This is semi-OT since all modelling thus far has been done in cinema4D, but it's intended to move to Bryce for the challenge, so there we go. The proverb I picked is "casa sporca, gente aspetta" , which loosely translates into "a messy house invites unexpected visitors". The last few weeks I focussed on building the house. Not sure yet if this is going to be an exterior or interior scene so I did both and this is where I stand (this will be six posts with images, so beware :-).

That's it for the moment. The house is around 20k polygones, weighs around 1,5 MB and readily imports into Bryce. Problem are the textures which are a whopping 200 MB and the render times which are around 5 hours with best AA in Bryce and around 2 minutes in C4D under otherwise identical conditions. I think I need another 4-6 weeks to get a final scene that fits the proverb so I don't think that I will make it. But comments and suggestions are most welcome, anyhow.

OMG! Did everyone just hear my jaw hit the floor? Wow, I love that house. Its so cool to see it being made in steps like that. Its gonna be a shame to make it messy LOL.

Love the house. But 200 megabytes of textures? Wow. You'd need almost as many textures as they used in the Chinese carnival scene in "Ghost in the Shell: Innocence" to fill that up. :-) Is those five hours because of the trees? Or you're using a lightdome both in Cinema and Bryce?

Very cool work Roobol!!!

Very cool work Roobol!!!

Wow. That's incredible work!

Great work! Alas, the texture size isn't your only problem; any tree that size, that close to a house would need to be cut down or moved (roots would undermine the house foundations; any strong storm from the wrong direction would send it into the house, crumlping it into a mass of shredded timbers...) Chers, Diolma (Diolma, the great purveyor of pessimistic views...)

Stunning.

great work, how will you mess it up?

Decide what your final image is going to be and don't render the rest. If it is exterior don't import the wallpaper and interior textures if it is in one of the rooms don't import other rooms that are not in the scene. Should speed things up a bit.

Instead of moving it into Bryce......could you move it to England and I'll move in!!!!!!!!!!!! Excellent modeling, well done :)

Wonderful house! But why not change the tree for something less common....and less render-intensive?

great house! Excellent model. 200mb in textures is way overkill. Im working on an animation project for a company right now in which 2 square miles of a city are modeled and textured and the textures all together are less than 50mbs (for 30 buildings or so). Its all about knowing how close the camera will get. You can lower the rez of most of your textures to 256x256 and lose no detail at that distance. If you are going to render interior scenes, only keep the hirez of the certain rooms that you will view up close. but great house! And it would be really cool to see it put together like you have showed us but in a sort of timelapse video thing. Kepp up the great work

Thanks all for the compliments and suggestions. I should have mentioned that for the moment the texture maps are uncompressed 4megapixel psd files straight from Bodypaint with separate layers for colour and bump. For he final renders they will be scaled down and jpegged and unnecessary textures will be removed. The current trees are from Xfrog, which are also quite resource-intensive; Bryce trees are a lot more forgiving. Diolma, thanks for the tip for how to mess up the house :-) Erlik, light dome in C4D, sun and a few radials in Bryce, soft shadows and best AA in both. Ysvry, presumably broken glass and lots of peeling paint and weathered wood textures, but still have to photograph those, though. The unexpected visitors will be my regular models (yes, she too :-)

Aaaah. Soft shadows in Bryce... yeah, a sure computer killer. :-)