In this quick tutorial set, I will be creating a pillar and optimize it for leveldesign purposes as well as gaming performance in UDK.

Preperation:

A quick google image search for references and a quick look into Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Column reveals that a pillar has 3 Parts to it. It is probably the best to create these as three modular Parts, to combine them later on for different sizes, or exchange the Parts.

3 major parts of a column

Defining the Head/Base:

For sake of the tutorial, I am going to be reusing the base as head.

High-Poly Model:

1.  Switch to the side View (Make sure you are using UDK-Grid Settings)
2. Create > CV-Curve Tool. With this tool we will create a profile curve for the base
3. For the first point enable grid-snapping with pressing the key “x”and place it on the origin. Place the rest of the pivots in any way you would like your profile. (It helps to press “Shift” while drawing the curve for more exact results
   

   Finished profile curve

4. Select the profile curve in object mode, Surfaces > Revolve (options)
   

   Revolve Options

5. Adjust the profile curve to get a better result (If construction history is turned on, changes will be visible instantly)
6. Select the geometry, Mesh > Smooth
   

   Smoothed object

7. Rename the “revolvedSurface1″ to “pillar_base_high_poly”
8. Create > Poly > Sphere, place the sphere on the edge of the base
9. Move pivot to center (Press d to modify the pivot)
10. Edit > Duplicate Special (options) Rotate Y = 22.5 Number of copies = 15
    

    Duplicate Special Options

11. Select all spheres, Mesh > Combine
12. Duplicate the combined spheres for later, hide it (Strg-H)
13. First select “pillar_base_highPoly”, then select the combined spheres Mesh > Boolean > Difference
    

    Finished High Poly Base

14. (optional) Select all edges and Mesh > Fill Holes

Defining the Pillar:

1. with Ctrl-Shift-H reveal the combined spheres (Alternative select the hidden object in the Outliner and set the Visibility to 1)
2. In the Side view, select all Edges, with Ctrl-Pressed deselect all edges except the top edges.
3. Edit Mesh > Extrude (in world mode translate in Y)
   
4. In faces mode, delete the remaining original faces from the sphere.
5. Create > Polygon Cylinder
6. Scale it and position it above the pillar base
7. Rename the Cylinder to “pillar_column_highPoly”
8. Select the top and bottom edge of the cylinder, Edit Mesh > Bevel
9. First select “pillar_column_highPoly”, then select the combined spheres Mesh > Boolean > Difference
   

Conclusion:

By enabling  Display > Heads up Display > Polycount you can figure out how many Tris currently the scene is using (In my case 10526 Tris). In Part 2 I will be looking into Normal Maps how to reduce the polys.

Important Note: Booleans are not very useful, this geometry cannot be directly imported into a game engine. This is only a quick way to get a good looking geometry that will be used to calculate the normal map.