Booleans

The part where the treehouse is built around the tree needs to look convincing and real so I have to make sure it looks like it has been constructed properly. I firstly wanted to use the boolean tool to cut the shape  of the tree from the corner of the treehouse, but when I tried using it both the tree and the treehouse completely disappeared, I repeatedly tried it and even reset Maya in case it was a weird bug but I still had no success. I started researching online why I was having this problem and found out the reason was because if one object has a significantly higher/lower poly count than the other object, then Maya cannot calculate the differences in faces and edges to accurately cut away the desired shape. So the tree has a much higher poly count than the treehouse which is why it wasn't working. 

To solve this I could make a low poly tree and then shape the new edges of the treehouse once the corner is cut away, or I could just dive right in and manually cut away the area I don't need by using the boolean tool and cube shapes, this way I will have 2 objects with equal poly count and will be able to replicate the wooden planks shape.

The screen above shows how I was using a cube with the Boolean tool to cut away the shapes I wanted for where the tree would be. Also note that the railing is bent to show how the tree has grown and slowly pushed it out over time.

Above shows the rough cut out shape for where the tree will be positioned, it still needs a bit of tweaking  and some of the edges that were generated by Maya can be deleted as they are not needed.

The shapes of some of the planks are not quite how I want them to be on the roof so I need to adjust the vertices of some of the corners to align them in the right way.

THis shows the tree now in the scene, and I have to say that i really dont like it. Only now can I see how the treehouse looks properly  and all of the area where I performed the Boolean operation looks too jagged and rough. I'll need to make it look as though there are less cuts in the treehouse and try to give it a more blocky feel to that area.

This is the exterior at the back of the house, I can leave this how it is as it will not be in any of the shots from this angle, when it comes to the rendering stage I will go through and delete all the faces that are not in shot to help speed up render time and keep our file sizes as small as possible.