This how my 3d art gallery is progressing, still quite a bit to do, as I expanded on the original design to include extra hexagon shape galleries on the ground floor, with exterior display space above the galleries, also 3 oblong galleries with 3 floors jutting out from the main gallery and also two top floors on the main gallery. When it is finished, I have lots of sculptures and paintings that will be added, then a 3d animated walk around.


The last 3 images were the original test before I started to expand on the gallery.(The internal stiffeners for the top ring are now absent, as all the support is through the exterior buildings and bracings)

Fantastic!

Henry H

Lots of windows on the the oblong galleries to add yet Henry, some of which will be stained glass, the oblong galleries will also open into the partial hemisphere main gallery with balconies. The domes have all got to be split into segments yet, and the smaller hexagonal galleries on the outside will have smaller glass domes on a supporting wall or framework. Also lots of skirting boards, gutters\downspouts etc. The green copper roof will also have solar panels on the sun side and some wherever else I can fit them in. The spiral staircase on the exterior of the hemispherical main gallery may change, as it enters the second to top floor on an angle as the spiral is reducing, so may have to come up with a better method.

Here is an example of the fencing or railing panels, which have added 257 meg to my model when saved as sat, I added a radius on the inside of all of the hexagons which probably was not necessary, so will try without the radius.

Excellent work Michael.

I have a feeling the building might be more interesting than the contents.   

For what it's worth, that's an engineer's thoughts!

Regards Tim

Fantastic project, Michael. Planned stained glass and glazing windows will give interesting effects of light inside the rooms. I wonder if it can be made simulation , for it, ​​with sufficient accuracy, using TCAD.  Probably too, somewhere will be also some lifts. Walk through this facility will be a super interesting.
Marek

Struggling to get the handrails down to a suitable size, I did find that saving each handrail panel as as an obj file reduces the file size of the panel from 1.78mb for sat down to 380kb for the obj file, which I will then turn into a block.

Fantastic project, Michael. Planned stained glass and glazing windows will give interesting effects of light inside the rooms. I wonder if it can be made simulation , for it, ​​with sufficient accuracy, using TCAD.  Probably too, somewhere will be also some lifts. Walk through this facility will be a super interesting.
Marek

I do intend to put lifts in one of the oblong galleries that project out from the side, but need some stairs for emergency exits, the spiral staircase was all working well until I found out that the cutout in the floor at the level it arrived at would be on an angle as the spiral is spiraling around a section of a hemisphere, and would run across the floor with the head height opening from the stairs. I have plenty of room in the oblong galleries now, so may put conventional return stairs in.

Excellent work Michael.

I have a feeling the building might be more interesting than the contents.   

For what it's worth, that's an engineer's thoughts!

Regards Tim

I created the gallery to showcase my artwork and sculptures Tim, as I always ended up with black backgrounds on the sculptures as I could never find any good real scenes at the kind of vantage point I wanted. With the gallery, I can change the decor , add lights and different paintings, all of which add natural reflections and sparks of light to the sculptures. Just got to watch that I don't overdo it now and create too cumbersome a file for animations.

Hi Michael,

yes, I see what you are trying to do.  Would it not help to create images of various gallery views, as backgrounds, rather than rendering a full 3d model animation?  This might significantly reduce the file size.  The main purpose, in all this, is primarily, to illustrate your sculptures.

Have you considered using SOFTBOX (HDRI) for TurboCAD?

Regards Tim

WOW Michael what a great project. Thanks for sharing. This project will keep you busy for awhile. Carroll 

Hi Michael,

yes, I see what you are trying to do.  Would it not help to create images of various gallery views, as backgrounds, rather than rendering a full 3d model animation?  This might significantly reduce the file size.  The main purpose, in all this, is primarily, to illustrate your sculptures.

Have you considered using SOFTBOX (HDRI) for TurboCAD?

Regards Tim

Yes Tim, rendering some of the views as backgrounds is an option, the advantage of the animation, is finding the appealing vantage point, so lots of views at a lower res from the animation that I can sift through for interesting vantage points for high res prints.

I have Softbox, but have not set it up yet since I set up my new system, must get it up and running again. I think that Turbocad is sadly lacking in the number of different cube maps , also they need to be far higher resolution, a script to create cube maps and other maps from Turbocad models would be a great feature to add to Turbocad.

