Building a Stadium Environment
– How to model a section of seating in your stadium
Open the reference picture provided. ...\Employability Skills Part 2\class02> stadium cross section.jpg
NOTE- you will not always have a cross section of your stadium to work with. Find a good reference picture that shows the different levels of your stand and keep it open to refer back to.
I personally do not like to use Rotoscopes because they are not always available to use. Instead of a Rotoscope, I have created a grid and rotated it 90 degree so it stands vertical and applied my reference picture of the stadium cross section to it. The size of my grid started as the same size as the image to ensure a prefect fit of the image onto the grid. I then created a 2 m X 2m cube to use as a reference to represent the height of a person. Assuming this image is to scale, I then scaled the grid down to match the 2m X 2m height of the cube to the silohette of the person in the image.
Creating a Stand:...\class02\PROJECT_how_to_build_a_stadium\Scenes>scene01_start.scn
– Create a cube 1x1x1 meter as a reference to scale
– Model>Primitive> Polygon Mesh> Cube
– notice that the grid in XSI matches to the same size as your 1x1x1x meter cube.
– XSI does not have a setting where you change and set your desired unit of measurement. XSI has its own unit of measurement, so we must ASSUME that when a an object like a cube is created it already has a measurement. Ie: 1 inch, 1 foot, 1 meter etc.
– create a second cube 1x1x1x meter, name it stand_01
– Model>Primitive> Polygon Mesh> Cube
– the second cube will be the first section of you stadium
*NOTE- this is where your basic skills as an artist becomes important. All objects can be broken down into basic shapes, cube, cylanders, cones, etc (basic primitives)
*NOTE- when nameing your objects, do not to use spaces or capital letters. Spaces and capital letters create errors when you hand off your project to a programmer. This rule also goes from naming textures.
– Go into vertex mode and make adjustments to the cube so it matches the first step of your stadium according to your reference picture
– If you do not have a cross section of your stadium, select your 1 m reference cube and hit enter. You know that 1 m = 100 cm and the average height of a step is about 20 cm. Under Geometry> Subdivision
– U- 1
– V- 1
– change 1 to 5.
– by using round numbers, it will be easier to make your guestimates.
– Ie: 1m = 100cm
– 100cm divides evenly by 2, 4, 5, and 10
– so if the height of an average step is 15 cm, round the measurement up to 20. 100cm/15cm= 6.667 where 100cm/20cm= 5 therefore a subdivision of 5 is better to use compared to 6.667.
– a person is an average 1.89 meters tall therefore use a 2 meter cube to represent the height of a person.
– Use a 1 meter cube to represent how much space a person would take up while sitting in the stands. Therefore if there are 10 rows of seats in your reference picture, the seats must be 10 meters deep.
– in the perspective viewport, go into polygon mode and select the top of your cube
– invert the selection and delete
– In the video game industry, all your geometry needs to load as fast as possible. Therefore, as artists, we need to use our polygons in a creative and efficient way. At some point during a project, you will be asked to reduce the number of polygons in your scene. The less number of polygons the game needs to load, the faster it will load. People are impatient, they just want to play the game and have fun as soon as possible. The less amount of time people have to wait the happier they will be. We must be aware of the polygon count. Unseen polygons must be deleted.
– Ie: the seats in the stadium do not have to be modeled, they will be respresented with a texture
– go into edge mode and select the edge closest to the reference picture
– in the right viewport, Extrude (hotkey- Shift D)
– move your extruded edge to match up with your reference picture
– repeat extrude and move until the outline of your stand is complete
– be aware of areas that will not be seen, do not create them
The Playing Surface
– The playing surface will determine the length of your stands.
– There is a space between the playing surface and the stands. We do not know the size of this space, therefore you can make an educated guess using your reference pictures and your knowledge of the human body and its relation to the 1 m cube.
– Depending on what sport your stadium respresents, will deterimine the size of your playing surface.
– Soccer Playing Surface Size- 110 meters x 75 meters
– NHL Hockey Rink Size- 30 meters x 61 meters
– NFL Football Field Size- 109.7 meters x 91.4 meters with endzone
– in the case of a Football field, we can not round off our numbers. This needs to be an exact measurement. Why? Because in our case, XSI units represent 1 meter. A football field is measured in feet, 360 feet x 160 feet. As an artist, it is your responsibility to work with programmers to establish a unit of measurement. Ie: cm, yards, inches, feet, meters, fathoms, acres etc.
– in this tutorial, we will be using a soccer playing surface: 110mx75m
– Model>Get> Primitive> Polygon Mesh> Grid
– U Length- 110
– V Length- 75
– name it- playing_surface
– hide your reference picture
– scale stand_01 to be the length of your playing surface.
*NOTE- scale your stand to the be the length of the playing surface not the length of your playing surface and the space between your stand and the playing surface. We will be using the space between the playing surface and the stands to make the curved seating area of the stadium.
– now we will add divisions in our stand to create staircases
– go into edge mode and select all your edges
– Model>Modify>Polygon Mesh>Subdivide Polygons/Edges
– Iterations- 11
*NOTE- use your reference pictures to determine the number of stair cases you will need. I am using 11 because it will give me the 5 staircases I need, and I will not have one of my staircases on the edge of my stand. It is important not have have staircases on the ends of your stands because if they are on the ends of your stands it cause difficulties when we go to make the curved seating of our stands.
– Select your 1 meter reference cube and place it next to the 3rd division on your stand
– go into vertex mode and select every second row of verticies. Do not select the last row of verticies. We do not want to move the last row because that will make our stand longer than we want
– move your verticies over to the edge of your one meter reference cube
– select all your stair cases and move them to the approximate center of your stand.
the tutorial continues on to create tunnels, placing them in the stands, creating rounded corners to the stadium
and how to texture a stadium, make alpha textures, fake lights for a game, vertex painting, and grass for the playing surface.
