I finished modeling the roof cresting, but I don’t have a render of it yet. I jumped to another part of the roof, the flagpole!

Even a seemingly insignificant part of the building, like the roof flagpole deserves some love so I researched this as well. I did my best to find authentic flagpole “technology” like the truck/pulley design at the top. The poles of the late nineteenth century were still made out of wood so that factoid will help me with texturing it.

The flag is a 38 star American flag from 1877, a year after Colorado entered the Union. My building was constructed between 1881-1889, before the next flag change happened in 1890 when the Dakotas, Idaho, Montana, and Washington were added.

I worked on an animation (first one I’ve ever rendered), but it’s pretty jerky. I had some issues with the cloth simulation because the rope is not a loop. The bottom end is connected to the flag, and the top of the flag is connected to the top end of the rope. I tried vertex parenting, but the bottom end of the rope had nothing to attach to. I would love some advice on having two objects pulling against each other in a cloth simulation.

I also was curious about my rendering time. I tried out motion blur at .5, and while I understand that this would be taxing on my computer, it varied widely on render times. One frame took 8 hours while another took 2 minutes. I started it late on the 8th, and it’s still rendering (108/120). I’m assuming that my simulation was so jumpy that some frames included a lot more blur to compensate. Anyway, I’ll come back to the pole and animation, but for now I’m happy with the progress of the model.

Next up I’ll be working on ornamentation design for the entrance archway. To the drawing table!