Berm behind New Orleans Square

Much of my model is relatively simple, geometrically speaking. Some areas are becoming quite detailed, but the shapes themselves typically have hard edges and don't require an organic approach. This all changes, however, when I need to create something like a hill or mountain—or a berm. Disneyland has a lot of berms (manmade ridges of earth), all of which are used to visually separate different areas. The park-encircling earthen wall we might call "The Berm" is actually a number of different berms, separated by gaps and tunnels and such.

This particular part of "The Berm" is located behind New Orleans Square Station, and it is responsible for the honorable task of hiding the west chiller plant, which is basically a bunch of industrial air conditioning and heating equipment. Crucial to the park functioning, but not so great to look at in a themed area. Solution? Pile up a nice wall of dirt, put pretty plants on it, and voila! Problem solved. And despite my sarcastic tone, I do mean this seriously; it's a simple but extremely effective and attractive way to hide things.

Building the berm has been a difficult task that I've attempted numerous times, but I'm finally taking advantage of a Blender technique called SubSurf, which stands for "subdivision surface." Without getting too technical, this technique basically allows me to play with a small number of points, or vertices, and then let the software figure out smooth, curvy transitions between them. It's working like a charm so far.

As always, click the image for a full-sized version on Flickr. Sometimes, there won't be a larger version available, in which case you'll just get taken to the main page for that image, which is also cool, because I post "notes" that clearly annotate exactly what's happening in the different parts of the render. If you're not seeing those rectangular notes pop up over the image, click the Back to the Flickr photo page link near the top.