Francis90's studio

[Francis90b 748]

Page 4??? page 4 i guess...

[nihonkaranws 88]

Hehe... I am also a big fan of Cold Case!!! But I only get to see it when I visit Canada: we don't get it in Japan.

As for your BAT, you are really taking on the whole BATting concept! The building is very detailed, and the windows are looking great.

But since this is a high-rise, I suggest that you follow Gascooker's tutorial in the Omnibus on 'Fake Ray-tracing'. If you use that tutorial to apply gradients on your wall texture, it will look more realistic. (You'll see what I mean! )... And also, make the 'lucky strike' texture more of an oval, since the SC4 Renders squash things, looks a bit too squashed.

Anyway, hope to see more from you J1, you are getting really good with the BAT.

[Gn_leugim 853]

this is a very nice bat here good work =)

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I think part of the building should be made taller (only a few stories) to create a small tower in the front.  Right now, because of the buildings you modeled this after, it looks like part of a building and not an entire building.

I think the white outlines should be closer, or possibly flush, with the wall.

What the windows, glass, and how the spandrels are, will be important in how this building looks.  Right now it's hard to see what is going on in there.

The area where the billboard is should have the same appearance as the rest of the facade.  That part is not a wall to wall area, and would be visible.

It looks like those are wooden fire escape coverings.  I don't know much about them, but I feel like the fire stairs would probably be on the inside of the building at this point in history for this type of building.  But that's just me, and it's your building.

I agree that a gradient in the texture would improve it.  Also, I think there could be more contrast in the texture.  For now I think the color of the limestone texture is ok, but it will need to be tweaked in the future.

[madhatter106 3,903]

I don't watch "Cold Case," but I know a few people who work on it (behind the scenes). I particularly like the Lucky Strike logo on the side...a nice touch. Good to see another tall building that isn't a square or rectangle in plan view...

[plasticboy 36]

Right now, because of the buildings you modeled this after, it looks like part of a building and not an entire building.

.quote>

Would be perfect as an urban infill tho

[Jasoncw 11,840]

It could still be an infill building, but I think that these kind of dramatic art deco setbacks need to resolve themselves into something.

More about the billboard. Those usually go over what are called "common walls" (because they are common (shared) between two buildings) or "blind walls" (because they have no windows). These spots would normally be covered up by a neighboring building, sometimes the neighboring building was demolished (thus revealing the wall), or the wall was done in this way speculatively (they were anticipating a tall building being built next to their own). The idea behind these walls, is why bother spending all of the money on expensive stone and ornament, and why bother putting windows if they're going to go right up against another wall. Advertisements were put on these walls when they were exposed to increase income.

However, the area where your billboard will always be visible from the street, and it will always have access to the outside (view and ventilation), so it would have windows and more expensive materials, like the rest of the facade.

Also, I forgot to mention before, you'll need to modify your windows on the inside corners of the setbacks, where the windows meet each other in a strange way. This is a design issue with setbacks, and needs to be solved. In real life, the facade may not be perfectly uniform, there might be small changes in some places, very carefully done. My advice for this is to look at art deco buildings and see why there aren't strange window situations on the inside corners.

[nihonkaranws 88]

Concerning the advertisement on the side of the wall: You may want to model a cylinder, and apply the material to that, instead of the blank wall right there. Another way is to edit the UVW Map 'Gizmo', and scale it down so that it fits the cylinder, and apply an 'opacity' map in the Material Editor (to your cylinder), so that it fades into the main wall. Try making a square (not rectangular) image that is completely black, and use a soft paintbrush (in photoshop or photopaint) to make a white circle in the middle that fading to black at the edges. This will allow the cylinder to 'fade' (visually) into the main wall.

[Francis90b 748]

Hi folks,

I wanted to came with an update, but school is picking up and i'm quite busy also during the weekends.

I think that both Jasoncw and plasticboy are right.Rush building will be small enough to be an infill building, but it is also meant to be noticeable.In many american cities, some buildings that ended up as infills because many other buildings surpassed them, but they were actually thought to be quite majestic and impressive.

I would like to say something about the setbacks, the lines around the windows and the fire escapes.

The setbacks come from a bigger buildings, and they actually look quite strange, so i will need to rebuild them.

The horizontal lines have to be rebuild as well, they have be less deep.

