Gothic Architecture Toolkit
This is a Python-scripted toolkit for Maya that generates Gothic architectural details. I designed it to be lightweight and flexible, inspired by the simplicity and effectiveness to the basic Maya geometry modifiers like extrude and bevel. It can use the edges of any mesh to create Gothic arches, vaulted canopies, decorative trim, and combinations beyond that. It is also axis, rotation, and scale independent, making it easy to incorporate into your modeling workflow.
I was inspired to develop this tool while working on my Durham project. FromSoftware's releases of Dark Souls and Bloodborne had left me with an incredible appreciation for cathedrals, and I was excited to build one in the vista of my scene. At the time, I was sure that a series of bend modifiers would be enough to construct the iconic pointed details of Medieval structures, but my mentor Vince Joyal showed me the rules that define true Gothic architecture:
This diagram illustrates the specific geometrical properties of a Gothic arch, which is formed by the halving the overlapping area of two identical circles that intersect one another along their radius. The shortcoming of the bend modifier is that it only has control over the angle of the curve; the proper length of the bent edge must be calculated outside of the deformation, since it is a distinct factor of the arch's span. You could also create two overlapping cylinders and salvage the necessary edges from them, which eliminates the math calculations but is far from efficient.
​
I decided to incorporate the geometric and trigonometric rules of Gothic shapes into a component-level mesh editing tool. Because the relationships between the edges of an arch are constant, a mathematically sound and visually consistent arch can be generated from any selected edge. The additional features I implemented include a subdivision parameter for different scales/levels of detail, and a switch for additive and subtractive arch creation.
One of the most striking and impressive features of a Gothic space is a rib-vaulted ceiling. These spacious expanses behave like a complex, webbed network of supports, but they too adhere to a system of rules. A Gothic vault is essentially a 2D arch compounded with itself in a 3D space. The formula for these shapes was a challenge to derive, and even more troublesome to implement in object-space, but I was able to incorporate vaulted ceiling generation into the tool. The ribs themselves are not created automatically, since they can be set up in many different ways, but the generated ceiling offers a great base to follow up with some spline extrude modifiers.
The final function of the tool is the trim generator. Gothic trim can be found sprinkled in all sorts of locations: in windows, on doors, hanging from buttresses, clinging to the ceiling, etc. Details like these come in so many different variations that no geometric standard stood out at me. The aesthetics of trim really come down to how successfully they interact with the space they occupy. With that in mind, I developed the trim component with a dynamic creation option. Changes to the parameters will be reflected by the mesh in real-time, allowing the appearance of the trim to be tweaked and tuned rapidly and precisely.
Below are some screenshots of a scene in Unreal Engine 4. I built the nave of Exeter Cathedral using a set of modules developed with my Gothic toolkit. The process of modeling these structures gave me some ideas for improvements that I can make to the tool set. In the future, I might implement dynamic rib, hollow trim, and archivolt creation.
