Sketchup City

[nematode]

The choice of 3D modelling software was straightforward - Sketchup. It's easy to use, capable, and free, since this is a hobby project. I had not used Sketchup before, so I guess it was a leap of faith that it'd be suitable. I was right!

Given that my goal was to depict an entire city, my renders wouldn't be close-ups, they'd be more like panoramas. So I decided early on that I would create the city using models with a low to medium level of detail. In due course, I learned that I made the right decision. Low-medium poly saves time, but even then, the model became so big that it bumped up against the limit of what was manageable on my system.

Another advantage of Sketchup is its model warehouse. I located models with some feature that I wanted to have in my city, and downloaded them for study. I didn't put downloaded models in my city. I used the downloaded models to learn how to make them myself.

The following pictures show my city model after a about two years of work, off and on. They were rendered within Sketchup using Maxwell Fire, which is the free plug-in version of Maxwell Render.

These renders are nice, but it wasn't my destination. I wanted something more moody and environmental. More to come.....