Merton Priory book launch

I've now run out of excuses about stopping development on this project as Pat Miller and Dave Saxby's book on the Prior has been published.


The 296 page A4 format book contains full details of the excavations that took place on the site from 1976-1990.


Already a quick flick through has given me insight into problems with the model, particularly the textures, as well as providing details of the stone work of which I was previously unaware. It also cover ancillary building like the mill to the south of priory and a nearby aisled hall which I was previously unaware of.


Below are two images of the model as it exists at the moment, one of the overall site in the 14C and a detailed render of the 14C church. Although evidence for the actual structure is sparse, indeed Pat Miller admitted to me that the Museum of London decided there was insufficient for a reconstruction, I will continue to build the model using the evidence at my disposal and my limited knowledge of the architecture of the period.

Update

Again it's been a while since the last post. I've realized that Dave Saxby's upcoming book is having an affect on the development as it would certainly mean me altering the model. I've also realized that I'm losing momentum with the project so what the hell I'll model it anyway and change it later.
I've created the cloister in front of the chapter house and will update the West and south ranges to incorporate it.
I've also updated the render engine to the latest version Bryce 6.0. The following images show its improved rendering capabilities (Note these are normal mode not Fine!!). Transparency is working as well. The most intriguing update is the integration with DAZ Studio and Poser. This should allow me to have animated characters in the movies.

Infirmary Chapel

It has been a while since my last post. I've been off for a week and have not been idle. Most of the 13th Century building have a new exterior but I've been experimenting with Bryce and have eventually worked out how to get transparent windows. The earlier attempts failed to generate transparent colours as well as not rendering correctly.
The following image of the Infirmary chapel show that the transparency now works

Movies

I've been trying to find a rendering engine to improve the quality of the current movie. My requirements were for speed, quality and simplicity for creating the animation.
Well I've found Bryce 5.0 which was available as a free download (sorry the offer closed yesterday but may come back). Not only is the quality good but it supports Network rendering allowing me to use multiple PC's to create the final animation.
I've not tested the Network rendering or the animation but the quality is good.
This picture shows the quality, with shadows (which I've not used before because of speed) and is fine quality. This still took 3 minutes to render but the network capability should reduce this together with tuning the model.

Movies

Although production of the movie is complete I still intend to render it in Truespace to get the more detailed version. To this end I've separated the Interiors from the Exterior is an effort to increase the animation speed.
This will probably be all right for the chapter house animation but as the priory grows it will again get too complex and slow down again.
So I've decided to produce a low-res version of the chapter house for distance shots. These low-res models might also be placed on Google Earth as well. The way the low-res model is produced is to generate images of all faces of the chapter house and then map these images as textures onto the simplified structure, which in this case in only 6 faces (not including the base).
Hi-Res

Low-Res

The real give away for the low res is you can see the west window through the east window

Columns

Here is the major column from the church. I've no diagrams for the captial or any annulets so I might resue the profiles from the minor column.

Columns

I mentioned that the minor column's annulet pictured in the previous post was wrong. I've now corrected it. The annulet is the moulding in the middle of the column, and this one is called a compass rose annulet as it only appears on the courner of the column and not all the way round.

The problem with the last one is that I got the original moulding's profile dimensions wrong and had to adjust its width so it fitted correctly, which meant that it stuck out too far. Once I worked out where the problem was I corrected it so that this version is now accurate

Movies

I've taken a few days off from creating the model after all the effort to get the movie ready for last Monday.
I would like to thank everyone for their words of encouragement and was grateful for all comments received.
As well as picking up a copy of "A Priory Revealed using meterial relating to Merton Priory" by Lionel Green I also found out that Dave Saxby is soon going to be publishing a more detailed work on the archaeolgy of Merton Priory.
He very generously let me have some of the diagrams from the new book showing some of the moulding recovered from the site and from the foundations of Non Such Palace.
These included a 14C Minor shaft which is very similar to the columns I used in the model of the church. Here however is a a nearly acurate version with capital and annulets (which need to be re done)