Softbox has some excellent lighting and environment presets, so will probably give that a try when I have completed my model.

Cool project Michael.  I have to ask, what's the propulsion system?  The building looks ready for liftoff, heading to the stars.  "Flying Mother Nature's silver seed to a new home in the sun..."

BTW, I use Softbox for most of my renderings.  Brad has provided updated installers for TCAD through V20 - don't know about V21.  I've played around a bit with the lighting cube environments; there's a lot of flexibility there.

Can you make the railings from planes instead of volumes?  In some views, level of detail would allow that.  Maybe make a few different buildings, with "solid" and "planar" railings in different places, depending on the view you have planned.

Looking forward to seeing your progress!
Steve

Thanks for the feedback Steve, It does tend to look like one of ET's motherships. I have tried a few methods up to now to see if I can reduce the railing size, I even tried using a masked image on a 2" thick panel, but unfortunately it does not show the hex mesh color through the thickness of the panel.

Some peripheral buildings from google 3dWarehouse may suffice for background buildings as they will not get picked up so much at a distance on a high res print. I always intended to download some props, but always end up modelling them myself. Now that I am starting to create some backdrop scenes, I may look into some of the free models available on the internet.

Softbox is worth exploring now with my new system, with lots of memory I should be able to try out some of the more complex environments and lums. I tried to download the new updated installer, but it flashed up an error, I am still on v19, but it may have upgraded slightly since my V18 version of Softbox.

Did you get the updated installer error Steve, and if you did, did it still work okay?

Maybe now with more memory, you'll be able to handle the railing's geometry? Is it a 64bit system?

I contacted Brad directly to get the v20 update of Softbox.  He's at brad@dean3.com.  I had some initial error problems with my old registration, and he sent me new reg and activation codes. All went fine after that. 

The 3D Warehouse sketchup models are kinda limited, weirdly-formatted surfaces, proprietary shaders.  I've used a few OK, but sometimes have to ungroup them a few times, explode, solidify, etc.  Often I wind up building my own.   If I can use the SKP model as an accent, as-is, that seems to be best.

SG

Hello again Steve, I solved the problem with the railings, by setting the acis quality facet settings of the solid, and then saved it as an .obj file, which I then inserted and turned into a block,  probably a tenfold reduction in size and still with enough clarity of detail for what I need. When I say new system, I built it Christmas before last, it is an AMD system as I got more power for my money, the system is an AMD FX 8350 8 core running at about  4.13ghz(average), although they have been easily overclocked to 5Ghz  with 32gb ram and a windows 8 64 bit operating system. I won Softbox a few years back on the Turbocad User Challenge, but had not tried it out yet on the 64 bit version.

I tried some buildings from 3d warehouse, but as usual, did not really get what I wanted so modelled them myself, although there must be lots of good sketchup models out there if you have the time to search.

The AMD FX 8350 actually beat the world overclocking record a number of times and now stands at 8.794ghz and this was about 2012 or 2013 . http://valid.canardpc.com/records.php

Well still burning up every available hour on my 3d art gallery, which just gets bigger and bigger, now there are four more floors below what is shown in the top image earlier in the posting, 1 more square floor below the existing which will be at ground floor level, and three equal sized square galleries below floor level. The center of the domed gallery now has 3 dual spiral staircases encased in glass panels and support structure that drop right down into the bowels of the sub surface galleries.

This might sound crazy, but the capacity volume wise of the gallery is about 13 million cu/ft.

I will post some images later in the week if I can get some free time, already generated thousands of smaller images in some test animation walk arounds, not finished versions yet, just getting a feel for how it is coming together.

Here are some early images of my double spiral staircase, that extends down 3 floors into the lower subsurface galleries, there are two versions of the handrail and staircase stringers. Lots of things to do on it yet, the breakouts onto the floors, glass panel fixings and seals etc.

Michael'

I like it - very impressive! 
You certainly haven't chosen a 'cheap' option!
Easy when it's only virtual(?).
Any grey hairs yet?

Regards Tim

Michael'

I like it - very impressive! 
You certainly haven't chosen a 'cheap' option!
Easy when it's only virtual(?).
Any grey hairs yet?

Regards Tim

Lost the last of my black hair a long time ago Tim, lucky to find much grey now either, all turned white.

