@unknownuser said:

Lewis, thanks and you are right, I missed your original post.

Get yourself a copy of Myst. Start with the first one as there is a story throughout. You can get collections now.
http://www.ubi.com/US/Games/Info.aspx?pId=1042
And if you are an Uber Geek like me, get the 3 books that give the past history.

And I am sure there is a book on that pedestal. If I could just reach out and tou....

Thanks for the compliments, guys...it's interesting that everyone finds these things so evocative, since they basically began as an self-directed exercise in constructibility.

And I'll take a look at the Myst resources, Eric. Will these things still play on a modern PC, you think? It's been at least a decade since I read about them.

Incidentally, attached is the sort of output from SketchUp that I need to produce this type of rendering, along with the faux depth masks I described in another thread. It all goes into layers and saved masks in Photoshop.

Materials mask:

Shadows-only export:

--Lewis

@unknownuser said:

Beautiful work Lewis. The compositions and colors are just wonderful. I wouldn't be any big rush to go for the other rendering techniques. These are pretty nice.

Thanks much, Jeff. I appreciate it.

Eric,

Long--and slightly nuts--story. I'll try to shorten it up:

Originally, I started this project late last November as just as a casual experiment in the simulation of complex geometry using basic, off-the-shelf building components (I'd been reading the chapter on "constructibility" in that NCARB publication on building envelope by Randall Stout) . About the same time, jenujacob posted a link to the Smooth Teddy toy modeler in the old Forum, and I discovered it was most useful for creating "boulder"-like shapes, since you can't do anything really precise with it. I have this abiding interest in prehistoric anthropology (I nearly became an archaeologist at one point), particularly the western European megalith-builders...and suddenly I found I could build megalthic structures with Smooth Teddy and throw them into SketchUp. So monoliths started making their way into my complex-constructible-geometry study, or maybe the other way around, and I also began developing the model to illustrate various SketchUp techniques I was teaching at the BAC in my course on 3D modeling and illustration. For a hobby, this thing took on a very strange impetus of its own; I planned on entering it into an "unbuilt architecture" competition in N.Y. in February, but my health crashed in a big way and I missed the deadline (which may explain some of the bleakness of the scenery around my model...I was too sick to go to work, so when my fever would let up I would plug away at the model).

Incidentally, there really is not a site, per se...it's all a kind of pastiche of my memories of places in Wales and Cornwall from when I was much younger and traveling around the UK. I told my students that they should imagine it to be built on a disrupted ancient site on the western edge of the Isle of Lewis (where I have never been).

It's funny how many people mention Myst...I've never played the game, although I've seen some imagery and I did once, sometime around 1995, devote a few minutes to the sequel Riven.

I take it you must have missed the original posting in the Spring...here is a just slightly-reworked version of the principal image I had on the old gallery forum:

Thanks for the interest!

--Lewis

EDIT: I didn't really answer your question about purpose for the structure, did I? I did come up with a belated rationale for the thing, which is true now, although (as I wrote above) it wasn't consciously true when I started this. I had to send in a page explaining the project with the competition entry, so I've attached it below in pdf. Be warned: this is the sort of thing that made my critics in grad school start frothing at the mouth.
LWadsworth_fantasy_archit.pdf

These are some additional scenes for a project that I have referenced perhaps too many times in other places (in the old Google SketchUp Gallery forum it was originally posted under the headings "Point Oblivion" and "Last of Oblivion"). I've tweaked the model a bit and jiggered around the renderings since then...I finally did send a set of five images off to a competition last month, but I would have heard if the project had placed by now.

In case anyone missed the previous posts of this monster on the old Forum: these are essentially paintings done with Photoshop CS3 XT over a SketchUp-derived "scaffolding." I used the SketchUp 2D export to create various sorts of masks to make it simpler for me to paint in textures in PS, with the idea of creating something that neither seemed derivative of traditional media nor photorealistic. In fact, I think they ended up looking like drybrush watercolor, so I don't know that I consider the renderings successful on that level. It might be time to stop bucking the general drift of things and get back into using raytracers and radiosity.

And Matthew, too:

http://www.sketchucation.com/forums/scf/viewtopic.php?f=125&t=5204&hilit=+Trajan%27s+markets+Rome

My first model was the Forum and Markets of Trajan in Rome, that one that my classicist friends (who have posted at various points in this forum) are developing for their projects.

These recent posts of your work are very interesting, Kris. I'm a little overwhelmed, trying to make sure I see them all.

Could you explain how these relate to your work? I know you do custom homes (I'm assuming its "design-build," in architect's terminology). How do these models fit into the process, if you don't mind me asking? Do you make the models (and the renderings) from construction drawings you have already worked out, or do you first make the model and use it to demonstrate your design ideas to the client prior to committing them to plan?

--Lewis

(P.S. I'm not going to let my wife see any of these...she'll just want to ditch this antique monster I rehabbed ten years ago and move into a Krisidious Special.)

I would say that the photomontaged additions...the entourage and the background...are converging to different vanishing points than your model, although this is not as obvious with people and landscapes as it might be if you had dropped this into a photo of a heavily-built context.

