The Wizards Book of Spells

This is the creation of 'The Wizards Book of Spells' in weekly updates from start to finish. I will show you the creation of the model itself and the design and texturing of the model once it is complete.

To start creating the spell book I started with a cube. I selected the faces that I wanted to make bigger or extend and scaled them up to the right size for my book. Once I had the main frame for my book I used the knife tool to create edge loops so that I could inner extrude the pages and give the book some curvature at the back and on the sides.

As you can see from this screenshot the transformation from a cube to the base frame of my Spell Book. I added more edge loops around the spine of the book so that I could give it a nice around the back, this made it look a lot less blocky and more of a natural book shape. I took my time adding the edge loops to the book because I didn't want to have a flat book with no curvature on it so I added some on the cover of the book and grabbed the edges and moved them in slightly to give it on a slight but noticeable curve.

After I added the edge loops to the spine and sides I smoothed the edges, this gives the illusion that there are no edges there and that it is a smooth curve. I didn't not do this to some of the edges as I wanted them to stay hard edges giving it more detail and showing were the cover meets the pages and stops.

Once I had completed the main part of the book I started creating details to go onto my book like, buckles and straps. I started by creating the buckle. I got a cube and extruded it and beveled it until I got a design that I liked for a buckle. I like the style of this buckle straight away, it was simple yet looked really nice and I think it went really well with the book. To create the front of the buckle I used the bevel tool to bring it out forward a bit.

When the buckle was complete and I had fixed minor things, I was able to create the strap to with the buckle. Like the book and the buckle I used a cube to start off with and then extruded, stretched and beveled the strap to fit through the buckle and fit around the whole book without looking silly.

Since I wanted two buckles and straps on my book, instead of making another one I duplicated the original buckle and strap and moved it further down the book than the first one and tried to make them evenly spaced out from the edges of the book.

Once the buckles had been duplicated and put into place I still had a lower poly-count compared to what I was given as a maximum so I decided to add some pages coming out of the book. This made the book look a lot more interesting, old, and used which is what I am planning for my book to look like by the end of the project.

Once I had completely finished the model and was happy with the final model I started to unwrap the model in to a UV map. This lets me add textures and materials to the model and make it as realistic or as cartoony as I like. As this was my first time unwrapping a UV map I found it very difficult to get used to but once you get the hang of it, it isn't that back, it is just very time consuming.

When I had completely unwrapped everything I took a UV snapshot of it made it 1024x1024 and imported it into Photoshop were I was able to add textures and make the book look however I want.

I first started texturing by adding the cover of the book. I got a leather texture off of Textures.com and placed it onto my UV. I then added a mask around the map and inverted it meaning that the leather was cut off and not overlapping other UVs. I then followed some of the lines down the edges and spine of the book bevel and embossing it giving it a slight 3D look to it. I then added the symbol which I gave a drop shadow to, this gave the illusion of it coming off the page slightly making the book look a little more interesting.

Once the cover of the book was done I went to texture the rest using the same technique to mask everything making sure that the textures don't overlap. I first did the pages and I added different orientations of pages so when I added the texture to the model the pages were the right way round. Next I added the leather to the straps and a brass texture to the buckle and then added a slight rust to it to make it look slightly older.

When the texturing was finished I opened Maya and went into Hypershade and dragged the .png file into the hierarchy and the held right click in the middle of the blinn and selected 'add to selection'. This then added the texture to the model.

This is the final piece, when all the modelling was done, the texturing was complete and the UV was added to the model. First time I added the UV map to the model I noticed little things that I didn't like about the texture that I added to the model, so I went back into Photoshop and changed it. I kept redoing this a couple times but no I am finally happy with the final model and texture.