The seventh step in the My House Project is modeling the front garden area. Again, we will work with cubes, numeric measurements and a lot of snapping. After that we will work with the pen 2D region tool to create a wall with a curve at the top.
This is the model of the house at the end of part VI, and this is a render from the camera view at the and of part VI.
This part of the project deals with modeling the front garden area, to the left of the porch. It is very similar to what we did for the porch: creating, resizing and snapping cubes in place to create the volumes.
Let us start by saving the file as my house-garden.
The next step is selecting the cube that corresponds to the garden –forward at the left– and group it. Double click on the group and we will have the cube all to ourselves in its own window.
The cube inside its group
Now let us copy the cube and paste again. This way we have a cube exactly the same size of the volume in the same place. This new cube will be resized to be the floor .The floor on the left is higher than the floor on the porch, so we will set the new height to 0.8 ft.
The floor cube is 0.8 ft. in height.
The next volume is the side wall. Let us copy and paste a cube or drag and resize a new cube. It is 6.3 ft. in height, 9 ft. in length and 0.8 ft. thick. Of course, after resizing the cube, we snap it in place.
The side wall volume is 6,3 ft. in height, 9 ft. in length and 0.8 ft. thick.
The next piece is the pump housing. Create a new cube and assign the following dimensions to it: 3.5 ft. wide, 4.5 ft. high and 3.5 ft. deep.
Snap it in place.
The pump housing is 3.5 ft. wide, 4.5 ft. high and 3.5 ft. deep.
There’s a trough at the front where all the plants go. Two cubes are enough. These will be 0.3 ft. in depth and are 1 foot apart.
The floor cube has been scaled to allow room.
The trough is created with 2 flattened cubes, 0.3 ft. in depth, set 1 foot apart.
Those are our base volumes. A render looks like this:
The Base Volumes
Now we will add curves.
Drawing Curves
Now we will add the curve to the wall using the Pen 2D Region Tool, which is a filled pen tool.
From the Left View (4 key) let us draw the profile seen below. The curve starts where the water pump housing ends and is about 1 foot high by 1 foot deep.
Just like in Illustrator and similar programs, we get the Bézier handles by clicking and dragging when creating the point.
The wall profile, almost ready for extruding. Look at the slightly misplaced points on the base
We can always go back to editing the curve with Cmd+E (Ctrl+E) so we can tweak it until we are satisfied. Have extra care with getting the points exactly where they should go. Even small imperfections can appear in the render.
When we are done, we can extrude (in fact, we can continue to edit the point position after extruding). Let us select the Extrude Tool.
From an isometric view, drag the profile with the extrude tool until it is about 0.8 ft. thick.
Assign the precise thickness in the Object Properties panel.
The curved wall
There is another job for the Pen 2D Region Tool. It is the back of the trough, which is raised on the left and the right. In this case we do not need any curves, it is just a polygonal shape we need to draw and extrude.
The extrusion is 0.3 ft. deep.
The back of the trough, from the front.
That’s it for now. We have the garden area ready.
The render up to this stage is this.
