090930 Skyscraper 03

I have been working on Skyscraper 03 for more than 12 hours and finally I've got the scripts working, STL ready, and renderable. Pretty happy about the result to be honest. And hopefully the 3d-print will work perfectly fine for my 1:1000 model.

I will go through the process from here on.


Imported the mapped-points-drawings into AutoCAD which the acquirement of points have been illustrated in the previous post.


Started mapping up the highlighted points using dots and crosslines.


Here's the results for the 4 categories


I decided to use square panel for the dots. The facades of the tower are also laid out with 10m x 10m square grids


Array across the panels with the 4 block panels. Rotate them to give more variations on the facades


It seems that 10m x 10m will contain a lot of points. So I made the grid to 20m x 20m and the density of points is just about right


Import the dwg/dxf file into Rhino


Applied Voronoi-2D script on facade and started to create some floor plates.


The wireframe generated by Voronoi-2D is then imported to 3ds max for piping (i.e. making from lines/curves to solid/mesh)


Isolated the wireframe to reduce memory usage for Scripts


I have modifed the script that I wrote in the previous post. This script is more simple. What it does is considering
-> each cell as individual
-> offset curve inward
-> CurvethroughPolyline
-> clean up the scene
This script can be made much better in terms of the return and the input variables.


Then I did a simple PlanarSrf command by selecting all curves in the scene to create the cutout surfaces


I wrote another script for this particular move - Extrude each surface to its normal.
Each surface has their own normal of extrude. If you type in ExtrudeSrf and select all the surfaces, you might encounter a problem where some surfaces might extrude along the construction plane which is undesirable. So this script does:
-> enter extrude height value (preset Cap and Both sides prior to runscript)
-> considering each surface
-> extrude individually via its normal
-> clean up the scene
It runs quite a while and this is the result with a thickness for the "membrane"


This image shows the combination of the primary cell structure + the membranes


Playing with the shapes of the floor plates


And stack them up with a rotating configuration. The idea here is to create some double volume spaces.


Here is the overall model!


Import the whole model into 3dsmax for basic renderings


Rendering in process... and below are the resulting renders.









I like this render the most.

090930 Point Mapping

I proposed a hypothesis for these towers.

If the twin towers are going to be a very iconic and striking buildings in Perth, It has got to have a bit of reference of the city itself.

To generate Voronoi Cells, you need points and a boundary. The points are the extracted node points of the city in four categories - Traffic Junctions, Open Spaces, Commercial, Entertainment/Tourists.

Here are the point maps of the city, and these will give the "randomness" of the points on facade.


Traffic Junctions


Open Spaces


Entertainment/Tourists


Commercial


Overall

090920 Tutorial 08

In the previous tutorial class, we were required to analyse a Jeffrey Smart piece, collaborate with our peers, reinterpret the image, and represent this image with 3d softwares and rendering tools.

The image the our group pick is called "Reflected Arrows" by Jeffrey Smart in 1974. You can see more of his works from here and here.


Reflected Arrows by Jeffrey Smart in 1974

Here are some of the process works:


Setting up scene


Modeling background building


Modeling puddles


Modeling the circular signs


Preparation of political figures to be mapped on to the signs


Abstracting the human figures in the scene


Material palette in 3D Studio Max


Running trial renders with mental ray

090919 Site Model | Technical Issue + Solution

I was intended to do some sun path study but I encountered some issues in terms of the completion of the site model and also file conversion. Eventually, I managed to complete the whole site model and did a couple of renders of it.


Original model from my uni-mate built in Rhino

I was given this Rhino site model from my uni-mate and this is a pretty decent model to work on with. It took me a while to export this polysurface model into 3d max for proper sunlight study. 3d studio max just cannot read polysurface even with force 2-sided on which I will never understand why. Anyway, the problem was fixed by meshing all surfaces.


Top view of the whole model in 3D Studio Max


Detail Top View with a 300m tower located on the western side


First trial testing over-shadowing distance and coverage

Putting the model into max and modeling up a 300m tall tower locating on the western side to test the shadow overcast. It casted a long shadow during winter in the morning over-shadowing Swan Bell Tower. Then I realised that the model received from my friend does not include the pier side models. So I started to search online from 3D Warehouse to find a free-already-built-for-you model.


Quick search on Google on Swan Bell Tower


KMZ model from 3D Warehouse


Double-click on KMZ file will bring you to Google Earth with the model.

Here's where I encountered my 1st issue. The 3d warehouse only has a KMZ model but not the Sketchup model. Thanks to SketchUcation Community Forum that I managed to convert KMZ file to SKP file with the following steps. (See here, here and here)


A thread on kmz-skp conversion on SketchUcation Forum


Blender official website, free download available


Python official website, also free for download


Blender interface with imported Swan Bell Tower


Import the OBJ-ed model back to Rhino
1) Import the DAE file into Blender. (you also have to download + install python beforehand ... what a pain!)
2) Export to 3DS/OBJ file
3) Import back into Rhino, done.


Vivaty official website

I have encountered an advice on using Vivaty in the help of file conversion but I failed to do so. It just doesn't allow me to install on vista.

The next is to model the pier/harbour and some more building blocks.



Extract the CAD drawing and import into Rhino for further modeling


Using streetview to determine the building height of the surrounding buildings.


The final site model


Rendering with V-ray in Rhino


800 x 600 jpeg render

There are couple of renderers that I had come across during my research on the web. Personally I still think V-ray is the best, maybe because I'm relatively more familiar with V-ray than the others. RenderPlus 's IRender nXt is a good plug-in renderer for SketchUp, but it's not free. It does amazingly quick renders straight from the viewpoint of SketchUp. Many more features can be found via this video ad.

Kerkythea is another free external renderer platform. Quite easy to control and easy to follow interface. It is potentially a good platform for reasonable photorealistic rendering because it supports a vast range of file format by different softwares. There's also a forum page for tutorials.


Quick render from Rhino model


Changing particular object's material is not hard to do


800 x 600 render, obviously the bleed control has to be taken into account