actually quite minimalistic compared to some of the more elaborately sculpted pieces which have engraved decorations patterns. It’s simply circular at top and a square at the base.
much progress has been made this week. I’ve used the array and mirror modifier to complete the facades on all sides, tweaked the structure to fit, added the timber structure under the main roof, completed windows and doors, and layed down the roof supports.
Jumping into the roof structure, traditional Chinese roofs are supported with a timber structure quite different from western wooden constructs. Here is an image illustrating the difference.
are you specialize in architecture or wood structure?
Actually I’m not specialized at all, at most I’m a random highschooler who happened to have visited the Forbidden City in Beijing this summer and got addicted to Chinese architectural books. I began my interest in architecture three years ago after a visit to Italy but never got anywhere and only months ago have I started on anything. Researching was overwhelmingly joyful as I had to dig into every detail of the structure of these buildings.
blender or EEVEE
Blender, I’m still unfamiliar with EEVEE atm and personally I enjoy PBR.
Your Chinese architectural skills must have leveled up 10x since starting this study.
I started with practically none and my knowledge grew significantly along with the project.
Modeled roof tiles and begun exploring how to place them with modifiers.
A lazy approch to building roofs would be to just place cylinders over the roof or just use displacement materials. I decided to do it the proper way and model the individual elements cause why the hell not?
There are three classes of tiles on a Chinese building, the cylindrical tile「筒瓦」, the cylindrical tile with cover「瓦当」, and the plate tile「板瓦」(from left to right). I’ve made them using the boolean modifier and manually cleaned up the geometry.
It took loads of experiments and tutorials before I settled down on how to place these elements. Originally I was thinking about scattering these elements over a plane and use a lattice deformation. But using the hair partical generator wasn’t nearly as customizable and simple as I’ve expected. After hours of fruitless messing around I’ve decided to array my tiles along a curve then further arraying the resulting row.
The effects are not exactly up to expectations as the lattice deformation produced the side-effect of unwanted distortion to my tile elements which are dissatisfying. However, I would tolerate the imperfections for the time being as a I’ve yet to discover a better method for the job.
Installed more tiles onto the roof and modified roof incline. Up to this point work on this project has been done on a Macbook Air, which is slowly becoming insufficient in handling this heavy file.
At this point we have nearly 12 million faces on the model and any work is becoming increasingly computationally intensive. It takes forever to do anything and I am considering moving work to my PC some point next week
