I'm afraid that I'm a bit late in updating this again, but I'm happy to say that I have completed the blockout! While not perfect, I am very happy with how this blockout looks, and it's been really interesting to build a 3D model from snapshots: it really shows how important good references and concepts are for a 3D artist.
First of all, the blockout from outside:
The doorway and walls are interesting, because in the films you only see them either in the background or from a distance, so for the blockout I tried to emulate a typical prison. The 'bars' are effectively needless, because the whole cell is surrounded by solid glass walls, but I reasoned that the artists who worked on the film put them in because without them the walls would look empty and the space would not look like a prison cell: if anything it would look more like a futuristic resort. I didn't get any screenshots of when the walls were blank, without bars, but the difference the bars made was really noticeable: even as a dull solid grey model in Maya, the bars make it look like a cage, while without them it looked like a hotel room.
Inside the cell, it looks like there isn't very much stuff: this makes a lot of sense because prisons aren't exactly meant to be luxurious, but the amount of assets I actually had to make for the blockout was eye-opening. Making a space feel homely and lived in...the work that must take is incredible. It made me think about the clutter I have in my bedroom back home, and how many assets that would come to if it needed to be modelled. Of course, Magneto's cell is not homely, and so there is very little clutter: the closest this place comes to homely is his desk, which is only ever seen in the background, but you can see in the films that he has books, papers, at least one pencil, and a rack to place them on. Unfortunately, because a clear view of them is never given, I have had to improvise a little with the looks: below is an overview screenshot of the whole interior.
The part I'm personally most proud of in the interior is the chess board: I don't think I'd go as far as to say it is finished, as I think I may need to scale the chess pieces to be bigger, but the model looks clean and the pieces are easy to identify. The chess board is an iconic symbol in the films, especially between Charles Xavier and Magneto: the two play games with each other, neither fully revealing everything, both prepared to make sacrifices to win. Because of this significance, I felt it was necessary to make it one of the most detailed parts of the scene: I plan to have a segment of the cinematic be a flyaround of the board, showcasing the opaque and clear pieces squaring off against each other. (The amount of puns that could be made is incredible).
Of all the pieces, I struggled the most with the knight and the bishop. The knight I struggled with because I built the face and head from a single cylinder, and so I had to make additional polys that I could cut and extrude to pull out the face. However, I am happy that I did so for the model: at least for the blockout, it felt a lot more authentic, as chess pieces are carved from single pieces of wood, and it saved me some nasty problems with merging objects and vertexes. The bishop was annoying because of the cut: I made a whole circular top, and then cut diagonal lines down both sides. The trouble wasn't getting the polys to line up, that part was pretty easy: it was moving the lines down so that the faces didn't pull and stretch visually, while not having them cover each other up or reverse faces that was the problem. Eventually I settled for not having the cut be as deep as I originally wanted, which kept the overall look of the chess piece while not having nasty visual issues.
Next step is to build the proper assets! Modular walls and tileable floors here we come!
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