The fire escapes aren't wooden, i' ve used the wrong texture on them , but they' re going to be metal-made and rusty.I don't know if external firescapes are right on a late '20s early '30s building, but i think that they' re still good, although quite late.

The billboard on the wall needs to be fixed, but i think that also something with clear edges can fit well.

Now i'm sketching ideas for the union terminal and for the rush building, so i won't come soon with an update.

Thanks to Nikonkarawans, Jasoncw,Plasticboy and all the people who commented my last work.

[art128 4,618]

nice BAT !! great work

[delija21 295]

this is looking really good...i like the textures and especially lucky strike sign

[Francis90b 748]

Has someone some pics to show about how to model a colonnade in art decò style?I' ve tried with squared pillars but the result didn't convinced me.

Thanks

[Odainsaker 2,134]

Hiya joint1, hopefully some of these pictures may help or give inspiration.  Somehow, I originally thought your most recent post mentioned "porches," but now I see it is "colonnades" instead, so these examples may or may not entirely apply.

Bu far the best I can think of is the huge colonnade on the Buffalo City Hall:

Being a civic building, its entry and frieze plays heavily towards classicism, complete with fluted columns and capitals, even if the rest of the building becomes much more exuberant in its details.  On the left side of the image, the lower base facade maintains a handsome run of pilasters, between which are intricate windows and decorated panels.  This great building actually was BATted by sargeantcm and can be found on the STEX.

Next we have the Treasure Island Administration Building, part of a World's Fair complex on Treasure Island near San Fransisco:

I now always think of Jasoncw's wonderful Perry Station when I see this building, because the pilaster and window colonnades are so very similar.  Though this is a closed colonnade wall, some reworking of the base could open it up into an entry like on your station.  Note how the pilasters suggest classic roots from their abstracted flutes, and the bare top suggests a cornice and entablature, even when none of it is directly copying a classical style.  Hehe, also note the air contol tower above, as this building was also a terminal for 1930s Pan Am seaplanes.

Of course, you can also spin the idea of entry enclosures, such as in this porte cochere on the Bullock's Wilshire Department Store in Los Angeles:

In an earlier reply, I showed the urban street entrance to this building.  At the time, it was recognized that many customers were adopting suburban lifestyles centered around automobiles, and this building was among to earliest to to cater to them with dual urban pedestrian and suburban parking lot entrances.  "Porte cochere" or "coach door" is a fancy term for a motor court vestibule, and in this case there was offered valet service underneath the open vestibule for elite Hollywood guests arriving in their classic sports cars.  Today it has been remodelled into an outdoor sheltered patio.  Sadly, modern malls and department stores today almost universally made the transition to fronting parking lots, and even now typically dispense entirely with the sheltered entrances.  This example is of a small intimate entry, but it possibly can be scaled and its elements refitted and remodulated for a large sheltered colonnade.

Of course, if we really wanted to push the envelope, you could always change any stoa-like colonnaded central entry block into a full arch hall as in the Cincinnati Union Terminal:

Okay, that is maybe a different project in itself, hehe, however, I can see your current station wings flanking of a center such as this!

Perhaps a more modest central block is offered by Oklahoma City's old Santa Fe Depot:

Everything is scalable, and it is not necessary to have glass or keep the column spacing.  Perhaps more interesting is how at the top of the columns are suggestions of capitals, which sculpturally taper the forward protruding column tips back into the entablature top.  Actually, this is a great little depot in itself!

__________________________

I'm going to parrot someting Jasoncw mention with regards to the Rush Building and its windows tucked into tight inner corners on the corner setbacks.  Such corners are visually described as "weak" corners because you can't visually see the structural column that you would expect to be there, "awkward" because not seeing that expected visually reinforcer of support undermines the heavy structural system the style is trying to evoke, and "tight" because it almost mashes together windows that obviously want to follow their own proportion and rhythm.  Fear not...this was a common problem for Renaissance builders trying to recreate classic patterns, often with arches and medallions atop courtyard arcades strangely crashing into each other at the corners, leaving folded medallions or arched cornices that only complete 3/4s of the arch.  It even afflicted Baroque designers at Versailles, where some of the grand interiors have ridiculously thin slivers of pilasters at the corners where the decoratively modular wall panels don't quite fit the measurements of the rooms.

