Do you guys collaborate often?
I have a half baked idea of creating a few pieces, props, clothes, characters that are reminiscent of Victorian era or Dickens Style Villages in the future.

Frankly, I get little bored doing it all by myself, and was curious if this would sound like an interesting collaboration to anyone?

One important thing to do right away is have a low res/poly conceptual drawing or model for everybody to use a reference.
I thought I read that you do something along that line professionally, ConnieKat8?
It doesn't have to be anything extravagant, just enough to get everyone working in the same style. Also allows for someone to 'sign off' on a particular piece of work, avoiding duplication of effort (member A will work on Building X, Member B will work on Building Y, and so forth).

What target app. are you making these for?

Target app would eventually be Poser related I suppose.My application arsenal is usually 3D max, hexagon, cararra, Poser, Bryce, photoshop, Deep paint, UV Mapper.

I don't have conceptuals, other then just the idea that if someone is passionate about that theme, it might be fun to make something together.  I haven't even thought as far as whether they'd be freebies, sale items or just models for ourselves... It's wide open for ideas at the moment. I have 2-3 items right now, in various stages of colmpletion, that apply to the era/look that have beem promissed as freebies. Other then that... it's wide open, just depends on who gets interested and in what fashion. Maybe we can dig up a plan of some pictoresque 18-19th century city or town or a village... who knows...

I do engineering related 3D at work... none of the character and prop, fun and artsy kind of a thing. The latter is a hobby, although some of the things I learn, I can use at work too... in a different way. I make a decent modeller, but actually prefer texture mapping and painting - as I don't do enough of it.

I make everything for 3ds Max rendering now-a-days...
I use Wings3d and Max for modelling.
Not clear on exactly what Poser needs for models (I only have Poser 5, no later versions).
About everything I have made modelwise is either a lot older (Fantasy and/or Grecko-Roman antiquity) or alot newer (sci-fi) than Victorian era. I have many contemporary models too, but that doesn't help either. Mostly all architectural.

---

Maybe find a picture of some tourist trap reproduction village to use as a ref. A Rennaisance Fair or something.

Doesn't need to be blueprints or anything like that, just some kind of ground plan; and some specific style(s) to aim for. To tie everything together with some coherency.

I Love architectural stuff.
As for the look... Here's what tends to inspire me, there's a collection of miniatures which is not quite as cutesy as dept 57... it's david winters collection: http://www.davidwinter.info/wizardcastle.html   http://www.davidwinter.info/saireygamp.html
Some of the pieces are over the top cutesy, but there are others that inspire me, and I keep thinking about something that might fit a fantasy or a fairy, or with a right texture even a pretty realistic 18 or 19th century dilapidated look.  There's a logging cabin model I made, released here as a freebie that was inspired by his work. But, I'd like to up the ante on quality from that one.
If you like architectural kind of things, you've probably noticed things that meshbox designs makes - chikako here on rendo.  http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?Start=31&vendor=132485   His work inspires me too.

As for poser... Even thought I have half a mind of eventually offering some of the things I make (not out of this effort) for sale that's not my motivation, and especially not for this idea, so, as far as I'm concerned, things would not HAVE to fit poser. Most of my personal scene type rendering is not done in poser, and this idea is a personal interest kind of a thing.  

Being that my mom is an architect, I suppose just by osmosis I'm a bit of an architecture ..um... admirer shall i say, and have a huge pile of books on architecture, different styles, element sand pictorial references, catalogues... and if needed I can sketch up a set of reference plans.

One of the more vague ideas, I gather there are writers around here, sometimes I get inspired by reading a story, and feel the urge to illustrate it... 

LOL, perhaps I may be hoping someone will get interested in narrowing down some of the ideas. At the moment I get too many. ..  
Hmmm... I don't think I'm being of much help LOL   maybe it was a bad idea...

Hahaha, I've never been to the market here.
I don't think it was a bad idea. Most of the large scale works are made by more than one individual. I'm making a greek town myself now, and it's taking a very long time to do all of the work alone. It does get boring too, after a while; starts to seem more like work than fun.

What do you render with?

I like those 'gingerbread house' models in your links, those are pretty cool looking; but I have never made anything like that at all. When I read the title of the thread, I was immediately thinking Historical Victorian Era.

i love this idea and architecture, but sadly i don't know much about 3d progs. i can only use sketchup, but i will follow your efforts with lots of interest.

