plants

Here is how i went about making my plants. I started by creating the texture with the leaves that i wanted to use. I got these from a local garden center and tried to stick to the indoor plants because these seemed best fitting. After bringing them into max i placed each one on a plane and divided them up into subsections for deformation. 

 I stacked a bend and twist modifier to each plant so i could twist and deform them individually and come back to them later to tweak as appropriate. When satisfied i collapsed them down and grouped them up.

I made different variations of some of the bigger plants so they wouldn't look to similar when placed in the level.

This is the first lot placed in the lobby. I was torn between this or a sculpture but after deciding on the central red carpet it seemed wrong to have two sculptures either side of it. Here you can also see the chunk of dome that the robbers had to break through and that it has smashed the planter causing pebbles and soil to be scattered across the floor. This makes for a intriguing point of interest.

This was the next use of planters in my level. These are found on the lowest floor just before the vault and have been encorporated into the stairs. 

Painting WIPs

I've been working on some paintings for the offices to bring a little more colour into them. I thought id post them up here now because i'm quite happy with how they're going. I'm trying to make each a slightly different style and colour but not enough so it looks too random on the wall. They will most likely have different frames etc.

Back Office Stairs

  So I've been struggling for a good idea to go at the back of my offices for a while. I knew i was having 2 lifts and a symmetrical theme. This is the idea i came up with for the stair well that wraps around each lift shaft.

   After some crits it was decided that it was too bright and claustrophobic. i tested a thinner design with less lighting and it worked better.

 Making the stairs was easy, the wall was a little fiddlier. I started by making the mesh as one vertical plane with all the cut insets and then unwrapped it.

Next i had to bend it around a 90 degree corner so using a cylinder to test how many faces i would need i split the mesh and bent it around the cylinder.

Then i proceed to do the opposite for the inward facing corner.

Here is the final model, it has a top and bottom strip light but this its self wasn't enough to light the hall so i positioned two non shadow casting lights on each floor to brighten it up.

Office update

So after majorly updating the desks in my back room offices i continued to flesh them out with assets and am rounding them off now.

  I have made several desk top filler assets including phone, pen tidy, files and folders and it has really cluttered up my office in a good way. Its now looking a lot more lived in. I am now considering the parts that will have been disrupted my the robbery, i.e. up turned folders and plants. 

There are two offices to my level, one you go through and another you pass briefly on your way down to the vault. This second office is a mirror of the previous in terms of lay out and architecture but i intend to heavily alter the work space so it doesn't seem and exact clone. My intentions are that as you come down the stairs you will have to step out into the office to get round some debris, possibly a fallen roof panel sparking and the  lights turned off.

New desks

This was my old desk design. It complemented the other main desk in the lobby but continued the old style into the office part of the building and i was struggling for ideas for the surroundings that didn't look too much like the lobby. I wanted this section to be modern and high tech, to contrast the lobby as you went through down into the vault. 

 So here are my new desk design. I think it will contrast well. It is made of wood and plastic paneling and is almost sci-fi.

walkway

Like the stairs i was holding off texturing these. They have a simple colour choice that compliments the lobby.

  I have also implemented a particle effect for unsettled dust. It was a simple particle with a slow emitter and a large volume area and gives the impression of small glowing specks floating downward around the room. It still needs to be tweaked to look a little more as i have in mind. I also want to add some kind of fog volume to give the air a thicker translucency adding to the dust effect.

Showing the dust so far.

(The doors there are unfinished)

Stairs

  My stairs are finally textured. After holding them off for fear of being super time consuming it turns out they were. But not for the reasons i thought. I found i took most time trying to balance the colour pallet mainly because they touch the very black and white lower floor and extend to the more orange and yellow upper floor. This Created a problem because colouring it so it fits one part meant it looking off at the other end. I started with sandstone colours and quickly scrapped that as it looked far too orange on the floor, next i tried the dark wood but it brought the lighting down drastically. I finally settled for this cool white colour not unlike the base of the pillars. I felt i had to have some colour and essence of its surroundings so added the red carpet and wooden railings.
  When unwrapping these i found repetition was going to be a problem and looked into ways of fixing it. The addition of the carpet helped hide the stairs down the middle and the exposed side planes were over-layed on the bottom steps that would not be covered. I made 4-5 actual stair textures and over-layed various uvs from each step now no two are the same, and it used up hardly any uv space.

Here you can also see the que dividers at the front of the main desk. These are still being tweaked because the gold is far too strong.