This tutorial will teach how to model a minaret, which is one of the most distinctive features of Islamic architecture and an important element in the structure of a mosque. Fans of of Prince of Persia shall instantly recognise its shape.
This is a beginner tutorial, you will not be required to have extensive knowledge on how to use Swift3D to be able to follow this tutorial.
Quick UI highlight
Here is a screenshot of the user interface with the main parts of it highlighted for beginner users. If I mention a certain toolbar, you can look it up in this image if you do not know where it is.
Modeling the dome of the Minaret
We are going to use the Lathe Editor to model our minaret, click on the tab on the .
We are going to draw a path in the Lathe Editor to create the dome of our minaret. You will need to click on the to start drawing.
The Lathe Editor will create the 3D dome when we supply a path that illustrates half the dome only. Draw a shape similar to the one below by making left-button clicks in the appropriate places.
I am sure that you noticed that the line we drew is not smooth at all. We are going to fix that now. I recommend that you at this stage using the icon located on the Main Toolbar, select that tool and then click on the scene. We'll now go back to our job, select the and then select the second point from the top of our path.
We will make this point part of a curve to make the path smoother, click on the button in the . This should make two more anchor points appear.
While the is still selected, click on one of the anchor points and drag it, you will notice that the path changes its shape. Try moving the anchor point around to get a smooth line that goes along the shape of the minaret. Do the same thing to the other points in our path.
Once you are satisfied with the smoothness of your path, you can click on the tab to view the 3D dome of your minaret.
Our dome is a little bit too big, we are going to scale it down. To do this, you will have to select the dome, and then click on the button located on the .
When scaling objects in Swift3D it is good to hold the object from its boundaries. As you move the cursor towards the center of the object the object's size decreases and as you move the cursor further from the center of the object the size increases. Scale the dome down to the half its original size.
We will now move the dome to the upper part of the Front Viewport. To do this, you will have to click on the dome, and then when the axis sign appears, hold on your keyboard to lock-on a single axis and then use the to move it upwards.
That should give us some space in the viewport to work on the shaft of our minaret. You should have the following in your viewports now.
Modeling the Shaft of the Minaret
We are going to use the to model the shaft of our minaret. Click on the Extrusion Editor tab to enter its mode. Once you do that, you shall be able to see a collection of extrusion tools, click on the button to create a hexagon.
Click on the tab to go back and look at our viewports.
Our hexagon is too big for our minaret, we are going to scale it to down. Use the same technique explained above to scale it down using the . You might have to move it along the y-axis to make it visible in the front viewport.
You will notice in the front viewport that the base of the hexagon faces the front camera. We will have to rotate it so that the base of our hexagon faces the base of our dome. In order to do this, you will have to select the hexagon and then access the at the bottom left of the screen.
We are going to lock the rotation to the vertical direction only, do this by clicking on the icon, you can deselect later if you would like to rotate it again. Follow that by clicking on the button and select . You will now have to click and hold the Rotation Trackball and then move it upwards to rotate your hexagon vertically. You should get a result similar to the second image below.
We will now alter the size of the shaft so that it appears as a thinner that holds the dome. We are not going to use the Scale Mode to do this, but instead use the options from the to make more precise alternations.
Select the shaft on the viewport and then selecting , you shall see sizing options appear below the . Set the the value for the , and .
You might not get a result similar to the one that I got above, you will need to move the shaft upwards so that it touches the dome. The size of your dome might be bigger or smaller than what we want to get, you could use the to fix that.
Adding Details to the Minaret
It's time to add some details to the shaft of the minaret. Start off by copying the shaft by selecting it and then using the keyboard shortcuts and then to create a duplicate of it. While this new copy is selected, access the , select and then apply the configurations illustrated in the image below. You will also have to align the new hexagon so that it is close the dome.
This step was repeated to create another outer bump on our hexagon using an object of the same shape but greater width and height and a less depth. Two more of these were created to get the result you see below.
Applying Materials to the Minaret
Adding materials in Swift3D is a very simply matter of drag and drop. Look for the button on the bottom right section of the screen, click it and then access the tab to reveal a collection of colors.
To add a color to the dome, select the color you desire and then drag it onto the dome as illustrated in the image below.
You can repeat this method to color the shaft of the minaret, you will then have to color each of the hexagonal pieces one by one. This is the result I got after coloring the whole thing.
Exporting the Render of the Image
It is now time to render our Minaret, start off by accesing the by clicking on its designated tab in the upper menu and configuring the options you desire on the left side of the screen.
