Books

It is time to create some books for the bookshelf.

To do this I start off with a simple box. After converting to an editable poly I select the three sides that will be paper. After selecting the bevel tool and bringing up the options menu, it is important to switch group to local normal. Then I bevel the book in slightly creating an indent in the model. This starts to create the look of the pages.

The next step is to extrude in the bevelled polys. This helps to make the shape complete. Again it is important that local normal is selected on the extrude box, otherwise the pages will go through the book's spine.

The next thing I have chosen to do is chamfer the edges of the spine. This adds a nice curve that makes the book look more real and less rigid.

Once this is done, the only thing left to do is texture the books. This will be done using simple materials for the most part as the books will not be a fundamental part of the scene. If one or two books are to be seen in greater detail then we can use bitmap texturing to give them more detail. To give the books separate materials, different polygons will be assigned different IDs. In this case, the cover and spine will be ID 1 and the pages ID 2.

I found a paper texture online that I have used for the pages. For the moment I have just set default colours in the diffuse box as the cover but this can be changed later on to match in with the room.

I started to assemble the books onto the book shelf. First I resized and angled them onto the shelf. Then it was a case of copying the books over and over again to fill up the shelves. I also copied the materials a number of times and changed the diffuse colour. This will give a variety of different books on the shelf. The two books I made at the start were slightly different in height as well, so this helps add to the variety.

After more copying and pasting and mixing up some of the materials to avoid some repeating patterns, we are left with the final book shelf!