A solution common to Art Deco can be seen again the Bullock's Wilshire.  Okay, I once made of scurk of this building for SimCity 3000, and learned hands on how this worked:

At initial glance, it would seem all the column-like piers and windows align vertically, and indeed, that is how we are meant to understand them.  But if you look carefully at the interior corners of the corner setbacks, you will see that although the windows are perpendicular to each other at the corner, they do not meet other.  There is enough of pilaster at that corner to clearly separate them.  This extra bit of pilaster would seem to throw the whole idealized vertical alignment off, and indeed, it actually does.  However, when we look more closely, we see that some of the thick piers and pilasters are actually wider than others, or have extra vertical flutes in them, with those piers towards to lower setbacks having more fluting than the piers on the highest floors.  The shortest setback actually has its walls recessed in from the rest of the facade walls, but that recession follows the fluting of the major piers to its sides.  What looks like decorative flutes or corner notches running vertically up the piers are actually part of a clever system designed to allow the facade pattern and articulation to turn corners and fold in and out of setbacks without adding weak spots into the pattern of Pier-Window-Column-Window-Pier.

When I finally found a detailed elevation drawing of this building, sure enough, on paper the vertical window strips and piers are not in rigid identical alignment, but actually shift about and change sizes.  You would never notice these shifting paper alignments looking at the real building, and structurally, the width of the stonework making the piers or their centering is less important than the actual steel columns unseen within that are the real hidden alignments.  The natural tendency would be to push everything back vertically into perfect simple alignment, and you will see this alot in buildings that try to emulate Art Deco, but because of their simplifications seem more post-modern.

On your Rush Building, I would go ahead and force in push out the corner setbacks so that you can add in piers at the inner corners and re-separate to the vertical window strips.  Of course, this would make the outer corners on the main facade wall seemingly too stretched to fit that extra width created by adding another set of interior piers.  In that case, recess the outer corners of the main facade walls, much like that first and shortest corner setback on the Bullock's Wilshire above.

If you really want to blow you mind away on a tower, just imagine that there is a systematic reason for every setback on the wild tower of the Buffalo City Hall I showed earlier:

I wouldn't even know where to begin, hehe.  Hats off to sargeantcm, who made this as a wonderful BAT.

Oh, one more example for the Rush Building that occurs to me looking at the big central stairwell:

This is the backside of the historic downtown Nix Medical Center in San Antonio, in its 1920s heydey America's tallest urban downtown hospital skyscraper.  This building is actually in the the style of Spanish Gothic Revival, but the resemblance with yours should be obvious, hehe.  I think the vertical shaft is a latter 50s or 60s addition, offering better servicing and access to the many hospital floors and towertop helipad.  One of the ways it visually succeeds on the Nix Hospital is that the window sizes and patterning on the metal clad shaft match that of the older brick and terra cotta structure, so you may consider something similar with your building.

Okay, I admit, I like to sometimes show off old San Antonio terra cotta pictures!

Hope some of this was helpful!

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

Okay, I admit, I like to sometimes show off old San Antonio terra cotta pictures!quote>

Well I don't mind too much, they are beautiful Very informative, even for a a BATer who makes boring rectangular commie blocks like me.

Oh, hope to see you doing some work again soon Joint, you had some great things going!

-Todd

[Francis90b 748]

Yeah, i've been too much lately, and maybe you can be interested in what i'm doing now.Shortly after Odainsaker wrote his long and helpful post, i' ve discovered the beautiful Tulsa union depot:

I

sn't she a beauty?.The two boxed areas has provided vital ideas for the building, which is going to appear like a central hall with two entrances at the left and the right of it.The station will be located at the end of a ramp, like the Cincinnati union terminal.Differently from the C.U.T. the access avenue will be splitted in two and then will cross the railway tracks with two viaducts.The two road will also provide car access on the sides of the station, so they will be partially covered.

                                                       

                                                                    Back

(to the viaduct                                (to the the train shed )    corridor to the train sheds            

over the tracks)

                                            IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII             IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

    road                                 I         

                                                          office space

_____________________________________________________________________

I                     I                     I                                                       I

I                     I                     I              office space                       I

I                     I                     I                                                        I

I                     IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Icovered road     (side entrance)                                                     (central hall)

I

I

I                     IIII              IIIII

I                     I  I              I   I

I                     I  I              I   I

I                     I  I              I   IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

I                     I  (front entrace)               I

                                                              I

                                                              IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

                                                                                          I

                                                                                          IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

road                     sidewak          (green space)                      front square and avenue loop

                                                               Front

Above there is a sketch to represent the plant of the building.I've did it just because i still have modelled the majority of the parts, and many of them will be very challenging.However i think that if i succeed in doing them the result is going to be amazing.

