Durant,

Thanks for the demiurgic comment. "Whimsy funk" captures my approach/style pretty well.

Fred

Thanks guys. What I find frustrating is that the fluidity of working with SU breaks down as you start to get into models with a really fluid look to them. You can set FFD to work on a high-poly model -to get that extra curve you want- but if you do don't expect to use SU for a couple of hours. Oh well, the trick is to use limits to improve your creativity... at least that's how I rationalize it.

Ahhhh, summer!

Pushing the SU poly face limits with this geometry. The model is 86 Mb and VERY slow to work with.

Have I mentioned how much I love SdS.

@unknownuser said:

The fawlty Towers 'Don't mention the War' scene comes to mind :
"Don't mention Number Seven. I mentioned it once but I think I have gotten away with it..."

Seven is right out sir.

Thanks for the feedback guys.

Mateo,

That bubble house is wacky (like I should talk) but the quality of the detailing shows that if you apply enough money you can make almost anything look good.

Fred

It makes a nice gift.

I'm going to put this aside for a bit. The interior still needs a lot of work but I'm not up for it right now.

Lots of experimentation going on with this design. It has been interesting working out what to do with the interiors of the arches. Perhaps a fun retirement house that the grand kids would love to visit.

without the arches

@unknownuser said:

Fred, do these houses actually get realized? Or are they pure enjoyment for you to model?

Do you know any wealthy Dutch burgermeisters with the architecture bug?

I keep hoping that Sergey or Larry will stumble upon my designs while surveying their empire. Those guys will try anything.

For now, just the joy of exploration and the challenge of making vaguely envisioned design ideas tangible ... and, of course, the positive feedback from SCF'ers.

Fred

PS My sympathies on the long trip home.

Been slogging away on this and it's to the point where I want to share a preview... a teaser if you will.

mateo,

The look is so beautifully rich, textured and layered. The reflections in the plate glass windows are fantastic. It very much reminds me of illustrations in some of my favorite childrens picture books. My kids are older now so I can't remember the illustrators but I'll bet some of those with younger children can supply some names.

Anyway, you are definitely taking SketchUp to a new level. Congrats for some great work! Keep going!

Fred

I've been enjoying this thread. Thanks to all for sharing. I took most of the text in the thread and fed it into a little online program called Wordle which produces a word/tag cloud of the words in the submitted text. Kinda fun.

Brilliant! What a cool solution. That is a really clever and creative use of a tool in an unexpected context! Wow.

Thanks Gaieus and Mateo,

The congrats really belong to Andrew, who is an exceptional young man. He was absolutely thrilled to attend BaseCamp, and enjoyed getting to meet some of the SCF people. Far from being the master I'm just a lucky teacher who worked with a brilliant exceptionally hard-working student.

Re the subject of "organic master", there are many on this list to whom that term would be more accurately applied... "organic dabbler" would be more appropriate in my case.

Fred

HFM,

Cool idea regarding joint push pull. I took one of the elements that comprise the starting geometry for the images above and tried your idea on it. Lots of potential here I think.

Fred

Eric,

Thanks, these are great! Very nice style.

I hope to use a few in a new project I'm just starting.

Fred

One last image before settling down to some real work. I was using the Option/Orbit trick (Ctrl-Orbit on Windows) to get some different views of the model. This view seemed to have a little more balance than the others.

It has some nice color details at high resolution, so I put the hi-res version here:

http://dws.editme.com/files/MayJune2008/accidental%20abstract%20v6.jpg

Thanks guys. You are making my day, which is cool because we had a t-storm last night which screwed up the electricity at the school where I'm the I.T. guy. I used to like thunderstorms.

Again, straight SketchUp/FFD. No photoshop.

rsw, I'm with you re the crazy hair look. I think they would make great toupées for some Japanese anime character. Goku's wacky brother perhaps.

Fred

Thanks for the feedback guys. Always appreciated. Just SketchUp (and FFD) acting a little screwy.

If anyone is interested, hi-res versions of the images are available at the following urls:

http://dws.editme.com/files/MayJune2008/forest%20of%20lines%202%20big.jpg

http://dws.editme.com/files/MayJune2008/forest%20of%20lines%202%20v2%20big.jpg

Playing around with FFD on some complex geometry created interesting and unexpected effects. I applied some textures for fun to see what might appear. Odd and a bit painterly, in an abstract sort of way.

The building, Museum Plaza in Louisville, KT is by Joshua Prince-Ramus, who worked with Rem Koolhaas on the Seattle Public Library. There is a good TED talk by Prince-Ramus, in which he discusses both buildings, here.

TED | 404: Not Found

(www.ted.com)