Show some of your Renderings

[Anonymous]

I thought it would be a fun idea to show some renderings of homes you've designed in Archicad, kind of like a little portfolio or show and tell.

So I'll start with a few:

[Karl Ottenstein]

Super work, David!!

[Erika Epstein]

David wrote:
The idea was to create a series of VR panoramas as a virtual tour of the church, a kind of book illustration in three dimensions. The model was created entirely in ArchiCAD and rendered in Artlantis.
.

Is there somewhere we can view the VRs?

[David Collins]

Here are a few more renderings from the Fenchurch project. Most of the detail work is made up of custom scripted GDL objects, there being very little call for standard aluminum windows and kitchen cabinets in the 14th century. Texture bitmaps were developed from photographs I took while researching medieval parish church architecture in England.

[David Collins]

Dennis wrote:
David, this was made entirely in ArchiCAD? Any add-ons? How did you make all those sculpture pieces?

The model was constructed entirely in ArchiCAD. No add-ons at all, just GDL script and many thanks to David Nicholson-Cole for the GDL cookbook.
The cornice trim here is a TUBE object, sculpted objects like the window tracery and the gargoyle were generated with MASSes, the window sill is a CPRISM. Fine details like the glass leading and brick arch are all texture maps.

[David Collins]

The beauty of ArchiCad: a complete set of architectural drawings derived from the model. I probably could have produced a quantity take-off and a cost estimate, if I knew the unit cost, say, of medium sized gargoyle in 14th century England.

[David Collins]

An “antique photograph” of a bell that fell and broke on the tower floor back in 1820 when the belfry timbers were left in a sad state of repair.

[David Collins]

Probably the single most challenging thing in the whole project: teaching the computer to tie a knot, i.e., working out the three dimensional path of a simple TUBE profile.

[David Collins]

Erika wrote:
Is there somewhere we can view the VRs?

The Dorothy L. Sayers Society has published the complete project on CD. I hasten to add that I donated the work to them and will not profit personally, beyond having had the unbelievable fun of designing and building a 14th century Gothic church more or less from scratch.

The DLS Society is a non-for-profit registered charity: from what I understand, all the proceeds will go toward a scholarship program for young bell ringers. The CD can be ordered directly from their website. I’ll post more information in the “ads” section.

[Anonymous]

David, truly amazing!!!

But for a project such as this one, did you ever consider using another software more suited to this type of modeling?

[David Collins]

Don wrote:
But for a project such as this one, did you ever consider using another software more suited to this type of modeling?

Nope. To my mind it was always essentially an architectural project, with walls, windows, stories, floor to floor heights, problems that needed to be studied in section, etc. I could have imported special objects created in other programs, but I wanted to avoid any compatibility issues and I needed to have strict control over the polygon complexity of absolutely everything.

Furthermore, most of the custom objects I created had to be parametric in one way or another. Gothic windows could be stretched vertically, leaving the upper tracery and arch in tact, (with a parametric value for the overall height) or adjusted slightly horizontally (with a MUL variable for the overall object) , so that I could easily change them as the general geometry of the church was established. Pews could be stretched in length as needed from the 2d symbol. The hammerbeam roof angels are completely parametric, changing position, clothing and hair style, and whatever stuff they needed to be holding (Medieval craftsmen were not keen on industrial standardization). In addition, most of the objects have a complexity parameter, so I could turn off the details of objects in the distance where they weren’t visible. As it was, I was just barely able to shoehorn the model into the computer memory and still leave enough elbow room for Artlantis to render it.

All this becomes less amazing when you consider that it took me nearly seven years to complete. I actually never intended to take it to such extremes, but the darn thing just turned out to be so interesting.....