Image Planes, Scaling and Starting Modelling

To start off the modelling process, I first imported the side and front view pictures from photoshop into Maya as image planes and lined them up alongside each other.

And then before actually starting off modelling, I needed to make sure that my lighthouse would be to scale, to ensure this, my tutor had sent out a 6 foot man that we could then import into Maya to scale things around.

Initially, the image planes were not even past the 6 foot mans foot. So I had to scale them up very very much before I could start modelling around the image planes.

 To start off the modelling process, I first created the bottom platform that would serve as the base for my lighthouse. This was initially just a cube which i increased the size of and then stretched out to match the size of the guides and then moved the different edges out so they matched up too.

 I then moved on to creating what would be the wooden beams holding the lighthouse up off of the ground.

I encountered a problem when creating the crossbeams in which you could see the edges of the polygon and I was unsure as to how I would flatten this out without altering the shape of the beam. I used the bevel tool on the ends of each crossed beam to flatten the right part of them so as to make the edges not visible.