Yeah, the Pepsi thing is a good scale gauge. Of course, so is Michael J. Fox. If you know his height, you can probably scale the whole dang thing pretty easily.
That would be cool. Though, I doubt we'll have the hover cars or hoverboards by then. Or the self-fitting and self-drying jackets, power laces, etc. Though, on the flipside, it's nice to know we won't have to pay $50 for a Pepsi just yet.
That was actually the Pacman arcade machine (which sits in the opposite corner of the Cafe with the sign "PRICELESS ARTIFACT: DO NOT TOUCH"). But I've got a render of the start of the Wild Gunman machine, which is an old Nintendo Playchoice cabinet.
I've now started on the Blast From The Past antiques shop right next to the Cafe '80s.
Really nice works.
Are you going to keep the tube TV on the back wall or update them to flat screens?
I'm going for complete screen accuracy, so I'll be sticking with tubes. I figure that being a nostalgia place, they intentionally went with old CRTs over newer technology anyway.
Making a start on the clock for the clock tower. I'm pretty happy with how the roman numerals and the hands turned out. Tomorrow I'll do the fancy edging and the rest of the section.
In building this, I've discovered a few interesting things.
It appears that the clock they made for part 3 with the iconic photo with Doc/Marty in front of the clock isn't all too accurate to the one actually on the clock tower.
The shape of the hands is different at the pivot (which appears to be because the clock in part 3 follows the original clock blueprints I found, whereas it looks like they made changes while making the original one for the clock tower).
Also the rotation of the roman numerals is parallel per hour, rather than being rotated per character, so for example the XII and VII look really weird.
And the outer rim doesn't seem as thick, and appears to lack the bolts that mark the minutes around the edge.
Pretty useless trivia, but I found it interesting!
That was actually the Pacman arcade machine (which sits in the opposite corner of the Cafe with the sign "PRICELESS ARTIFACT: DO NOT TOUCH"). But I've got a render of the start of the Wild Gunman machine, which is an old Nintendo Playchoice cabinet.
I've now started on the Blast From The Past antiques shop right next to the Cafe '80s.
I'm going for complete screen accuracy, so I'll be sticking with tubes. I figure that being a nostalgia place, they intentionally went with old CRTs over newer technology anyway.
We'll see!
You certainly found more detail on the room than I but I figured some dimension could help.
The tile is at least 12 x 12
foot rest 8 1/2" tall
Back wall to back of counter top 6'-3 11/16"
Standard Pacman cabinent worked perfectly here 26 x 33 x 73
counter top around the far circle seems to be 14"
Straight top is 28 inches wide (pretty standard)
Counter top was a perfect 38 inches from the floor.
back self was 2' wide (length was to difficult to determine with the column in the way)
back self was 3'-8 3/4" from the floor.
If I had more pictures I could add them to the photo match and get a complete room size.
take it with a grain of salt though Michael J Fox came out to 5'-10 instead of 5'-4" and his sneakers aren't that thick but alot of things came out right with at least some of the architectural and construction standards I know.
PS. Sketchup was made to do this and I've used it for gauging starships in Trek.
I never thought I'd see someone actually going to this amount of detail for building here. It's quite a task. Good luck.
Looking great. Interesting trivia on the clock. Though, I think the Hollywood types would prefer if you didn't point out their lack of consistency from one film to the next.
You certainly found more detail on the room than I but I figured some dimension could help.
The tile is at least 12 x 12
foot rest 8 1/2" tall
Back wall to back of counter top 6'-3 11/16"
Standard Pacman cabinent worked perfectly here 26 x 33 x 73
counter top around the far circle seems to be 14"
Straight top is 28 inches wide (pretty standard)
Counter top was a perfect 38 inches from the floor.
back self was 2' wide (length was to difficult to determine with the column in the way)
back self was 3'-8 3/4" from the floor.
If I had more pictures I could add them to the photo match and get a complete room size.
take it with a grain of salt though Michael J Fox came out to 5'-10 instead of 5'-4" and his sneakers aren't that thick but alot of things came out right with at least some of the architectural and construction standards I know.
PS. Sketchup was made to do this and I've used it for gauging starships in Trek.
I never thought I'd see someone actually going to this amount of detail for building here. It's quite a task. Good luck.
