Ivy and Banners

After adding some dynamic effects to my scene, I felt the courtyard was looking empty so I began to think of more of a back story to the area to help me with ideas for what props to add. I came up with the idea that the palace was being prepared for the royal return. The family has been away, perhaps on holiday or to visit family and is now returning. They would obviously expect the palace to be in top condition and clean. This explains the trimmed bushes and tidy bedroom. The outer courtyard stone will be worn down as it is not a newly erected palace however it will not be so old that the pillars are falling apart or cracks everywhere. With this story in mind I began to think of what would be arranged for the family's arrival and thought about having banners with the family crest on. I went and did some research to find out the name of the family who used to live at the Alhambra and discovered the name "Mohammed I ibn Nasr". This was a prominent family in the Masrid dynasty and the coat of arms for this was as follows:

Heralder. (2013). Coat of Arms of the Emirate of Granada (1013-1492). Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasrid_dynasty#mediaviewer/File:Coat_of_Arms_of_the_Emirate_of_Granada_(1013-1492).svg. Last accessed 28/11/2014.

The next task was to add this symbol to some banners and dress the courtyard area.

I chose the colours for the banners based on the family's colours and the bedroom colours I had chosen earlier in the project. I wanted to tie in the two rooms so they felt like part of the same building even though one was exterior and one was interior. It was a nice coincidence that the red colour of the family crest was near the same colour of the furniture I had used inside so it did not require much tweaking.

For extra detail I added some ivy running down off some of the roof section. I used an ivy generator to get a basic ivy mesh. 

I found this was very useful as it helped vastly with the time element. If I had created my own ivy leaf (sculpted in ZBrush, baked and then placed hundreds over some branches) it would have taken twice as long if not longer. It took a bit of time to understand the ivy generator and to get some pieces that I was happy with me but it was still quicker than any other attempts I had made. I added my own textures and materials to the leaves and branches then placed a number of clumps around the scene to add more colour variation to the scene.

Thomas Luft. (2008). An Ivy Generator. Available: http://graphics.uni-konstanz.de/~luft/ivy_generator/. Last accessed 30/11/2014.