Hey Conniekat8

Sounds great !  Count me in !  How's this for an idea The Moulin Rouge, 
Toulouse Lautrec era.     

Cheers,
Patorak

Koosie, I think sketchup may work fine... and as for other 3D programs, well, I see every new project as an opportunity to learn something new...

Dvlenk, about the renderer... I have to admit I don't have my heart set on a single one just yet. Sometimes it's Max, sometimes it's cararra, sometimes bryce, sometimes Poser. Just depends on my mood, what I'm making and what computer I happen to be sitting at. And what the renderer doesn't do... I'm relatively handy in photoshop.

Patorak, I like your Idea of Moulin Rouge and Touluse Lautrec era. I think that falls into the era I was contemplating. Some water, either around Sienne, or Venice or Amsterdam looking canals always seem interesting. 

Sometimes I think about paintings like those of Victor Schvaiko http://www.renjeau.com/cgi-bin/imagepage.pl?84
Other times I get all excited about little portofino looking coastal villages like this: http://www.ibrewster.com/gallery/ssampark/Harbor_at_Portofino 

And then there's Thomas Kinkade: http://www.piersidegallery.com/artists/kinkade/   and Sam Park: http://www.piersidegallery.com/artists/park/ 

Perhaps you guys have some idea links you wanna share? 

what made me start with sketchup was the great scenes by svenart. i started on a small town scene of which are images in my gallery. it was the first thing i did and the textures should be better of course - most of them were 'out of the box' so to speak (the textures i mean). but i don't know anything else than this - rendering is a mistery to me. if i could contribute something i would be glad to do so however. (could learn something more on the way)

I like KinKade's work.  What figures did you plan on making the clothing for? 

Attached Link: Victorian Architecture @ Great Buildings On-Line

koosievantutte: What kind of files can your version of SketchUp export? I have a lot of programs and can convert a lot of different file types.

I use this site for reference pictures a lot. They have a section on Victorian Era buildings. The ones listed are all pretty extravagant, but still examples of the style.

I'll try to dig up some more down to earth examples of the style.
I'll leave it to somebody else to look into clothing and hair styles and the like.

as i work with the free version i can just keep it as sketchup files (skp) or google earth (.kmz) or export it as .jpg/.bmp/.tif/.png - as these are 2d formats that won't work. the pro version has the possibility to convert the files to several 3d formats, but that one costs 500 euro's.
i have design workshop on my computer too, but i can't  get the hang of that prog.

Attached Link: KML/KMZ Importer for Blender

Koozievantutte: Here is a python script that allows .kmz files to be imported into Blender as mesh objects, which could then be exported from Blender as .obj or .3ds or anything else that Blender supports.

I have Blender, and got the script; but I don't have any .kmz models to try it on.
The script can only use google earth and google earth 3 formats, not the latest google earth 4.
Could you upload a simple .mkz model for me to check it out?

Blender is free too, btw...
http://www.blender.org

Patorak, I'm undecided about what figure to make the clothing for... That's a detail I hadn't thought of yet. I'm not particularly in love or hating any of the figures, so, it's wide open!  if you want, we can make it for the figure you're modelling right now ;)

As for victorian fashions in last few weeks I've been researching a lot of victorian clothing and fashions (shoe thread, for those that haven't seen it http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2694616 )

Great buildings online is a great site :))

I'm looking at some of the Dover pictorial archive books I have...  "Hecks pictorial archive of art and architecture", "Hecks pictorial archive of nature and science", "Illustrated dictionary of historic architecture", "The grammar of architecture", "Architecture, Form, space and Order" by Francis Ching, "Heck's pictorial archive of military science, geography and history, Victorian houseware, hardware and kitchenware'... and about another half a dozen others. 
What I'm getting at, scanning a few pages for our use should be no problem :)

I need to go get couple books on victorian clothing   Can't believe I don't have any!

Attached Link: Buffalo as an architectural museum: Victorian Styles

Here are some more victorian style architectural references. Go down to the 'Styles included' part and look throught the different styles.   There are a good number of pictures of homes, churches, etc.

In the SketchUp forum there are about 15 Vic age house nicely done..If you want them, let me know and perhaps I can help you..They are not done by me but they are free...Take a look..http://forum.sketchup.com/showthread.php?t=80906

Richard

Dunno if it would help but I've been adding loads of textures to the freebies and some are old bricks, roof tiles, brick air vents etc etc, may come in handy.

I can take some pics of the actual buildings if you like there are some interesting turret-like mini towers on the roofs.  Some of the buildings are quite old, I'll have to check up on the actual age.

