3DPalace of the Grand City

uniderth

Home to a great race of warriors, the Grand City is the center of power. A vast city with five walls. In the center of the Grand City rises a palace, tall and shimmering. It is home to the leaders and governing councils.

The Palace is vast with council chambers, treasuries, living quarters, treasuries, and baths. The lower levels have offices, hospitals, and ceremonial chambers.

Warriors travel thousands of miles just to visit the Grand City once in their lives.

Come and explore the magnificence of of the Palace of the Grand City!





Just for some background info, I used to use TrueSpace. I tried using TrueSpace 7.6 but just couldn't figure out how to use it. So I converted to Blender. This is my first real modelling attempt with Blender. I watched several tutorials to get started with Blender and i can do way more than what I was able to do with TrueSpace.

About the images the first image is rendered with Blender Render. The second is with Cycles. I'm still trying to figure out how to get good Cycles renders.

Jenny

Do they have airships? Or flying mounts of some sort? Or are those platforms where the criers go to call the faithful to prayer?

Five walls? Did the city expand and build another wall, and then another outside the previous ones, or is it, "Hey! We need a wall... over here... and over there... and, what the heck, let's drop some more walls!"?

uniderth

Haha. What I meant was the wall that goes around the city forms a pentagon. Hence the five walls. I guess you could say it is just one wall. However each side has a gate thus separating each wall segment from the other.

Airships would be cool. But the platforms are designed for VTOL craft, helicopters, flying cars, etc. The wall where the platforms join will be opened to be the hangar. These platforms are specifically for the use of the High Clan Lords.

Here's an image for scale. The little green smudge is a human sized figure for scale. You can barely see it in the other images.

SolCommand

I really like the design. The style reminds me a bit of some buildings from a star wars movie, can't remember which one for sure. Keep it up.

Jenny

So this is a moderately high-tech society, with VTOL craft? Cool. Keep goin'!

Tovette

SolCommand wrote: »

I really like the design. The style reminds me a bit of some buildings from a star wars movie, can't remember which one for sure. Keep it up.

You might be thinking of Naboo. The color palette is different but the shape language is quite similar.

uniderth

Work has been a bit slow. But, I've added some various structures to the tower. I tried my hand at making something resembling cloth and made a flag. It's small in this image.



I've also starting making a vehicle. All I have so far is the tire.

Armondikov

Epic architecture.

uniderth

Ok. Here's a bit more. I cut out the entry ways to the landing pads and added some more details there. I also began the first of the five High Clan Lord towers. The High Clan Lord's residence is at the top of each tower and other apartments are lower down the tower. The rings on the tower will become observation walkways. However they don't really seem to fit with the style of the main tower.

Jenny

Nice. I hope these folks are good at elevator technology.

uniderth

Haha. Yeah, I'd hate to take the stairs.

Egeria

This looks interesting... far too rare to see others making city-like constructions...

uniderth

Here's a few more updates. I replaced the walkways. I think it fits a bit better with the overall scheme. I also added the other four towers to get the look of it.



Here's a close up. You can start to see the geometry here. But once it's done I probably wont get this close again.

uniderth

Here's a bit more progress. I'm not quite sure how I like that dome center thing. I need something like it to complete the symbolism of the building.



Also if anybody knows how to increase the darkness of the shadows in blender please tell me. I want to use a lighter sky background but as you can see in this pic there is just not enough contrast to allow a light background.

Oh, and I duplicated the tires of the vehicle.

uniderth

I've roughed out the building. This will be the general shape as I continue to add more details.

evil_genius_180

That's looking really cool so far.

I don't blame you for jumping ship from trueSpace 7.6. It's a buggy POS. Kudos on switching to Blender. I tried that a couple years ago. I was actually starting to almost get the hang of it when I had a project come up that required actual skill to complete, so I had to switch back to tS for that project and I never got back into Blender (I was learning on 2.49 and then they switched while I was working on that project, that didn't help.)

uniderth

Well I measured this building and apparently it's just over 11,100 feet tall! That's about five times taller than the Burj Dubai! So I'm going to have to resize the building.

uniderth

Ok since my scale calculations I've been rescaling and rearranging the Palace.



You can see the shadow of the old palace. I just moved it vertically and have been using parts from it.

It seems the new palace will be more sprawling and city-like rather than tower-like. The height should now be between the Burj Dubai and Taipei 101.

akb1979

uniderth wrote: »

Well I measured this building and apparently it's just over 11,100 feet tall! That's about five times taller than the Burj Dubai! So I'm going to have to resize the building.

Why? Who is to say that you cannot have it that tall? I'd build it at the original size first and see how it turns out. If it's a more advanced civilisation than we are currently who's to say they can't build that tall? Otherwise excellent work and I am looking forward to the updates.

uniderth

Ok. A bit more work done.



akb1979 one of my goals was to have it build-able by modern technology. Having it that tall would be awesome, just not feasible for my design goals.

evil_genius_180

It's looking really good. I like the design a lot.

akb1979

uniderth wrote: »

akb1979 one of my goals was to have it build-able by modern technology. Having it that tall would be awesome, just not feasible for my design goals.

Ah, I see. Fair enough then. *looks at clock* Come on, next update please. :P

andar_b

Interesting design.

As far as darkening the shadows in Blender, it depends on your setup. If you're using Global light, then the Ambient Occlusion can be typed in a number greater than one, just not using the slider. You could also set it to Multiply instead of Add. Otherwise, it's just a matter of your lighting rig. I actually really like the darker settings of AO, they give models a worn look that appeals to me.