Modeling a building for Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML)
This building will be a design construct based on a simple logo treatment.

The building needs to be functional, yet identifiable, and have good interior space for VRML browsing as well as an attractive low polygon exterior.

The detail of the building will be created by first modeling it with polygonal modeling tools, then taking a virtual snapshot of the building face with the renderer and mapping that image back on to a low detail version of the building.

1.) Start with an outline.

Because polygons are composed of linear segments, you will want to draw the outline of the shapes you plan to extrude or skin with a linear spline.

First, you should set up your work area to make life easy. Start in the front view, expand it to full screen size, and turn on grid settings of 1 Softimage unit in X, Y, and Z. Keeping a grid while you draw will make it easier for you to draw line segments that are parallel and square to one another, resulting in clean professional looking models.

In the Model module, choose DRAW ->Curve ->Linear.

TIP: if you draw counter clockwise, Softimage will correctly calculate which side of the spline is inside versus outside, and correctly create normals for surfaces you make from this spline.

Draw the shape of the first building side in the shape of an "N".

to close the curve, choose DRAW->Open/Close.

2.) Set up the right view the same way as the front view, and trace the outline of an "M" also using a linear spline, drawn counterclockwise.

make sure that you close this curve as well!

3. Position the two sides so they form a corner.

4. Duplicate each face and move to the opposing side.

5. Skin between the two N shaped faces using the command SURFACE -> SKIN. Pick the front curve, then the back curve, and click the right mouse button to do the skin. In the skin dialog that pops up, choose polygon for the resulting object, with a subdivision of 1.

6. Do the same for the "M" shape. You will now have two shapes, looking much like fig 3. except that yours will occupy exactly the same space.

7. Create one single object with the shape of both sides of the building. To make this new complex shape quickly and easily, we will use a polygonal boolean operation. The shape we want to result will be the intersection of both shapes, i.e. the space that is common to both shapes. Space occupied by one but not the other will be shaved off.