How The Hotel Was Created

The main element of the introductory scene is the hotel, that James Bond will walk out of, turn around and see the harrier about to fire at him as he runs for his car. Therefore, as there will be a lot of focus upon the hotel it is important that it looks sophisticated.

As a building such as a hotel can vary in different ways, some are very elegant, some appear to be very cheap and cheerful, whereas some others appear to be very lavish. As there are different ways it could be interpreted, some pictorial research was collated and used as a reference to create the hotel. It was not used as a reference plate as a material on a plane, but rather my own interpretation of the hotel was sketched and then used and referred to when creating the hotel. This is the original image (Venere.com, nd).

This is my interpretation of the hotel and how I intend the hotel to look.

This was achieved by first creating a box onto the stage of substantial height, weight and depth. The number of segments was 20 across all three dimensions before converting it to a poly. Using the extrude tool, the windows and door was pushed inwards, making a nice frame for each of them. The roof was extruded in multiple layers to represent a roofs generic conventions of gradually ascending to a higher level. There is also a arch on top of the door naming the hotel. This was again accomplished using the extrude tool, and completed by moving the vertices closer together to give the impression of a curve.

The material that was used on the building was a combination of maps, including the marble effect that with a tiling of 20, made the hotel appear to be the grey colour with the vertical lines going down the hotel. To add a texture to the building, the bump tool was also used approximately 80 to add a lot of texture of the same material (marble) to give the impression of a tile like texture. This has worked well for this model.

The next step was creating a path for James Bond to walk across as he heads for his car. The intended effect for gravel was used by searching on the internet (REFERENCE) for a suitable image that could be imported as a bitmap and used within the material editor. This worked very well, better than what was intended as there appears to be a hint of blue that has come through on the material when rendered. This works because of the lighting coming from the hotel, it appears that there is something reflecting onto the path. Along with hotel patios tend not to be controversial with the designs of their pavements outside the hotel.

Lamp posts were created by making thin cylinders with a bend modifier on the piece at the top, so that a cone could then hang from the object. The omni light, found in the create>light>omni panel acts as a small beam of light, the same as you would expect from a lamp post light. Therefore, this works very well. Other lights were used, such as sky light among others, but the light source seemed to great for the intended effect.

Many hotels tend to have a garden feature in front of it to make it more aesthetically appealing, thus to draw more customers to their hotel. Therefore, to add to the hotel's authenticity, a garden feature has been used in this model. First a thin cylinder was created which would act as grass. The material that was used for this was swirl with the tiling adjusted so that it made small circles. When the bump tool was then applied and adjusted to 100, it made a green grass and mud effect. It was green and brown as these were the colours that were adjusted from the swirl instead of the standard yellow and brown used within the default. It was not intended to appear to have long grass, firstly, as the render time is horrendous, but also a garden feature appearing in their kind of destination would ensure it was cut short, thus this was the intended effect.

Once the grass effect had been added to the feature, foliage was then applied. This was achieved by selecting the create panel and selecting from the drop down menu "AEC". Foliage can then be selected which gives a large menu of various plants and trees to choose from. A small plant from the menu was selected and then arranged in a small pattern following the shape of the circle. This were adjusted and moved into place to appear symmetrical. Finally, to complete the foliage, a tree was then added to the centre of the feature which has worked well. Various trees were tried and tested, each appeared to give a different representation of what type kind of building, it was supposed to represent. An exotic tree was chosen, as the idea of exotic trees, in my opinion links to the idea of holiday destination, thus hotel. To add to the idea of holiday and hotels with their stereotypical features, more exotic trees were added in between lamp posts to add to the scene. 

To finish the scene, another omni light was put within the hotel, to appear that the hotel was open and so that the audience can then see Bond leaving the hotel.