How to approach modelling chinese architecture?

[thegr8one123]

Hi im currently planning to create a new 3d environment in UDK, my plan was to create 'hills in the mist' type theme with a fog layer underneath a mountain landscape to make it look high, my plan was to modell a chinese type temple and put a long steep said of ancient staircases the wind up to the temple, but im stuck at modelling the temple, here is the reference picture im using [IMG][/IMG]


as you can see the roof is rather tricky.. any ideas how I would go about modelling it?

[thegr8one123]

heres an update if anyone is intrested, and also would be nice some feedback, and please I love to hear constructive critsism and say is anything is wrong

[thegr8one123]

anyone out there lol?

[Graylord]

This is a forum, not a chatroom. You cannot expect instant responses to everything.

As for suggestions, I would suggest you work on the arcs in the corners a lot more. I would also add a few more edgeloops to the roofs in order to give them a bit more of a curve.
And compared to the rest of the model, the details of the windows in the top parts will give a lot more polycount than needed, does the windows need to be open? Could it be a part of a material instead? How about just using a plane with an opacity mask?

Also it looks like you have used pro-boolean in some locations without cleaning up the mesh afterwards.
Research topography and edgeloops, as N-gons like that will absolutely destroy your model.

[thegr8one123]

Thanks for the feedback, I recently tried to use ur suggestion, but couldn't get the material to be see-through for some reason, but since the this model is going to be the only building in udk, I dont think poly count could be an issue as long as i keep it within requirements, heres an update on the model its about 10,000 polys, I think it looks ok considering ive never modelled chinese structures and im not the best modeller in the world, only 1 year experience for college, anyway the hard part comes now which is unwraping for texture and then texturing which i completly suck at..

[IMG][/IMG]

[thegr8one123]

if anyone has tips for texturing this, go ahead and say cause im stuck:P