Attached Link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6048597/

The $70 million, film-noir-styled fantasy starring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow and Angelina Jolie cast its live actors against digitally animated giant robots on a backdrop of 1930s New York.

=====It seems that "Sky Captain" is going to become another CLASSIC and influential movie- and in searching around for "1930's" New York skylines-- that Dystopia might really work- but it would be great if it had some Chrysler and Empire State type building as an ADD-ON so that it looked more "30's-ish" when you wanted that type of look.

Also, wasn't some other Dystopia update supposed to be out by now?

Attached Link: http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Chrysler_Building.html

Attached Link: http://www.greatbuildings.com/cgi-bin/gbi.cgi/Empire_State_Building.html/cid_2164408.gbi

A 30's type set would also be great for Comic fans of Superman, Batman, etc.

Why hasn't anyone done a good 1930's New York set?

Oh yeah, the Chrysler has to be the coolest skyscraper of them all!

:] Fish (edited to fix spelinge)

Message edited on: 09/20/2004 17:17

Oh yeah, the Chrysler has to be the coolest skyscraper of them all!

Agreed. It fell down very nicely in Godzilla '98.

I think all the Dystopia guys have to do is take all the 1930s looking building on each square and bunch them together onto one piece. Problem with Dystopia for anything other than a 21st century city is that you'll find a block that looks cool except for one large, glaring 23rd century building right in the middle.

Yes, that's where the Dystopia Guys could REALLY make all their work a MEGA-HIT. -Re-Group sections into city-scapes that would look, or fit, 1930's-1980's, then a 21st Century city-scape and then a 23th Century city-scape. --Then they should create, or allow others to create, ADD-ON sections and fore-grounds that would match a particular era or theme. You could have Close-Up sections of higher detail that would allow Poser characters to fit IN-SCALE, with the city skyline as a back-drop. Dystopia is a GREAT prop idea, but now it needs to be a little more fine-tuned,- and it could be one of the greatest props-scenes ever made for Poser and general 3D work. Since they already make 3DS and OBJ versions the thinking is already beyond just Poser- to MAX, Lightwave, etc.- so I think they would have a really big market for all the Add-On scenes for different eras... So- Please make the 1930's Add-On NEXT, heh.

Hi guys. Moe's original idea was for Dystopia to be a futuristic city and we never really thought about it as a present day or historical cityscape product. I can see people want that from it though. I'll ask him to drop by and take a look at the thread. We'll see what he thinks about doing a few blocks of historical stuff. We're working on high-detail close-up sections but it's slow going and all of us have to work full time day jobs for a living. As for the Chrysler building, I'm sure there must be free models of it on the web somewhere. Free models of famous buildings seem to be easy enough to find usually.

Just think of all the King Kong, Giant Robot, Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Godzilla and Hindenburg Zeppelin scenes
that could be created with those props!

Chrystler Building from 3dcafe in 3ds format. http://www.3dcafe.com/models/chrysler.zip Statue of liberty in 3ds format http://www.3dcafe.com/models/liberty.zip

Hi guys, I started building Dystopia in November of 2000, strongly influenced by the work of Fritz Lang ("Metropolis") and Ridley Scott ("Blade Runner"). The original plan was to create my own personal vision of a futuristic city, comprised of 100 city blocks (with a few special add-ons thrown in). Dystopia was never intended to be the "feature" of a render, only a "filler" which explains why the geometries are all fairly light and the textures are mostly tiled. Two years ago Ajax and billy-home came to my assistance to help bring the native LWO meshes into Poser. Almost four years later I am still building block 64. :o( I am very much interested in creating add-ons to help with the versatility of the original pack. A 1930's style skyline or something more reminiscent of Gotham city would be a great idea. Perhaps we could dedicate city blocks 071-080 to this theme. Currently, I am on the research on conceptual stages for creating modular street facades for Dystopia. Unfortunately, my current day-job workload prohibts me from making any real headway. In behalf of all the artists/merchants that are involved in the evolution of Dystopia, I would like to apologize for the pace in which we are able to deliver. Please do not think for a moment that your input and feedback is ignored, these are invaluable to our process. I guess you could say that "Dystopia wasn't built in a day". Cheers! M

For backgrounds, at least, there are some quick hacks. Find a photo with a clean sky. It'd take a bit of fiddling to extract the sky, nut one converted to black sky and white everything-else you have a transmap. Put that onto a single-sided square primitive, scaled up as a backdrop, with the original photo as a texture-map. You can't do King Kong with that, but there's your New York skyline. Have a look at what they do in the movies. They have a photo outside the window of that office-set, not a model of New York.