Thanks for that. I sized the tiles at exactly 10x10", which works out perfectly to the width of the building, but I was using a lot more information than just the one image to derive that figure, including the top blueprint, and a fish-eye image of the entire interior that shows how many tiles there are across the floor. If you scale your dimensions accordingly, those other figures should probably be perfect. Also, the Wild Gunman machine is about 24" x 32" x 68", a standard single monitor Nintendo Playchoice 10 cabinet.
I've followed your work on the Defiant, so I know how good you are with that kind of stuff. :thumb:
I've been doing camera match myself wherever possible, as 3DS Max has good camera match tools too, although I've had a few problems with that interior due to lack of enough known figures to extrapolate from.
Here are some new renders of the clock tower. The shutters and moldings are mostly done. I still need to finish off the fancy edging on the clock and build the statues, which will take some work, since they're organic, and not architectural like the rest.
Thanks for that. I sized the tiles at exactly 10x10", which works out perfectly to the width of the building, but I was using a lot more information than just the one image to derive that figure, including the top blueprint, and a fish-eye image of the entire interior that shows how many tiles there are across the floor. If you scale your dimensions accordingly, those other figures should probably be perfect. Also, the Wild Gunman machine is about 24" x 32" x 68", a standard single monitor Nintendo Playchoice 10 cabinet.
I've followed your work on the Defiant, so I know how good you are with that kind of stuff. :thumb:
I've been doing camera match myself wherever possible, as 3DS Max has good camera match tools too, although I've had a few problems with that interior due to lack of enough known figures to extrapolate from.
Here are some new renders of the clock tower. The shutters and moldings are mostly done. I still need to finish off the fancy edging on the clock and build the statues, which will take some work, since they're organic, and not architectural like the rest.
..wait a minute you're saying 3DStudio MAX can match photo perspective?
..wait a minute you're saying 3DStudio MAX can match photo perspective?
It sure can, and they're adding another camera match method into the soon to be released version too.
The way it works is that you place marker points in your scene, then you choose the corresponding points on your background plate, then it creates a camera view from it.
In the new version, there will be a new method where you just have lines along each axis that you move/rotate into place for it to work out the perspective from, which should be nice and quick for the more geometric matching such as buildings. Not quite so much for starships though.
Still working on the clock tower. I've camera matched a good reference photo, so I'm working on getting this as accurate as possible now. If you compare the photo and the render, you can see that it's fairly accurate.
I've been working on the pillars today. I don't think I got the molding around the base 100%, but I'm happy with how the pillars look.
I also made a small start on the puma statues, although they currently look like smoothed blobs.
The top clock section still isn't attached, but that will be done very soon!
I've never heard of that movie, but Courthouse Square has been featured in so many movies and shows across the years, and BTTF wasn't even close to the first to use the courthouse. Apparently it was even used in Leave it to Beaver.
I find it very interesting how much of the square was in place actually in 1955, and if not, soon after. If they ever invent time travel, you could re-shoot the movie in 1955 without much trouble.
Currently, I believe the cinema they used for the holomax is there (that building appears to be a constant, although always in different configurations), and I'm not sure about the buildings to the left side of the courthouse (which would be the north side?), as they always seem to be the same generic buildings.
The Cafe '80s is long gone, and I don't think that building has been there since some point in the 90s.
This is one reason I want to recreate the set, because many of those buildings will likely never exist in reality again.
Posts
I rebuilt the entire counter from scratch, and here are two comparisons. It's still far from perfect, but I'm on the right track now.
I also quickly modeled a certain priceless artifact that sits in the corner of the Cafe '80's.
Are you going to keep the tube TV on the back wall or update them to flat screens?
Eager to see if that wall of stuff will be recreated. When it's all done, we'll all swing by for some mesquite-grilled sushi.
That would be cool. Though, I doubt we'll have the hover cars or hoverboards by then. Or the self-fitting and self-drying jackets, power laces, etc. Though, on the flipside, it's nice to know we won't have to pay $50 for a Pepsi just yet.
I've now started on the Blast From The Past antiques shop right next to the Cafe '80s.
