Going Home -WIP
DaWaterRat
Posts: 2,885
Okay, so I *finally* happened upon Sweet home 3D. With it's wonderful (though Hexagon choking) OBJ Export.
This is not to disparage the very fine work of the many artists that create houses for use in DS and Poser. But while some have come very close, none have ever really captured the sort of house I grew up in.
And now I have the tools to change that. :) And to remind me just how much work it is to create a house for Poser. ;)
Granted, it still needs things like stairs, a roof, doors, and a lot of not simple clean up work in Hex, but I can finally put my 3D people on a 3D version of the street where I grew up.
The pictures below are the very quick render out of Sweet Home 3D and a GoogleMaps Screencap of my childhood home (the yellow one)
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Comments
That looks like you're off to a good start. I like trying new things in modeling, but I've never tried a whole building, so keep up the good work. :coolsmile:
Thanks.
I've re-drawn the plans a couple of times as I've worked out the various quirks of how Sweet Home 3D exports things and the best way to work with it in hex, so nothing more to show this morning. :)
And I think I've figured out at least part of why I've never seen anything quite right for what I think of as "Urban Residential" and I'm kinda embarrassed by it, because it was something I never realized was so heavily regional. In my defense, most of my family that doesn't live in the Chicago area (which is, at this point, about all of them) tend to live in "true" suburbia, or even in rural settings. I live in the Chicago suburbs, but heavily urbanized ones that are visually little different from the Urban Residential areas of the city proper.
Over 1/3 of all single family homes in Chicago are "Chicago Bungalows," a one and a half (technically two, since the half story gets converted into bedrooms fairly quickly) story bungalow with full basement, built in the 1910-1940 period on narrow lots (30'-35' wide, and usually 155' deep) resulting in narrow rectangular houses (25'-30' wide, and usually about 55'-60' deep). A building style that is also pervasive throughout the near suburbs. The other major single family house style in the areas I grew up are cottages, which are two story houses built to similar space considerations (and again, usually with full basement).
So my idea of Urban Residential is a street of Chicago Bungalows, either all the same style, or in groups of 3 or so of several types interspersed with cottages, with maybe a Victorian or two, one usually on the corner, and the occasional more contemporary house squeezed in to a narrow lot to replace a house that burned down. Most of the houses are one-and-a-half to three stories tall, with about 5 to 7 feet between the houses. Maybe one or two might have a side garage (and a wider lot), but most of the garages are at the back of the lot, opening onto an alley. And almost all of them are slightly raised, with the top third or so of the basement actually above ground.
Of the available 3D houses on the market, I really think it's the lack of two-story (and I know that's a pain) cottages and the lot sizes (either too short or to big) that make me look at most of them and go... "eh, not quite." The closest I've ever seen to what I thought was "right" is DreamlandModels City Block 18, and that's just not "Chicago" enough for me. :)
I'm sure it's hard to find exactly what you're looking for. Every architect has their own vision of what a group of homes in a neighborhood should look like. Even here in New York it's hard to find the same type of home in every neighborhood, whether urban or suburban. Keep at it, I'm sure you'll come up with something you can be happy with.
Greetings,
I've used Collada Export to bring an image into DAZ Studio and render it, although that was from Live Interior 3D. I was pretty happy with how it looked, although it put some items flush with other items. You can see my toying with it in this thread.
-- Morgan
Oh, I can bring a whole house obj into DS, but if I want the surfaces to make sense and to be able to actually open doors, hide walls and such (not a high requirement, admittedly), I need to do some cleaning in Hex first, and the way Sweet Home 3D exports results in so many elements that Hexagon chokes unless I only export one floor at a time.
You have done a beautiful job- wow! Thanks for sharing and looking forward to the finished product.
I've heard about problems with Hexagon crashing or stalling- have you tried Silo? I just bought it, haven't used it, but both my sons are Lightwavers, tested Silo, and love love love it!
Purchasing Silo requires funds, which I am rather short on at the moment. :) And I don't have too many problems with Hexagon, once I confirmed that going level by level was going to work. And if I can get the number of elements in each hex file down to manageable, I should be able to re-assemble it.
After I get back from grocery shopping, I'll do a hex screenshot of the basement. :)
Like I said, I'm re-working things to find the best way to group the walls/rooms etc, but here's an early version of the basement. I might have some of the rooms a little off, but this is essentially the basement I remember.
I haven't labeled the rooms, but there was the basement pantry behind the furnace, a combined Laundry/Workshop (that's the big room at the back with some storage space off of it, one room for my dad's train layout that never got finished, becoming instead general storage. Another where he kept his weapon replicas, but that was after I moved out. Before then it was the gaming room, and before that another store room. The front room was a playroom when I was young, and the closet off of it held books and toys. Later it was converted into a bedroom for his ex-wife and her boyfriend after their apartment burned down (I wish I was kidding.) Now it stores models that he bought but never assembled. (my dad's third wife still lives there.)