Moebius87 and crew (if your still watching): is there an ETA on 51-60 (with bridge) for poser? I see the lightwave version but no poser.

Hey M - no apologising here lol! The stuff you create is WAY cool. And well worth the wait. I agree with Veritas that blocks from different periods is a very nice idea. Actually, 64 blocks of 'Classic' Dystopia is probably enough to cover almost any need - apart from really specialised and radical new stuff that is. Suggestions for such new blocks: Rundown, seedy future slum (Blade Runner springs inevitably to mind) in HongKong/ChinaTown style Stadium Docks (water, not space: or for any other fluid suface for that matter) Mines Factories Enormously tall spires and towers Fair/Tivoli/Red Light District (I'm thinking of AI here) Suburbs? 'City in a bubble' :] Fish (always full of sh-, uh, I mean ideas)

Sorry, Tyger_purr... I'm afraid that I don't know what billy-home's timetable for completing the conversion for city blocks 051-060 (plus bridge). I forwarded the LWO's to him a couple of weeks before I sent them over to the RMP. I'll drop him a note to visit this thread. Cheers! M

Hmmmm: I have a idea. I have Chief Architect 9.5 which is
a program for designing and making 3d models in VRML of
house's etc. See http://www.chiefarchitect.com. Basic idea
is to get some pictures of old 1930's New York and then
reproduce the buildings in Chief. The major mess is in
convertion. It entails exporting the model from Chief as
a VRML file, then importing that file into 3D Studio Max, then exporting the file as a obj file, which is then imported into Poser. There are 2 plugins for 3D Studio Max 6.0 called obj2max6 and max2obj6 that allow convertion from
max to obj and obj to max. There is also programs called
Polytrans and Nugraf that convert 3d models from one format
to another. I'll play around and see what I come up with.
Tho it may take a bit... Got work and other things first.

Message edited on: 09/22/2004 00:55

No need- just go to WWW.GreatBuildings.Com and you can download a FREE 3D modeling program AND FREE 3D models of the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings. These models can be converted to 3DS or OBJ, or whatever... http://www.greatbuildings.com/models/Chrysler_Building_mod.html http://www.greatbuildings.com/models/Empire_State_Buildin_mod.html

Oh Cool! I'll look later

I'd far rather have a new original futuristic set than a retread of an existing skyline. Inventing something takes more blood and sweat than copying it, yet seems to have less regard. Maybe insecure artists only want to create images with recognizable elements rather than use original sets and clothes and characters?

I have no interest in violating copyrights of either certain movies or certain architects. If I'm creating a fantasy future I want it to be special, uniquely-flavored, and not recognizable... and more explicitly not something which has been done-to-death.

Time is valuable. If these models are available at 3dcafe and other sites, why should somebody make them again?

I was an architectural and mechanical design drafter for 6 years... 4 of them spent working for skylight and curtain wall companies. Seeing our buildings in Buck Rogers 25th Century and similar venues was neat, but also a letdown... we knew that was a real-world office tower full of mundanes. Ho-hum.

The direction of Dystopia as defined is far to be preferred than taking identifiable skyscrapers from New York and Chicago and San Francisco and jumbling them all up together. If you want to see that, go to Las Vegas and look at the facades. Fake. Real cities don't have that many landmark buildings back to back.

BTW, Veritas, those are copyright images from Sky Captain. Do you have permission to use them?

Carolly

Message edited on: 09/23/2004 23:46

I think you're being a little harsh Carolly. The saying "different strokes for different folks" comes to mind. No need to put down those that have a different view than you.

Maybe insecure artists only want to create images with recognizable elements rather than use original sets and clothes and characters?

Then again, maybe some secure and mature artists want to create images with recognizable elements to establish a hint of reality, or to achieve a "retro" or avant-garde look. There's a time and place for everything and sometimes the time and place is the future with a chrome and steel city, and sometimes the time and place is an alternate past in gotham among towering grungy familiar structures ala Tim Burton's Gotham City.

If I'm creating a fantasy future I want it to be special, uniquely-flavored, and not recognizable... and more explicitly not something which has been done-to-death.

A vision unique to you, but someone else's vision is unique to them and should be respected.

BTW, Veritas, those are copyright images from Sky Captain. Do you have permission to use them?

That seems a bit snippy, perhaps an IM to Veritas would have been more appropriate, not to mention polite. Nothing like embarrassing someone you disagree with to take the wind out of their sails.