For my project, I decided to do an animation of the Bahá'í House of Worship in New Delhi, India (one of 7 around the world). This building is also known as the the "Lotus Temple", because it is in the shape of a lotus flower. I had served as a volunteer guide at the House of Worship in 1997, so I had a first had account of the structure and beauty of the building, and I wanted to share it with others.
Here are some pictures of the actual building:
I used 3D Studio Max to make the animation, and I built all the models myself. The title effects were done with Adobe Premier. This was the first time that I had created anything with either of these programs.
Below are some screenshots of my work as it progressed
This is my initial wireframe model of the middle row leaf.
This is where I was making the glass that is the doorways into the building, through the outerleaves.
I used boolean operations to get the proper outline of the glass so it wouldn't stickout like in the picture.
This is a picture of when I was desigining a bench for the inside of the temple.
This is after I placed all the benches and the rug that are in the interior of the temple.
I used the arcs and 9 sided polygon as guides for the placement of the objects.
This is how everything looked after it was all put together.
The animation does not do the graphics of the model justice because I had to make it 240x180 and 24 fps. To see a 640x480 picture of the rendered temple, click here.
Here are some of the materials/textures I used for the models. This is a screenshot of the Material Editor in 3DS Max, where the details for the materials are configured. Counting across from the top left to the bottom right, the materials were used for 1 - the wood for the benches, 2 - the marble for the outer surface of the temple, 3 - the rock for the inner surface of the leaves (with bump mapping), 5 - the grass, 6 - the glass for the entrances through the outer/bottom leaves. The texture used for the floor of the temple is the background for this page.
These are pictures I took of the symbol at the top of the inside of temple. It's not very clear because I didn't have a good camera at the time :-). It means Ya Bahá'u'l-Abhá, which is Arabic for "O Glory of the All-Glorious", and it refers to Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith. It is also known as the "Greatest Name", and an explanation of this symbol can be found at http://bahai-library.org/books/greatest.name/.
For more information on temple visit http://www.bahaindia.org/, and for more information on the Bahá'í Faith please visit http://www.bahai.org/.