Differently form my earlier creations, this is going to be a much smaller building, so i can afford ramps, viaducts, an ornated train shed and so on.On the other size i must say that the lot will be gigantic, since the ramps and the train sheds eat up a lot of space.I think that the final size will be 15-to-20 x 9 but i'm not completely sure.

If you look at real railway stations you may notice that sometimes they have facilities like repair shops, power plants, warehouses and so on.I'm going to create some of these facilities to match with the station, and i really appreciate any photo and idea you can offer, since i don't know very much about that architecture.

The rush tower needs to be restarted, but i can tell you i' ve got a crush for some Chicago art decò jewels near the Tribune building.However i need some time to study them, fix the ideas and come with the product.Also, i believe that it's too much important to be done while doing other projects, so i will do it after the other projects will be completed.

[Francis90b 748]

Maybe i need to come with another update....the pic below shows what i can offer now.

It,s not too much, a little more than some boxes joined together, but you can see the general idea.Many parts are actually boxes modelled to give an idea, and many others are still to be modelled.Needless to say, the vast majority of the details still needs to be added and textures are beta.Also, i need to know the height of the in-game trains to determine the height and the length of the ramps, and the height of the train shed.That's all for now.

[nihonkaranws 88]

Looks great J1!!! Try thickening the small portions of your walls (on the front), since they look a bit like planes right now, though.

[Francis90b 748]

Nikonkarawans:I agree, they appear too thin.I may also scale down the building a bit, sice i think it's too massive now.

BTW, congratulations for the trixie!

[Gn_leugim 853]

I agree with Nikonkarawans.. =)

[GMT 389]

oh lucky strike... reminds my of my long passed smoker-time...

oh some fun memories...

I'm drifting away, sry

nice buildings you've done so far! Can't wait to see them in action

[Francis90b 748]

My progresses so far...

[Francis90b 748]

Well after a lot of time, should i came with something new, right?

I can say that i have and i haven't something new.After realizing that some flaws on the small sized station in the previous page couldn't be fixed in a way i liked, i've shed that plan.What i'm thinking now?

Let's take into consideration the old LaSalle street station in Chicago:

It served two railway companies, the New York Central and the Rock island.After the 1968 merger with the Pennsylvania,The NYC left LaSalle for the union station.The Rock Island went bankrupt in 1975, and was liquidated in 1980.With no railroads using it, the station was doomed.Metra used the train sheds for it's commutert services, and the office block was torn down to make way for an ugly modern skyscraper.

I've seen that pic of the station topped by the Chicago Board of Trade building:

And i' ve thought:why don't model a station with a tower like that over it?

My thoughts went to my favorite chicago skyscraper, the LaSalle-Wacker building:

And so if everything goes well you will probably have a 41-story tower over a railway station.

[Francis90b 748]

(post reserved for future use)

[allez l'om 1]

It looks great!! it would wonderful if you make some buildings of Chicago because there is not a lot from the city on the STEX!!!

[nihonkaranws 88]

Are you J1?

[Francis90b 748]

Yes, i've changed username

[Francis90b 748]

Something really important happened few hours ago, and i need a new post to write about it..

The hard disk of my PC melted down, so i' ve lost everything i was working on.Now i'm using my father's PC.

I think it would be quite lucky if i can get a new hard disk whitin one or two weeks, and if i can gather all the things i need to re-start in two more weeks.So, i don't think i can bat again before at least a month.So i think that this thread may be considered as dead.Maybe i will start another one in the future, but now i don't know.

Thanks for reading this folks, hope i can BAT again soon.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Aw shoot, what a bummer. Well, I hope you'll be able to get it all sorted quickly. Reminds me of my PSU which literally blew up before Christmas and took my mainboard with it... not funny. However, at least my HD surviced! Things like this really suck, so I feel with you. Just take your time and re-start this thread (or open a new one) anytime you want. Good luck!

[madhatter106 3,903]

Oh no, what horrible news! I hope you're back up and running in no time...good luck!

[Gn_leugim 853]

dam it.. that's dab =1 I'm sorry for you man.. =(