Torstan's Academy Variation #4 in 3-D.

From: Variations on a Theme

I'm working on a tutorial to show how I was able to take a 2-D map (of Torstan's Academy) and wanted to show the before and after pictures.

This is the image of the 'map' that I'll be using. It's a chopped version of Torstan's original 'Academy' Tile.

Attachment 51707

Through the creation of several simple shapes and 'pulling' them up into a 3-Dimensional form I was able to create this:

Attachment 51708

As you can see it does not have the same artistic style as Torstan's original map tile. I'm still working on how to wrap the image around the solid shapes. (I've forgotten how I did it from the version a while back) but this version has had the Google Sketchup textures applied to give everyone a sense of what the model will look like when complete.

Attachment 51709

Obviously with Sketchup you could add in details like windows and doors and such to give it a more complete and 'rendered' version but if you're just wanting to see how the design manifests in 3-D then you can stop where I did.

The whole process took maybe 20 minutes.

Attachment 51710

Let me know what you think.

I'm not sure how I could post the actual sketchup file here - maybe a link or something?

Tutorial to follow once I convert it to PDF.

Comments Welcome.

-GP

That's really cool. Quite a different style from Thorstan's original work, but both are really nice. And, just 20 minutes? That's really impressive!

Put it in a Zip archive and upload that.

In order to place the texture on the model, you need to perform a planar projection from the top. Unfortunately, you'll have to come up with something else to texture the sides. Also, you may want to do some work in Photoshop to remove Torstan's lighting so that the shading comes from the render rather than the texture. That's up to you, though. You can certainly leave the lighting baked into the textures if you want. It does make rendering go faster.

The dormers in the corners do not match the reference. I don't know how important the accuracy is to you, but it will certainly look odd unless you either modify the model or modify the texture.

Howdy Mid.

I am still working on projecting the image onto the top of the rendered model but normally I don't go into that much detail. So long as I can get a sense of what the 2-D model of the building is like once it's rendered as a 3-D model I'm happy.

You can also adjust the lighting of the new, rendered model within Sketchup. This makes the process of removing such lighting from the original image unnecessary. I'm still working on fixing the dormers on the new model and I'll post some updates here in a bit.

Thanks for the comments.
-GP