With newer versions of Photoshop, you might be able to adjust the photographic elements slightly, but it would probably make more sense to adjust your camera view in SU to match your perspective "target" first using the Photo Match tools in SketchUp, if you can, or even by eye. I don't find Photo Match to be universally useful outside of environments with a great many right angles.

I might be able to help a bit with adjusting "simulated" lighting on the photographic people, as well, but I'll need a computer with Photoshop on it so I can create some examples...so I'll try to remember to respond to this after work with some additional comments.

--Lewis Wadsworth

I can't help but wonder what Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno would have thought of digital art like Mr. Bartels'...who needs mechanical reproduction anymore when every copy is in fact an exact duplicate of the original?

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

@elysium said:

James E. Packer, version of the Forum of Trajan is absolutely fantastic!

Hi Pedro. Do you mean that you've actually communicated with Mr. Packer? I really enjoyed his book on the Forum, even though I am hardly a classical scholar. His monograph was the one of the principal sources I had when I modeled the forum so long ago for my "gut" basic urban design class in Yale's architecture program. I particularly appreciated his descriptions and images of previous reconstructions of the monument...the Beaux Arts "imaginary" versions were insane and beautiful.

You're doing great with your model. If it becomes too cumbersome as a single file, you might try saving out individual structures or areas as components, editing them in separate SketchUp windows, and then reloading them into your main composite file when your edits are complete. I do this all the time for large projects.

--Lewis

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

Hey Pedro (I'm assuming that it's you, as how many people would be doing this?)

Have you heard from an Oxford University historian named Matthew Nicholls? He was trying to track you down through the old Google forums; apparently he's writing an article about some aspect of the Forum Trajani that you have modeled. He also pointed out (after I shared the same Forum/Markets model with him that I sent you) that new research has indicated that some parts of the Forum of Trajan are different than we had imagined.

poster-Lewis Wadsworth

Currently: Nash the Slash, "Children of the Night". I bought the album off of ITunes.

What a find! Thanks, Ross. To think that I've lived within an hour or two of the Canadian border for twenty years, and I'd never heard of this guy! And I've even listened to Numan, and somehow missed that he hung out for a while with this crazed mandolin player who performs with his face entirely covered by surgical gauze...

I emailed the YouTube clip of Nash doing "Wolf/Glass Eye" to a friend of mine who works for Gehry. She really liked it as well. So just imagine: there's a distinct possibility that in the office of the World's Most Famous Architect, someone is currently "rocking down" to the tunes of "thee ee-lick-troneek" Nash the Slash.

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

I do have both the Orff version of Carmina and Philip Pickett's "medieval" interpretation of the poems on my Ipod, too. Of course, Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi does not encourage model making. Rather, on listening I find myself fighting the urge to put on polished plate armor, mount a warhorse, and ride through a grove of flowering fruit trees to almost certain death in battle against the forces of evil.

Oh, wait...no, that's a flashback from Excalibur.

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

@ross macintosh said:

Seeing those Kompressor tubes reminded me of the truly great Nash The Slash, who had a cult following in the early 1980's. I've just enjoyed watching a number of his performances.

Regards, Ross

Nash was definitely a bit more polished than Kompressor, but you are right...there is a certain insane shared aesthetic...or maybe it's just the masks!

Is Nash really covering Astronomy Domine on an electric ukulele in one of those videos?

Thanks for bringing him to my attention.

--Lewis

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

I also have the Requiem on my 'pod. Of course, it's a rather shocking shuffle to go from that to "Under My Wheels."

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

@unknownuser said:

@unknownuser said:

Right now:

Alice Cooper, "Killer", 1976

A classic!

Yeah! This was way before he went Republican and started playing golf with country western performers!

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

Right now:

Alice Cooper, "Killer", 1976

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

It suddenly occurred to me: in YouTube is immortality.

By the way, the singing-in-the-shower scene was in Herr K's other hit video, "You have to Synthesize."

--Lewis

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

It's a pity Kompressor, my favorite pseudo-German, pseudo-alien, death metal artist from the Midwest, has retired from the music business. But his music lives on "to crush puny America with German industrial might":

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(www.kompressormusic.com)

Try "K is for Kompressor"...you just cannot imagine how wonderful the video was. At one point he (rather flabbily) sings in the shower...with the alien mask on.

And then, "for something completely different", listen to Herr K's version of "The Girl from Ipanema."

--Lewis

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

What do I listen to these days? Autechre, AFX, Plaid, and maybe some Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails when I want to cheer myself up. Our IT tyrant has banned internet radio at work, but before that I spent a lot of time with SomaFM's Cliqhop and this weird Czech station that is all Trent Reznor, all the time (NINnet).

Do you really listen to Rammstein, Jeff?

Posted by Lewis Wadsworth

My project team all received new Vista Business computers with wireless keyboards and mice Tuesday, and we have all had that same problem. I demanded my old "wired" mouse back, actually.

We also had a funny situation where my wireless keyboard would interface with the computer of someone sitting about fifteen feet away in the next cubicle, and vice versa. After a few screams of "My computer is possessed!" we worked that one out, but the issue with the mice has not gone away for those who kept the wireless ones.

--Lewis