Gart230 Blog- Week two, Gathering references

This week I decided to focus on getting myself into a position where I felt comfortable starting to block out the environment. As with previous projects I feel like I may spend a little longer than others on the planning stage of the project but I do not feel this has a negative impact on the project as I prefer to have a solid understanding of my subject matter before commencing modelling as opposed to having to constantly adapt the project as I learn more about the scene later down the line. I started by trying to find references of the environment from the film itself however the way the scenes are shot are very character centric and thus the amount of usable environmental references from the film and related media is remarkably minimal. To get around this I decided to research the place where the scene was shot instead which turned out to be AIRE bathhouse in new York. Whilst looking into the AIRE bathhouse I ran across this website ‘AIRE Ancient Baths – Architizer‘  it contained numerous excellent reference images as well as an incredibly helpful floorplan of the venue which I intend to model the project against as it should help with scaling and positioning of objects as well as providing a definitive point of reference for how the environment should look as I have found that the space has undergone many alterations over the years leading to features being added and removed on a regular basis and thus without setting a marker as to the specific configuration of the layout that I was working towards I am liable to get very confused very quickly.

I have created a folder on my computer where I am storing any and all reference material I can find so I can refer back to any of the material I have found later on in the project. The only issue I foresee in using references from the actual location and not the film is that the distinctive lighting from the film is not present in the location itself and thus I may struggle when it comes to lighting the scene in engine. Having my references be more neutrally lit is however beneficial as it gives me a much better look at the scene as a whole and should all me to more accurately recreate the textures of present in the environment without the discolouration caused by the blue wash lighting in the film. In the upcoming week I hope to focus on getting the basic environment blocked out using the floorplan along with the references to create basic shapes in place of the main objects and architectural features present within the scene.