Dubai model (2015?)

[malec]

For this one I turned on pretty much all the settings, took AGES to render and I was afraid of my PC overheating

[malec]

My very "aqua" fantasy SZR tower. A res tower just over 100 stories and 400m.
This is to be placed somewhere near bright start tower and for the design I decided to play off some of the elements of nearby towers. For example, I took the basic shape of the balconies from falcon tower nearby:




Then I stole the idea of changing the shape of the balconies from the Aqua proposal in Chicago. There's actually a method I made up for how the shape changes throughout the tower, although I couldn't be bothered explaining it now
I tried to avoid the whole phallic thing but I don't think I succeeded
I hated it the result at first but I think it's kind of OK now.











In the skyline:

[BrandonJXN]

How did you make the Aqua tower? I know SketchUp but how did you make the wavy affects?

[STR]

Originally Posted by malec

For this one I turned on pretty much all the settings, took AGES to render and I was afraid of my PC overheating

20-30 minutes is average to short for a pro render.

And your bump map needs to be much higher resolution or you need to tile it, or both. Reduce the contast on the map and you should start to be getting a much more realistic water effect.

[malec]

^^ Thanks, it actually took about 45 to 50 minutes.
I'll try that with the water, thanks. I've been messing around mostly, trying out different things (even if I don't have a clue what they are) and seeing what works, what doesn't.

I cleaned the top of my fantasy tower a bit. Now the it doesn't bulge as much as it did causing it to look like something it shouldn't:

[malec]

People were wondering how you get this wavy effect with sketchup so I made this tutorial:

1: Make a box.




2: Create some simple balconies like this:




3: For this we’ll just use a simple pattern so one curve per side. Let’s say we want the building to bulge in the middle, then we start with a curve pointing inwards like this. Create one at the bottom and at the top:




4: You need 3 points to define curves properly in sketchup so create 2 lines up the side, then a curve in the middle as shown.




5: Now make a curve for each floor, the end-points and midpoint joining up as shown:




6: Once you’ve done that get rid of the excess lines




7: Select the existing curves, then copy, paste and rotate them as shown.




8: Attach them to the building:




9: Get rid of the square portions of the balconies:




10: Optional step, spice it up if you want. Add some depth to the balconies.

[BrandonJXN]

Hm..I'm having problems. I want to make a section of a building Aqualike. Not the whole thing.

[malec]

Well, who said you have to make the whole building like that. This is just a guide and you can just apply it to whatever section you want, it's just to give the general idea of how this works

[malec]

2 more images. I fiddled around more with the water, got it looking more realistic now.

[Bergenser]

very nice

[STR]

I think I know why it's taking forever for everything to render. It's all the reflections on the buildings. The renderer has to calculate all the light bouncing off one building to another. It eats up huge amounts of processing power. Make the buildings flat and non-reflective.

[malec]

^^ It's strange though because I made one version of that tower which took only a few minutes to render, then the 2nd version which only had a changed top needed 40+ minutes, both had pretty much the same amount of reflection.


Making this dubai model is definitely a good exercise. The buildings get weirder and weirder and can be insanely hard to model sometimes. This next one mightn't be as flamboyant as say, dancing towers but it's going to be an absolute bitch to model, usually a pattern in the shapes help but here there is none! Maybe the method I used for making the fantasy tower might come in handy here.




Any suggestions on how to make this, STR or anyone (apart from learning max which I'm way too lazy to do )

[Eigenwelt]

how did you import the map below the modles?

[STR]

Originally Posted by malec

Any suggestions on how to make this, STR or anyone (apart from learning max which I'm way too lazy to do )

Start off with a box with as many vertical divisions as needed. Pull and rotate each level as needed. I'd guess it'd take about an hour in total.

[malec]

Just modelled the whole of DIFC. Am really happy with this since, looks like it has a bit more class than my other stuff. The index, sky gardens and the gate are done by others.









The park towers were a bitch to model, no easy way of doing it such as using the follow me tool.

[Bergenser]

Nice.

[malec]

Originally Posted by STR

Start off with a box with as many vertical divisions as needed. Pull and rotate each level as needed. I'd guess it'd take about an hour in total.

Thanks for that info. I'm not going to do this building yet since I don't know the exact location. There's another gehry-style tower announced for a specific plot (this one looks shit but is still complicated and a challenge)

[Sacto]

Nice!

[rbowk]

i love it omg

[malec]

I don't know if I can continue this since I think I've reached the limit that my PC can take. I was just preparing a model of the whole creek and when I was fiddling around with the various projects (of course very laggy) I noticed my processor temp was around 75'C!!! Was going to do some bryce renders but there's no chance I'll attempt that now, unless I want to set my PC on fire.

I might try and refit the heatsink (cooling device for the processor) tomorrow and see how it goes. I'll probably wait a few days though since I have assignments to do for college and I really don't want to fuck up my PC now.