Smithsonian Natural History Museum

This is a demo project where I was responsible for the Rotunda of the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. I modeled and textured all of the interior excluding props and the top arched window glass. I also lit the interior and elephant in Maya and baked the lighting. I put everything together in Unity and provided in-game lighting for the exterior and for certain props in the interior.

The exterior was modeled by Daniel Siebert and textured by Jennifer Stolzer and Daniel Siebert. The interior props were modeled and textured by Jennifer Stolzer and later Nick Metcalf. The Elephant and display were modeled, textured, and rigged by Josh Dicarlo. Nick Metcalf weight painted and posed the Elephant. Project time was from June 2009 to the end of September 2009 with my part taking from mid July 2009 till the end of September 2009.

The interior without props and the Elephant is 67398 tris. The model's area is broken up into distinct groups. There are 4 back walls, 4 balcony fronts, and 4 lower facades. The upper facdes and walkways are split into 2 groups. The doors are combined, except for the entrance doors which are not combined as they needed to open. There are 2 stairwells which have upper and lower divisions each.

Since this was a small demo and given the detail of Smithsonian we kept our textures large for the time being. Most of the interior's textures are 1024x1024 with a few being 512x512. The textures are also large because all the models that were lit and baked had no over-lapping UVs. Unfortunately at the time we did not know Unity was able to handle more then one UV set on a model.