Stonehenge Project

twharvey

To all forum folk who helped me with this project,

After all the good advice re SubSmooth, I've got a first cut at the Stonehenge monument as it is today. I'm at the tweaking/fiddeling stage now and any ideas, advice, critiques whould be welcome. As this model is aimed at GE, I'm particularly concirned about the size of the file: 3.7MB.

Thanks in advance,
Tom

solo

Tom

That looks great, about the file size, well you must understand that organic modeling will always be heavy due to the complexity and sheer number of faces needed to create the shapes, 3,7 Mb is not too bad actually.

You could try poly reducing but it would make the stones angular and spoil the realism.

Gaieus

Tom, from what I can see in these small images ( ) it must look really nice! As for file size; yes, obviously, it may seem to be quite big but if the Google QT realises that this is THE REAL model, I guess they wil be sort of "forgiving" about it (not to speak about the fact that there aren't many other building to be streaming / downloading in the neighbourhood).

Also, how much portion of the file size is the geometry and how much is the image files you used for texturing them? When the textures are heavy, the geometry still downloads easily and the textures apper a bit later. This is not true vice versa however.

Any chance for some bigger images?

Dave R

Very nice work, Tom.

There is an interesting article in the latest National Geographic magazine about Stonhenge, Durrington Walls and Woodhenge. I'd not heard of the last two before nor of the other artifacts as well as burial remains found in and around Stonehenge.

twharvey

Here're some bigger versions of the 3 shots.

I used Picasa to shrink all the texture photos before use. The textures average about 8-10KB,but there are a lot of them.

Tom

Gaieus

Now I can see better, thanks Tom. Really great model, I can tell!

This is the inside (though more spectacular) circle. Do you want to model the outside (less spectacular - but older and astronomically more interesting) outside circle as well? Though it wouldn't show too much on GE I presume...

Julius

could you upload larger images?

twharvey

Gaieus,

I chose the part that is inside the ditch because that is what is usually shown in photos and is the most spectacular. Also, it's what people see when they visit the site (my wife and I went there last week to get some aditional photos). When you aspproach the site from the east on the road, your first view of the monument is what is in the model. Also, as I said above, it's pretty big already.

On the subject of geometry vs. texture, I tried 3 ways to do these stones: first, very acurate geometry (high poly) with standard gray stone texture on all of them, second, very simple geometry and rely on the texture images for realism and third, a compromise between the two. The last one is what you saw in the shots above.

Tom

pichuneke

It's an incredible work.

Do you have plans for the original Stonehenge?

twharvey

@pichuneke said:

It's an incredible work.

Do you have plans for the original Stonehenge?

The first picture is a plan as its today that appears in several books. This one is from English Heritage Book of Stonehenge, Julian Richards, B.T. Batsford Ltd,1991. On the web I've oonly managed to find very small plans that aren't much use. Also, I haven't yet found any elevations. If anyone knows where they are, I like to know. There must be some academic sites with this kind of info.

I've also attached a plan that I downloaded showing the original layout. There are quite a few models of Stonehenge in 3DW that show a rconstructed view.

Thanks and regards,
Tom

Stonehenge Today

Location of original stones

Gareth

Nice work....congratulations....!

I'd like to see this one rendered in KT.

dylan

Looks great Tom and you have modelled the stones nicely.

Look forward to seeing this develop.

watkins

Dear Tom,

This might be of interest:

Redirect Notice

(images.google.co.uk)

Regards,
Bob

pichuneke

And this... (I hope):

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | History of Stonehenge

This animation from BBC Timewatch reveals the 4,500 years of history behind Stonehenge.

(news.bbc.co.uk)

Redirect Notice

(images.google.es)

http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/stonehenge.html

twharvey

@unknownuser said:

Very nice work Tom. I would as well like to get up closer amoung the rocks. I don't know if you are into rendering but this would certainly be a great model to play with. Cheers to you!!

Hi Modelhead,

I first went to Stonehenge in the mid-1970s. In those days you could walk all over the site and touch the stones. Now we're kept away from the stones to preserve them.

No, I haven't gotten into rendering. But could somebody else do it with the SU model?

Tom