I'm going for complete screen accuracy, so I'll be sticking with tubes. I figure that being a nostalgia place, they intentionally went with old CRTs over newer technology anyway.
We'll see!
Will be sweet once you pleace it in with the rest of the town and having that reflect of the windows.
In building this, I've discovered a few interesting things.
It appears that the clock they made for part 3 with the iconic photo with Doc/Marty in front of the clock isn't all too accurate to the one actually on the clock tower.
The shape of the hands is different at the pivot (which appears to be because the clock in part 3 follows the original clock blueprints I found, whereas it looks like they made changes while making the original one for the clock tower).
Also the rotation of the roman numerals is parallel per hour, rather than being rotated per character, so for example the XII and VII look really weird.
And the outer rim doesn't seem as thick, and appears to lack the bolts that mark the minutes around the edge.
Pretty useless trivia, but I found it interesting!
You certainly found more detail on the room than I but I figured some dimension could help.
The tile is at least 12 x 12
foot rest 8 1/2" tall
Back wall to back of counter top 6'-3 11/16"
Standard Pacman cabinent worked perfectly here 26 x 33 x 73
counter top around the far circle seems to be 14"
Straight top is 28 inches wide (pretty standard)
Counter top was a perfect 38 inches from the floor.
back self was 2' wide (length was to difficult to determine with the column in the way)
back self was 3'-8 3/4" from the floor.
If I had more pictures I could add them to the photo match and get a complete room size.
take it with a grain of salt though Michael J Fox came out to 5'-10 instead of 5'-4" and his sneakers aren't that thick but alot of things came out right with at least some of the architectural and construction standards I know.
PS. Sketchup was made to do this and I've used it for gauging starships in Trek.
I never thought I'd see someone actually going to this amount of detail for building here. It's quite a task. Good luck.
Looking great. Interesting trivia on the clock. Though, I think the Hollywood types would prefer if you didn't point out their lack of consistency from one film to the next.
Thanks for that. I sized the tiles at exactly 10x10", which works out perfectly to the width of the building, but I was using a lot more information than just the one image to derive that figure, including the top blueprint, and a fish-eye image of the entire interior that shows how many tiles there are across the floor. If you scale your dimensions accordingly, those other figures should probably be perfect. Also, the Wild Gunman machine is about 24" x 32" x 68", a standard single monitor Nintendo Playchoice 10 cabinet.
I've followed your work on the Defiant, so I know how good you are with that kind of stuff. :thumb:
I've been doing camera match myself wherever possible, as 3DS Max has good camera match tools too, although I've had a few problems with that interior due to lack of enough known figures to extrapolate from.
Here are some new renders of the clock tower. The shutters and moldings are mostly done. I still need to finish off the fancy edging on the clock and build the statues, which will take some work, since they're organic, and not architectural like the rest.
..wait a minute you're saying 3DStudio MAX can match photo perspective?
It sure can, and they're adding another camera match method into the soon to be released version too.
The way it works is that you place marker points in your scene, then you choose the corresponding points on your background plate, then it creates a camera view from it.
In the new version, there will be a new method where you just have lines along each axis that you move/rotate into place for it to work out the perspective from, which should be nice and quick for the more geometric matching such as buildings. Not quite so much for starships though.
I've been working on the pillars today. I don't think I got the molding around the base 100%, but I'm happy with how the pillars look.
I also made a small start on the puma statues, although they currently look like smoothed blobs.
The top clock section still isn't attached, but that will be done very soon!
Even after all these years the building reminds me of Inherit the Wind first and BTTF only second.
I find it very interesting how much of the square was in place actually in 1955, and if not, soon after. If they ever invent time travel, you could re-shoot the movie in 1955 without much trouble.
The Cafe '80s is long gone, and I don't think that building has been there since some point in the 90s.
This is one reason I want to recreate the set, because many of those buildings will likely never exist in reality again.
Seems like fate protects not only fools and ships named Enterprise but also fake courthouses:
http://www.thestudiotour.com/ush/backlot/fire_1990.php
http://www.thestudiotour.com/ush/backlot/fire_1997.php
http://www.thestudiotour.com/ush/backlot/fire_2008.php
http://provine.blogspot.com/2010/10/back-to-future-2-concept-art.html
http://t.co/CfMcN6hFjs