Chesterfield Mall Project - Independent Study [WORK IN PROGRESS]
WORK IN PROGRESS / INDEPENDENT STUDY
Rebuilding the mall I grew up with
Chesterfield Mall · Chesterfield, MissouriChesterfield Mall is the mall I grew up with. I remember the scale of it, the central court, the long concourses, and the way different parts of the building felt. When I wanted an independent project that would make me practice more than modeling alone, this was the place I kept coming back to.
My goal is bigger than one finished render. I want to work through a visualization project from the first piece of reference to the final camera: gathering evidence, reading plans, drawing useful CAD, organizing the Maya scene, building materials, checking scale, and presenting the result clearly. I am taking skills I learned in college and applying them to the kind of work I want to keep doing.
WHY THIS PROJECT
A familiar place gives me better questions
Being familiar with the mall gives me a built-in reality check. I can tell when a corridor feels too short, an anchor sits at the wrong angle, or an entrance looks believable by itself but falls apart when I compare it with the rest of the site. That makes me stop, check the reference again, and figure out what I missed.
I also like that the project makes me think beyond the building. The roads, parking fields, grades, landscaping, storefronts, materials, and history all affect what the final image says. Every part gives me another problem to learn from.
MY PROCESS SO FAR
Working from reference toward a 3D scene
- I begin with memory, then verify it against reference.
I record the details I remember and compare them with dated photographs. Those images help me study materials, storefront rhythm, entrances, lighting, landscaping, and the ways the building changed over time.
- I collect dated sources that provide measurable information.
Lease plans, site plans, published areas, scale bars, and aerial references give me a more reliable starting point than estimating from photographs alone. I keep the dates with each source because a 2016 interior and a 2024 exterior do not describe the same version of the mall. My first tenant-key pass also had five labels overlapping one another. I repositioned the leaders, reopened the drawing, and reviewed the sheet again before the information was readable.
- I establish scale before drawing or modeling.
I use the printed scale controls to establish real drawing units. The site-plan control is 240 feet, or 2,880 CAD inches. During this project I found an incorrect 636-foot conversion in my notes: it had been recorded as 194,000 centimeters instead of 19,385.28 centimeters. Finding that error reinforced the need to verify a conversion against a second known length before I build from it.
- I use CAD to study the project's scope, scale, and organization.
I had some early exposure to CAD in high school, and I am returning to it because I do not want Maya to be the only tool I understand. Reading and reproducing drawings in CAD helps me see the full scale of the mall, separate different layers of information, and prepare useful references before I block out geometry. CAD includes far more technical depth than I can cover in one visualization study, but learning to identify the data I need should help me model more efficiently and make better-informed decisions.
- I am testing a reliable CAD-to-Maya handoff.
I have the site, lower level, and upper level organized as inch-based DXF exchange drawings, and I am still testing the cleanest way to bring the useful curves into Maya. My current approach is to prepare a cleaned exchange copy containing the site lines, building footprints, roads, and level outlines, then keep each imported drawing in its own reference group rather than mixing it with the geometry I am modeling.
Maya uses centimeters by default, so I verify the import instead of assuming the units or axes translated correctly. One inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters, which means a 12-inch test line should measure 30.48 centimeters and the 240-foot control bar should measure 7,315.2 centimeters. Different import settings may handle that conversion differently, so I am testing it instead of assuming it worked. I still need to write down the result and confirm the scale before I rely on that CAD file as a Maya reference. I also check that the plan lands on the ground plane, north faces the expected direction, and no geometry is mirrored before I lock the reference.
I am also developing my understanding of curves. AutoCAD splines are NURBS curves, and Maya can use NURBS curves as paths, which is why I am interested in using them for smooth roads and curbs. I have not yet settled on the best way to prepare those curves, control road widths and intersections, and convert them into geometry that remains easy to edit. This is an area I want to improve through continued testing and guidance.
- I render, audit, and refine.
Once I can render the scene, I use each image as a quality-control pass. I review the model, materials, scale, composition, views, and camera angles, then make another iteration. This is one of the most enjoyable stages because each review gives me a specific problem to investigate. If the vegetation in a professional render looks more convincing, for example, I can study the asset quality, variation, placement, and lighting, then test those observations in my next pass. That cycle keeps the project challenging and gives me something new to learn with every revision.
PROJECT NOTEBOOK
Working through one problem at a time
CAD STUDY
Turning plans into something I can build from
The CAD work gives me three different scales to solve: the full site, the roads and landscape, and the floor plans inside the mall. These are the working views I use to check each level before bringing the useful information into Maya. I am still preparing better direct AutoCAD captures, but the drawings already give me a much stronger reference than trying to model the site by eye.
This is the big picture. I use it to check the mall footprint, entrances, parking fields, access roads, and how the entire property fits together.
Working CAD view
This is where I sort out parking islands, open areas, planting zones, and the landscape details I still need to verify. The road and curb curves are not finished yet; learning how to build those cleanly is one of my next major steps.
Working CAD view
This helps me read the anchor stores, concourses, courts, and circulation as one connected floor instead of a collection of separate rooms.
Working CAD viewWHAT I AM LEARNING
Learning the full process by building something real
I chose a project with enough scale and complexity to push me beyond a single finished render. Rebuilding Chesterfield Mall gives me a reason to study how research, CAD, modeling, materials, lighting, documentation, and revision connect across one visualization project.
I am doing this while working full time and continuing my 3D education at JCCC. Every new question— CAD standards, site planning, materials, scene organization, lighting, or quality control—sends me somewhere useful. I get to research it, try it in the scene, see what works, and carry that lesson into the next pass.
There have already been wrong conversions, crowded CAD labels, proportions that only looked right from one camera, and details I had to rebuild after comparing them with better reference. I want to keep those corrections visible because they show how the project is actually developing. The value is not that I got every decision right on the first try; it is that I can find a problem, understand why it happened, and make the next version better.
I like the idea of becoming an all-arounder. I want a working understanding of the whole process so I can make better decisions, hand work off clearly, and understand how one choice affects everything that comes after it. The more of the process I learn, the more directions I find to keep growing.
See how I currently understand the 3D visualization workflow →