Hi Conniekat8

Sounds good.  I'll make some edgeloop frames for clothing for V3 and M3.  IM  me or e-mail me at  chieftanoclan7@sbcglobal.net   and we'll talk about Plain Jane and the upcoming male figure.

Cheers,
patorak

Sketchup, textures, it all sounds wonderful guys :)  happy dance
Now we have to narrow down some of the ideas and come up with a plan of what we'll make!
I'm hoping to have some thime this evening to post few screenshots of the models I already have...  some of you that may have models, maybe you could do the same, let's see if what we already have may not lead us into putting it together?
Or we may need a photo or a piece of art for inspiration :D

Attached Link: Magnolia Hall Victorian Furniture

Found a Victorian Furniture Reproduction site with some nice pictures. It's a store...I'm not advertising for it, just think it has nice ref pics. - - - - - Also, I went and got a couple .kmz files to try with the Blender importer. I was able to export the imported models as objects. Everything worked fine, except some of the normals were flipped. No biggie. The geometry is good.

The script will not work on Google Earth 4 models. I tried, and there is no readable geometry for those.
I also don't think there is UVMapping with the models, Or else the particular models I tried just hadn't been UVMapped.

my prog is the newest sketchup version, so that won't work. very sad. keeping both versions won't work - i found out that the progs get confused :sad:
if there is anything i could contribute you could send me a site mail.
if you decide on amsterdam - i have a book with all houses along the canals (very detailed and to scale front elevations) and i could scan them.

Quote - my prog is the newest sketchup version, so that won't work. very sad. keeping both versions won't work - i found out that the progs get confused :sad:
if there is anything i could contribute you could send me a site mail.
if you decide on amsterdam - i have a book with all houses along the canals (very detailed and to scale front elevations) and i could scan them.

There may be hope yet for sketchup... I didn't think of it sooner, but I have some tools and resources at my disposal here at the office that can handle the conversion :)

Count me in on this one. Would love it. :)

nice to hear that sketchup is not fully out

Since my friend ghostman pointed out to me that not much has been done on Amsterdam theme, and it being a very pictoresque old town, I'm getting more intrigued with it.  
I noticed that it was fluorishing in 1600-1700 and then again in 1900, so it's not exactly a typical victorian mecca, but it still may lend itself to a victorian era renderings... along with some of the gothic and more provocative modern renderings (it's infamous red light district?)

What I gather from googling images, It has a nice harbor and canals, and nice town squares, and I've seen a fair amount of victorian houses...

Thoughts please?

Also, I don't know how many people from other forums peek in here, but if you think of anyone else that may have interest in tinkering with this, please feel free to let them know!

Attached Link: http://www.bma.amsterdam.nl/adam/uk/monum.html

amsterdam, houses, canals and bridges would be very good i think. apart from being interesting (imo) there is a lot of info on the internet. i added a website that gives great information to start with. there are lots more, which i will try to find if amsterdam is decided on. there are also some very good sites with photographs.

there is an other website for the municipal archive of amsterdam on which you can find photographs and drawings (interior and exterior) of thousands of amsterdam buildings.
this, however, is a website that is not very user friendly - it is only in dutch, you have to know which building you are looking for and so on. but once you manage all this it gives really good info. again, if needed i can give help.

Shounds very good!  Dvlenk, Patorak, Fran, ellocobo what are your guys thoughts?

I think a couple different 'sets' need makin':

• An outdoor one that could just be a single street. Long enough to get several different views of it.
• Some indoor sets: Maybe a whole house interior model. Furniture, drapes, carpets (I have 300 Hi-res Persian Rug textures :) ), etc. can be made as seperate props. <- that's a lot of work.
  Those a would be for background/environment.

For the rest, I'd say period clothing props, hats, shoes, etc. I have very little experience with that.
Some unique Poser characters for Vickie or Mikie (or whatever base figure) would be nice too.

---

Can always add more props as time goes on.

You'll have to decide on what style the models should be. I.e. Realistic, stylized, toon, whatever.

Dvlenk, Love your ideas and how you've broken it down. 

What I'm envisioning at the moment is perhaps a street (avenue) with a canal, ending in a harbor with a bit of a harbor front and a bay?  I think I'll sketch out the idea that I'm getting....

