Assignment 2 presentation and progress report

 

Here is the presentation and the progress report of assignment 2 all baked in to one. I chose to model a 12^th century baptismal font. At least I thought it was a baptismal font during the entire process of making it, only to find out after some further research that it is in fact a “Piscina”! the Piscina is a drain used by the church to dispose of holy water and to wash the communion vessels, usually they are connected with the foundation of the church so that the water is disposed on holy ground. This particular pascina was made by master of stone work Hegvald, Sjonhem church in the first half of the 12^th century.

My mistake was to associate the object with the other baptismal fonts as a themed section of the museum! So my model is a font with piscima influences and resembles more the design of baptismal fonts made during the late part of the medieval era than the ones in the 12^th century, as those were made big enough for a whole baby to be bathed in.

The visual style I was going for was that of games like skyrim, I wanted modified reality. In the case of skyrim it is hardly even modified reality but rather trying to capture the culture and time period that the font or piscimal portraits as it is. Keeping in mind that the object would not be quite so old as It is now in a skyrim like setting, I kept the silhouette intact and restored parts of the patterns that were destroyed.

The biggest risk with using this object in the setting is that it is an object directly linked to a religious practice that is one of the largest in the world, so I do not want the symbolic of the piece to too specific as far as religious meaning is concerned. But I think that the context of the symbols on this font are not relevant enough for modern people today, and the symbols are vague enough to be inserted in to a constructed spiritual setting in a game. There are no visible crosses and the people depicted in the reliefs are portrayed in a way that is quite universal for medieval folk.

The positive factor that is enforced by using a religious item is that it can be used to create associations to spiritual proceedings and rituals, that in a fictional setting will lend some credibility and easy the players immersion in the game world.

I was perhaps not as thorough as I should have been when making this edge flow, but this was to the first iteration that I made, in that one I made the font in separate pieces. A bad idea I was later told by someone with more experience than me.  

When modelling I was at first quite worried about the complicated relief of shapes and patterns on the object, but in the end I decided that the vital part that I should focus my poly count towards was the silhouette. After talking to people with knowledge of baptismal fonts of the era, I gathered that the most important decorations were placed on the head of the font, so I decided to work by that same rule and make the most actual in-model made details on the head of the font and create the rest with normal map.

 

The framework on the specular map is from before I completely optimized the poly count of the model. I could still use the same maps. 

I have spent a lot of hours on iterating this model! And even more on iterating the uv maps! It has been really frustrating but at the same time extremely useful in educating me in the process of modelling and texturing. I also got to put my photoshop experience to good use once more, which was nice because it gave me somewhat of a confidence boost that I had some pre-existing knowledge of use.