Creating a Steampunk Observatory Part 03: Walkway and Foundations

Tutorial 03: Walkway and Foundations

 To keep the tower from toppling, the lower half will be constructed out of metal, and will eventually have a strong base plate to clamp it down to the ground.

To begin, create an edge loop around two thirds of the way down and delete the two front facing sections. This will make room for the smaller house at the front later.

Next we're going to extract the base that we've just created, and scale it up slightly. Select the top edges, and extrude inwards until it meets the original tower again, and that's it until we create the brackets.

 Now we're going to create the walkway around the top of the observatory. 

Create another edge loop around the top of the tower, and extrude that edge outwards. This can then be extracted to create the floor.

Duplicate the floor and move it down slightly to create the underside of the floor. You also now need to reverse the normals, so the underside can be seen. 

To do this, select all the faces of the underside and go up to the 'Normals' menu. There you'll find a button marked 'Reverse'. This will reverse the Normals, so you will be able to see the faces when you go to render. You can tell when the 

Normals are backwards because the faces will be black in colour.

Next we need an outside to cap off the floor, and stop it wearing away. Create a 'Polygon Pipe' and line it up with the walkway. This will act as the base for the railing we'll make later, and also allow for added details like bolts during the sculpting stage.

Here I've added several edge loops on the pipe so I could extrude a small ridge on either side of the floor. This makes it look like the pipe is wrapped around the floor. I've also changed the material to a copper colour again (below), to keep an eye of the level of metal being used, and to remind me where to place the bolts and brackets later.

Next: Tutorial 04: Creating the Houses