Here's a quick and dirty massing model screenshot of what popped in my head at the moment... Perhaps it can give us a staring point to tweak the overall look and layout, and put things more in proportion to one another...

maybe it's a good idea to take part of a map to take as a start? this would make it look 'real', i think.
from your massing model i think a piece of amsterdam or london would be great because they are old towns. no matter what is built there, the ground and water parties will be the same as they were for ages. rotterdam, hamburg, bremen or antwerp are not so good i think because the harbours there are either much more recent or just lying along the river without canals.

it is also possible to have a town where the houses are built in the water at the back with the streets on the other side, there are 2 cities like that in holland, dordrecht and delft. on a few places very big buildings (e.g. townhall) were built over the canal.the canal was the harbour at the same time. just a thought.

For the architecture, one section at a time. Other sections can later be stacked against the first as needed. Whatever shape is needed. Square sections are the easiest to line up and lay out. It's difficult to avoid a 'grid' look that way, though.

Characters/props can be made at any time. I don't mean they aren't important. I mean that they aren't really dependent on a village layout. They could really be used with even a single building or view as a backdrop. Or only a simple, or even no, backdrop at all, if the render is a portrait.

You're so right about connecting sections dvlenk and about the props :)
Koosie, I just love what you sketched out! I love the quaint feel to the block. 

A piece of an actual map would be a good thing to work off of. What I sketched out in the massing model I made is what came to my mind after studying maps of old european towns, actually, there's an are somewhat simiar to that in the town where I grew up. It is more of a main square and avenue kind of a layout.

You guys should see this, just uploaded on rendo galleries yesterday, I stumbled over browsing the galleries: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1433259&member

I vote we start on a block of the type that koosie sketched out first.
We need to decide on the block sizes, and whether we want to work in metric or english units. (It doesn't matter to me, I worked half of my life in metric, the other in feet, so it's a tossup)  And, it's not that hard to convert between the two...

Perhaps if we took a general street layout from a real city map or lay out several blocks at once we could get around the 'square' look by slicing the sections around mapped city blocks, whichever shape they are.  You guys probably already know most old European towns are not square... :)

Koosie, you seem to know a lot about old urban layouts! Is it a hobby or do you do some of that for living too?

Before I forget and it disappears in my hundreds of 'favorites' here's a link to some map sites: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/map_sites/cities_sites.html#A

conniekat - it is a hobby for a very long time already. i am intersted in archeology, cartography, history and architecture - added up you will understand that this is something i like very much.
perhaps it is an idea to make up a map for a certain area and draw it and put the buildings on it.
when we draw squares on the 'floorplan' everybody can draw buildings freely, as long as they are
not interfering with the street and not exceed the maximum depth (hope i tell it clearly). this is more or less what the romans did - there are old english towns where the dimensions are still according to that system, forgot however the right measurements.
as an example: on the map will be squares of 1x1 metres - whoever build something should always use the full metres for the front, but it could be from 4 to perhaps 10 or 15 metres deep. buildings can be put next to each other without much problems. the depth of the buildings can vary as in any old town, but could have a maximum depth. this is not quite the case if we decide on the houses along the harbour, they do vary, but not so much as in other old towns.
if it is not quite clear i can draw an example of course.

Oh, no problem, I understand what you're saying quite well :)   One of the things I do for living is in construction industry, mapmaking and land surveying ;)    
I was trying to pace myself so I don't make things too complicate for those whom may not be as familiar with the industry... but I'm delighted with your depth of understanding. It will just make things more fun and easier to communicate :))

Quote - ...perhaps it is an idea to make up a map for a certain area and draw it and put the buildings on it.

Yes. That is neeed for a collaboration like this.
The same layout for a section has to be used by anyone making buildings, bridges, etc. or they won't fit together right. The acceptable tolerance is fairly generous, but not infinite; meaning there is some leeway on sizes (except along the front of row houses). I don't use metric system; but I have a calculator :) .

Quote - if it is not quite clear i can draw an example of course.

Please do. You could make an overhead grid map if you want too :)

---

What is the general story height of those older buildings?
Modern houses have basically standard height walls; but older ones don't. Again, I think each house had somewhat different height, and that would add to the asymmetry of the project
What would be a good median story height to start with?

am working on it i am making a map to show the general idea (if it's ok, of course) - the height of the houses differ enormously, but generally here in holland modern houses are abt. 3 mtrs for each floor. old houses vaey but floors are generally 4 to 4 1/2 meters. i have to look up quite a lot of things myself. i will look for the book with the front elevations and put some images here to give you an idea. 2 maps are coming up within 1/2 an hour

this is the first one - i took a piece of dordrecht, the oldest dutch town with still a lot left and unique for the canal that's a harbour too.

and this is the second one - on the other end of the canal with the harbour ending on the crossing of three big rivers

these pictures are just to give you an idea how this town was built and the variety of houses - it has all the possibilities imo to make it an interesting project.

