To begin with I needed to decide which part of Hawaii was
going to be the focus and how much else was required. After looking at several
maps and researching the events throughout Pearl Harbour I concluded that Ford
Island was the focal point and Battleship Row, alongside Ford Island, were the
necessary components to create.
Within a program called Corel Draw I took an aerial image of
Ford Island and traced a line around the islands shape. Once this line was
finished I was able to save it as an illustrator file and then transfer it into
3DS Max as a spline, this spline could then be transformed into an editable
poly and therefore became a plane.
In order to drag the island down to form a mountain like
shape from the bottom I ended up trialling numerous methods. I attempted to
utilise noise modifiers but that merely caused the plane to warp and become
unusable. I tried extruding the edge down and then adding loops to it in order
to then give some shape to it but it didn’t look rough enough, it ended up being
too perfect, which was not suited to the desired shape. I also attempted to
connect all of the vertices and pull down the central point; this once more
gave a too uniform shape. Inset was another thought however it really didn’t
work, the inset plane just overlapped itself too much due to the volume of
points on the exterior line.
Eventually I bought into 3Ds Max a great reference image I
had previously discovered and decided to try and follow that. I set about
extruding the edges of the initial plane but rather than the method used prior
I manipulated the edge at small intervals to match up to the reference image.
After numerous extrusions I ended up having to connect two points in order to
form a separate drop down area that could be extruded and adjusted by itself.
Once all this was done I went to the side view and did a similar thing, using
the now existing selections of points I merely scaled them appropriately to
match the reference image. Once this was done I had an island shape I was very
pleased with.
As an added feature I decided to include some of the extra
harbours that normally would be attached to the main island of Hawaii, however
due to the fantasy setting I decided that instead of including the entirety of
Hawaii just these extra harbour areas would be enough, the key decision to make
now is how to have them just floating there, as they are too perfect to be
non-man-made they would require some kind of device to stay afloat next to the
island.
Now the island has been crafted it is time to work out the
pieces that will go on top.
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| The reference image used to capture the shape of Ford Island within Corel Draw |
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| The line as traced around the island in preparation for transfer into Max |
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| The line now imported into Max via Illustrator |
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| The first extrusion, several later... |
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| The final extrusion performed and the island has really taken shape |
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