With about 13 million cu/ft to play with, it will take me the biggest part of this year to complete the gallery and start filling it up with some of my work.

The spiral staircases are about 60" wide at the outside of the stringers, with the central open section being 20 feet diameter. the galleries that the staircases will be cutting through will be upwards of 320 ft and may as big as 400 ft square and about twenty feet high (was 25 feet, but cut it down as the distance to view higher up moves the viewer further back away from the walls). the floors shown are only temp floors at present which are about 80 ft square.

I intend to use every surface both interior and exterior, and also mosaic floors and maybe frescoes on the ceilings eventually, exterior sculptures on the fenced roof sections as well as whatever architectural features I can add, maybe some big glass shard ducts that break into the surface and down 80 ft through the subsurface galleries.

The domed roof on the very top of the gallery should pump lots of light into the bowels of the gallery through the center of the spiral staircases.

I will probably break the lower galleries down into separate drawing and attach them as xrefs to the main model as and when I use them, that way I can start filling the galleries from the top and start producing some prints along the way, attaching or detaching  the xrefs as req'd.

Impressive Michael 

Is this going to actually be built then?...if so, where?

It is intended as a virtual prop for my artwork and sculptures to create a backdrop location with a myriad of different facets. I will probably need to sell a real one to pay for the last sixteen years of artwork, but hopefully some of my new works with a good background theme will bring some money in .

The architecture and the other facets of the building will also be the subject for some of my new artwork, so adding interesting facets with lots of good vantage points like the spiral staircases are a bonus.

Holy shimoly...! This is off the charts, Michael. Love the fisheye view, and the column view really illustrates the concept well. How very DNA of you.
Steve

I have only had about 3 hours sleep in the last few days, after a marathon few months working through the night, but just about worn out at the minute, so time for some sleep and see what I have to get on with tomorrow.

Hello again Steve, I solved the problem with the railings, by setting the acis quality facet settings of the solid, and then saved it as an .obj file, which I then inserted and turned into a block,  probably a tenfold reduction in size and still with enough clarity of detail for what I need. When I say new system, I built it Christmas before last, it is an AMD system as I got more power for my money, the system is an AMD FX 8350 8 core running at about  4.13ghz(average), although they have been easily overclocked to 5Ghz  with 32gb ram and a windows 8 64 bit operating system. I won Softbox a few years back on the Turbocad User Challenge, but had not tried it out yet on the 64 bit version.

I tried some buildings from 3d warehouse, but as usual, did not really get what I wanted so modelled them myself, although there must be lots of good sketchup models out there if you have the time to search.

The AMD FX 8350 actually beat the world overclocking record a number of times and now stands at 8.794ghz and this was about 2012 or 2013 . http://valid.canardpc.com/records.php

Michael,

Which video card do use in your system?

My card is quite a cheap card Don, as I was limited with my budget at the time, it is not a bad card but is not fully compatible with redsdk, maybe because it is a newer card and the compatibility list has not been updated.

  2GB XFX Radeon HD 7750 Ghost Thermal Technology, 1300MHz GDDR3, 28nm, GPU 800MHz, 512 Cores, HDMI/ 2x DVI/ DP


Here is the thread link to the system I built about 15 months ago. http://forums.turbocad.com/index.php/topic,10495.msg62334.html#msg62334

My card is quite a cheap card Don, as I was limited with my budget at the time, it is not a bad card but is not fully compatible with redsdk, maybe because it is a newer card and the compatibility list has not been updated.

  2GB XFX Radeon HD 7750 Ghost Thermal Technology, 1300MHz GDDR3, 28nm, GPU 800MHz, 512 Cores, HDMI/ 2x DVI/ DP


Here is the thread link to the system I built about 15 months ago. http://forums.turbocad.com/index.php/topic,10495.msg62334.html#msg62334

Thanks Michael,

You do fantastic work.

Here it is as it starts to develop, the spiral staircases shown earlier go down through three floors, from the domed gallery down to the second to bottom floor, the bottom three floors are sub surface floors. The square shape floor with the arbitrary placed windows will be the ground floor which will have a series of small artist workshops that open into the main gallery area.

This test render has had post render treatment with a slight bas relief.

Michael,

love the geodesic dome, and, those clouds - reminds me of chariots and scantily clad people floating in the sky!
Very dramatic - very artistic!

Regards Tim