Koosie, it looks great. Sorry, I'm distracted, and can't figure out if you're talking about amsterdam or another town. If you said it, I missed it :(...
I was able to dig up some hoistorical maps of amsterdam, and other cities starting with the link I posted earlier. Some of the maps were pretty high rez too :)
If you two, Koosie and Dvlenk feel like sketching out the base map it would be awesome (while I'm finishing another project)

As for the height of a single story, I do remember older buildings having rather high ceilings. 4,5m may also lend itself pretty well to indoor scenes, allowing for more headroom.

in this case i was taslking about an other town: 'dordrecht' i took this town because the situation was one looking very much like your 'rough and dirty' and the map could be easily adepted to our needs. the houses are very much like the ones in amsterdam as it was a merchant's town too. the fact that the houses are built with the backside in the water can be used or we just can put the houses up like in amsterdam, with a street between the canal and the houses. we are free to change everything.
as for measurements i would prefer metres, but as dvlenk6, i do have a calculator :-)

Attached Link: http://www.wereldorientatie.net/htm/activiteiten/dordrecht.htm

this is a websie with lots of photos of the environment on the maps above. they give a very good idea of the buildings, details to give everybody an idea what it all looks like.

Wonderful!
About metric vs. english units, I'm making a somewhat of an educated guess that if we pull any info off maps or building plans, it is likely to be in metric? If that's the case it's the easiest thing to do things in metric (there would be no conversion needed).  If we ever run into a model in english units (feet) it is possible to build it in those units, and convert it to metric before joining it to the whole (I can handle the conversion easily for whatever models we make)

The town map and photos look very neat. I quite like how it's laid out. If it's ok with everyone else, we can go with it.  Koosie, I gather that you have some good research sources specifically for that town?

yes, i have and i am there to answer questions, i lived there for several years. there is lots of info and as said before i have 2 books with detailed front elevations. they are from amsterdam but that does not matter as they are actually from the same era and built in the same way.
i thought up a way to avoid the 'squared' look and giving everybody the chance for somewhat more freedom and make it easier for people to join in later. if you agree i can work out what i mean, but i need a litle time for that.

this is an idea how to proceed with the collaboration. they are just ideas of course and comments are welcome. there will have to be a map or ground plan, but first we have to agree on basics i think. we could have a form like the brown part in the image, which sets the measurements for the canal and the quays/streets. i thought it to be a good idea to have buildings which stand in the water at one side (like in dordrecht) and on the other side houses which are built on the quay (like in amsterdam) - this will look more intersting i think and gives more opportunity for people to follow their own ideas. the little red building is one way of making buildings fit, together with the possibility to make a very small alley between the houses - these alleys were very often only 1 1/2 metres wide and gave entrance to a door in the side of the houses. the way i planned it there is some room to vary the houses on the side where they are in the water - the difference can not be too much, maximim 1 to 2 metres perhaps (have to check this) and on the street side a maximum of 0,5 - 1 metre at the most. on the waterfront side there are small gardens or loading places when the houses are less deep so that in the end the canal is rather straight. this means there can be variety even in the depth of the houses - they can be as broad as needed for the type of building and in this way we prevent the grid look dvlenk mentioned. when somebody wants to make a building it would be wise that he gives the measurements and the type of building, after which we can draw it in on the plan, this helps others to see what is needed (otherwise we could end up for example with too many corner houses) the drawing is not to scale, just something to give an idea. on these canals houses to live in and warehouses were next to each other and shops and pubs were on the ground floor with the people living above them. there have to be made decisions as to styles. houses in holland were not painted - the black ones you see on pictures are 'oiled' an oily/tar solution to protect the facade from getting too wet. some houses lean forward, this is not because they are old or in bad shape, this was done on purpose as they had no drainpipes and in this way the facade was kept drier when it rained. half timbered or wood houses cannot be found in holland because they were forbidden by law after big city fires (there can be timbered houses in our town, of course, depending on what we choose). perhaps a 'fantasy' town would be good for participation.

apart from that we have to choose the measurements of the area covered. here is one more image to make some of my remarks in the above message clear.