My Images of the day

Bryan K

Old churches represented the epitome of architectural design and engineering in their day that was also accessible and usable by the average person.

A worthy subject.

Chris Fullmer

Absolutely incredible Paul. I love your work as always,

Chris

Paul Russam

Here's an update on the church.
Work on site started recently with the builders doing a bit of remodelling with a couple of mini excavators, here's a shot taken before they got going:

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and here's one taken on Friday.....

A bit of a difference don't you think?, here's a couple more from Friday:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Whilst the builders were busy gutting the place they made a bit of a discovery. We always knew that under the raised area of the altar there was a tiled floor, we assumed that it was in poor condition, it having being covered up, but were we in for a surprise.

Before:

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And after the raised area was removed this is what we found!!

We're about to start working up some concepts that retain the floor whilst still raising the altar/lectern/priest's up about 450mm. I personally think we should suspend the lot on trapeze wires from the ceiling but I think the Monsignor may baulk at the idea of flying over his parishioners!

Here's a link to the Picasa album containing the above images along with a few more for good measure.
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/Paul.Russam/IOTD20090928?feat=directlink

Ecuadorian

You're a genius, Paul.
And I guess you must be kind of a hero to your client for being able to show these proposals in full-detail via SketchUp.

solo

Holy shit!! (pun intended)

That looks awesome, those tiles.. , fantastic stuff, I'm gonna be watching out as this progresses.

linea

What a find! I think we all dream of discoveries like that. Fascinating work Paul.

pilou

Astonished thread!

Paul Russam

Here's the first bash at a revised altar area. Apart from some cursory glances no one here's really seen it yet so your the first! I doubt this concept will survive much scrutiny so expect a second version soon.

This is a massively cut-down version of the model with only the bare essentials to enable us to come up with a new altar area.

The floor between the altar and pews is still the old design hence the large gaps, The altar area is no more than a massing model, hence the sharp edged steps.

Paul Russam

I'd forgotten that I'd been having a go with Twilight Render using the church as a tester before the revised design reared its head.

Here's some images I knocked out using Twilight, since I'd abandoned rendering when I abandoned 3D Studio Max in 2004 I had to relearn some things but I've go to say TW is good and fantastically easy to use. My only problem in getting better out of my models is me at the moment.

I was trying to get a highly reflective marble with this one and accidentally ended up with a polished steel floor, not what I intended but that's why their called test renders.

Stinkie

Marvellous work.

watkins

Dear Paul,

I know that this sounds a bit wacky, but have you thought of a using glass floors in your design so that the mosaic is still visible? Yea, I know, wacky!

Regards,
Bob

Paul Russam

Bob,
I had thought of it but as I'm 'just' the 3D guy and 'not' an architect my opinion doesn't carry much weight around here when it comes to design ideas.
But...... I do plan on putting my ideas on the table.

Replace the existing full depth floor with glass and lighting it from below but then I thought about how you would clean the covered area or replace the lights.
Have the risers of the steps in glass block with lights behind and either marble or timber as the goings/level areas, again maintenance would be a problem.
Marble risers with a new mosaic design for the goings/level areas, could be too fussy.

We'll see, its early days for this one but time's a ticking as a design will have to be resolved soon.

sepo

Amazing work....and materials in some renders are fantastic. I like oak very much...

Stinkie

I'm wondering how big this model is. 80 - 90 MB?

JuanV.Soler

how clean and, neat
.thanks very much
Paul Russam

Paul Russam

Thanks for all the nice comments, they truly make a difference.

@unknownuser said:

I'm wondering how big this model is. 80 - 90 MB?

The model is about 50-60mb at the moment, it was smaller but I went through it recently and 'upped' the detail on some of the parts that were bugging me, the round tops to the column bases, the roses at the end of the beading around the arches etc.
I've probably overdone the textures on the new floors as they make the altar walls look a bit blurry in comparison. I'm tempted to remake the textures as higher res but that's just the sadomasochist in me talking

Elibjr

My God,
I feel so inadequate now. This is beautiful. How long did it take you to model this? What settings did you use in TW and how long did it take this thing to render?

Looking at the sanctuary, this place looks like it would be dark at night. Is there any thought to update the lighting?

I would say that you have mastered this software. Amazing and inspiring. Thank you Mr. Russam!

Paul Russam

I did another Twilight Render last night.

SU Scene:

After 14h25m at 1200x850:

After a bit of Post Processing:

And for reference, a photo of the real thing:

Here's a link to the Picasa album with the full size images:
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/Paul.Russam/IOTD20090930?feat=directlink

Ecuadorian

The only difference I see is that the real photo has a lot more light coming in from the windows.

Perhaps rising "Sky Brightness" and "Maximum Sun Intensity" values from the Sun/Sky tab in Twilight's Light Editor might help get a bit closer to the real thing. Especially "Sky Brightness". But this is just nitpicking; you've done an amazing modeling job, Paul. You are really pushing SketchUp's limits.

Paul Russam

A couple of Twilight updates:

After 2h22m

After 3h

Managed to get a subtle bump on the tiles

This one is cooking overnight, but this is what I got after 50m

As usual the full res ones are on my Picasa album:http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/Paul.Russam/IOTD20090930?feat=directlink