Creating the Hall of a Mansion - Introduction

Okay, lets put the doors in place before we start out with the floors and the stairs. Keep the Level 0 Walls in Layer 1 and the Level 1 Walls in Layer 2, and then switch to Layer 3. Activate the Box tool and bring up the Numeric Panel, use the following settings.



Close down the Numeric Panel and hit Space to create the box. Bring up the Change Surface Panel and create a new surface called “Doors”, give it a brown colour (R: 120 G: 65 B: 30). Set the Specular to 75% and then click OK. Switch to Polygon Mode, and in the perspective Viewport, click to select the two big polygons making up the front and back of this door, like in picture 17.



Bevel these two polygons with the following settings.



First part of the door is finished, and the next step will be to add some detail to the corners of this door. We will create a Cylinder, which we will use as a Slice object.

Keep these polygons selected and give them the Walls_Wood Surface for now. Switch to Layer 4 and activate the Disc Tool, then bring up the Numeric Panel and enter the following settings.

Sides: 48
Segments: 1
Bottom: 4,47m
Top: 4,69



Close down the Numeric Panel and hit Space to create the cylinder. Activate the Mirror Tool and bring up the Numeric Panel, use the following settings.

Axis: Z
Center X: 0
Center Y: 0
Center Z: -2m

Close down the Numeric Panel and hit Space to perform the Mirror Operation. You should now have two of these cylinders, one in each top corner of the door. Put Layer 3 in the background and you’ll know what I mean. Activate the Mirror Tool again, bring up the Numeric Panel and use the following settings.

Axis: Y
Center X: 0
Center Y: 1,025m
Center Z: 0

Close down the Numeric Panel and hit Space to perform the Mirror Operation. Fit these cylinders in the view by hitting “a” now, and working in Back View, drag a lasso around the two bottom cylinders, like in picture 18.



Copy these by hitting “c” on your keyboard, then press “v” to paste them in the same Layer. Activate the Move Tool and bring up the Numeric Panel, enter the following values.



Click Apply once you’ve entered the values. There should now be 6 cylinders in Layer 4. Switch back to Layer 3 where the door is and bring up the Polygon Statistics Panel by hitting “w”. Select the Walls_Wood Surface at the bottom of this Panel, and then click the + to select those polygons. Close down the Statistics Panel and activate the Knife Tool, bring up the Numeric Panel and enter the following values.

Axis: X



Close down the Numeric Panel and hit Space to perform the cut. The selected polygons on the door should now be cut in half, and we need to bevel them once, so activate the Bevel Tool and use the following values in the Numeric Panel.



Keep these polygons selected and put Layer 4 in the background, then activate the “Solid Drill” Tool under the Multiply Tab. Select the Slice Operation and click OK. The selected polygons should now be cut in each corner. We need to remove these small pieces that were cut, so working in Viewport 4 (side view), click on the small pieces one by one to deselect them. Check picture 19 to see if you got it right.



With these polygons still selected, we will perform another bevel operation, so activate the Bevel Tool and bring up the Numeric Panel, then use the following settings.



Deselect everything and bring up the Change Surface Panel, set the surface to “Doors” and click OK. This will give all the polygons the Door surface. Switch to Layer 4 and delete the cylinders, and now it’s time to create a doorknob.

Keep Layer 4 active and activate the Box Tool, then use the following values in the Numeric Panel.



Close down the Numeric Panel and then hit Space to create the box. Hit “a” to fit this box in all Viewports, then press “Tab” to convert the box into a Subpatch.

Before we deform this box, lets give it a surface. Bring up the Change Surface Panel and create a new surface called “Door_Knob”. Give is a yellow colour (R: 250 G: 190 B: 25), set the specular to 75% and activate Smoothing. Click OK to attach the new surface to the object.

Hit the “o” key to bring up the Options Panel, and change the Patch Division to 4, then click OK. Working in Top View, drag a lasso around the right Patch of this box, like in picture 20.


Activate the Smooth Shift tool by hitting “Shift+F” and just right click in any of the views once. Hit Space and deselect everything, then freeze the Subpatch by hitting “ctrl+d” on your keyboard. Enter the Options Panel again and set the Patch Division to 2.

Working in the Back View, drag a lasso around the right half of this Doorknob, like in picture 21. Then check with picture 22 to see that you’ve selected the right polygons.



You should now have 96 polygons selected, and now we need to Smooth Scale these Polygons a bit. In the Modify Tab you should have a few “More” pull-down menus, under one of these you should find the Smooth Scale Tool.

Activate it and enter a value of “–5mm”. Click OK and the selected polygons should shrink a bit. Now we need to deselect some of these polygons before the next procedures.

Working in Back View, drag a lasso around the very right part of this box to deselect those polygons, like in picture 23. Then check picture 24 to see if you got it right.



The amount of polygons selected now should be 32.

Activate the Smooth Shift tool by hitting “Shift+F” and then bring up the Numeric Panel. Enter –5mm for Offset and leave the other settings to the defaults. Close down the Numeric Panel and hit Space to deselect the Tool. Deselect everything and hit “Tab” again to convert the mesh to a Subpatch, and then freeze it again by hitting “ctrl+d”. This doorknob should now have 768 polygons; you can check that in the Polygon Statistics Panel. Picture 25 shows my finished Doorknob.


Before we union this doorknob with the door, we need to move it a bit. Activate the Move Tool and bring up the Numeric Panel, then use the following values.



Cut the doorknob out of Layer 4 by hitting “x”, then switch to Layer 3 and paste it here with “v”. We can’t just use the Mirror Tool this time, because then the doorknobs would end up on the opposite side. What we need to do is simply copy the door we have in Layer 3 and paste it in Layer 4, so do that now. Keep Layer 4 activated and bring up the Numeric Panel for the Move Tool, then use the following settings.



Click Apply and the door should move. Cut it out from Layer 4 and paste it back to Layer 3. Now we can Mirror these doors, so activate the Mirror Tool and bring up the Numeric Panel. Set the axis to X and the centre values at 0, then close down the Numeric Panel and hit Space to perform the operation. 4 doors should now be in place, but we need 2 more for Level 0.