Coming off the tail-end of Week 1, I decided to do some research into the recently released “Hogwarts Legacy” video game released by Avalanche Studios this year. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t feature Diagon Alley, but it does include Hogsmeade, another wizarding shopping district from the franchise. I watched a YouTube video (TmarTn2, 2023) touring Hogsmeade in-game, giving me an idea of the hap-hazard and wonky architecture featured within Harry Potter, as well as the incredulous details within the models such as moss, peeled paint, and rusted metalwork to give a sense of age to the buildings. The video also gave me a solid example of industry standard modelling and texturing, giving me something to aspire to with my project.
With all my initial research gathered, I needed to start designing my shop. I initially started off trying to sketch out some initial house designs inspired by my reference sheets in Adobe Photoshop, however I quickly became aware of the pitfalls of perfectionism within digital drawing; this wasn’t a workflow I usually use to generate initial ideas having come from a more traditional art background; therefore, I resolved that I would feel more comfortable with the messiness of pencil on paper.
I played around with window size and style, columns, brickwork, door design and different roof slopes, piecing together notable Victorian motifs from my reference boards. It was also important to play around with different silhouettes since it gives character to the buildings – this was something I learnt in context of characters during my GAR101 concept art module, supported by an article by Xavier Coelho Kostolny I read at the time (Coelho-Kostolny, 2020).
Whilst sketching out concept for my shop, I made sure to remind myself to adhere to the brief – “The architectural style MUST be Victorian in nature and fit in with Diagon Alley from the Harry Potter films, this includes all the architectural features and all of the additional props made for the shop display and the building dressing”. If this was an actual product for a client, the most important thing is sticking to the IP and adhering to their requirements.
Although it was useful sketching out ideas in my sketchbook, I felt as if I needed to take some of these designs into the 3rd dimension so I could see how they take shape as physical mock-ups rather than 2D sketches. The program I decided to use for my mock-up was Autodesk Maya, which required some file set-up before I started blocking out.
I started off by setting the unit measurement for my blockout file to centimetres and set my grid as 100 units per metre, the same as in Unreal Engine which I will be eventually exporting my shop model to. This reduces the chance of any compatibility issues from the get-go which is crucial when exporting between programs.
My next task was to figure out the scale of the house, which was made much easier with the use of a Scaleman, essentially a 3D human yardstick used for scale reference. Researching the average ceiling height in the UK gave me a good basis to build off – 2.4m/7.4ft (Wilson, 2021).
Now with sufficient height and scale reference, I could start with my blockout. I used the Maya street file from learning space to ensure my blockout shape fit in my street plot (8cmx8cm) and so I could figure out the physical position of my plot – and to ensure it didn’t fall on a corner as my design could be altered if so. Luckily it didn’t, as my building is wedged between two others with space in front.
With my reference board and initial sketches to hand, I started to use primitive maya shapes to form some rough blockouts. I created 3 iterations of blockouts with slight variations as I toyed with different architectural features, such as multiple chimneys, cylindrical windows, and dormer windows. The first two blockouts look similar, however there are a lot of differences under the hood in terms of geometry and scale. The third blockout was a venture into creating an extruding shop front window, however I believe it looked too chunky and separated from the rest of the building.
I made sure that when I was creating the blockouts I snapped pieces to the grid, not only because it’s good practise to start early with grid snapping but also because it prepares me for the next phase of modular construction where pieces need to precisely fit together. I also utilised the layers function in Maya to hide/unhide pieces such as spares and separate blockouts as required.
References
Coelho-Kostolny, X. (2020) Character readability in Team Fortress 2 and overwatch, Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@xavierck/character-readability-in-team-fortress-2-and-overwatch-68c41d454465 (Accessed: 3 February 2023).
TmarTn2 (2023) Hogwarts Legacy - Part 2 - School Shopping in Hogsmeade, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/2LIDAxwaAEI (Accessed: 3 February 2023).
Wilson, D. (2021) What is the average (standard) ceiling height in the UK?, renovated.co.uk. Available at: https://renovated.co.uk/what-is-the-standard-ceiling-height-in-the-uk/ (Accessed: 3 February 2023).
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