British Museum: Great Court

[Stephen Thomas]

The Great Court at the British Museum by Norman Foster

 

I modelled the roof for this as an exercise a while ago but never went any further with it so I've decided to start a WIP to try and keep myself motivated.

 

Still early days but I've got some better reference images now than I had previously so I really want to see how far I can take it. I just think it's such a great space and apart from getting some nice renders I'd like to maybe try and do a time lapse animation with an animated HDR sky map I got hold of from Paul Debevec's site.

 

Anyway, this is where I'm at now so I'll just keep posting updates as I go!

 

Stef

[trino]

ambitious project man, but if you go a head i think you could have some nice renders, keep it up.

 

Are you modeling based on CAD or by eye ??

[FreakiestFish]

Looking good. It is definitely a huge challenge for modeling and rendering.

 

Want to see more.

[Tim Nelson]

How did you do the roof? It looks great and I wouldn't know where to begin.

[Stephen Thomas]

Thanks for the support everyone.

 

ambitious project man, but if you go a head i think you could have some nice renders, keep it up.

 

Are you modeling based on CAD or by eye ??

I don't have any cad, just some fairly low-res scans from a book. The sections are fine but the floor plans aren't up to much so just cross referencing with photos etc.

 

How did you do the roof? It looks great and I wouldn't know where to begin.

I thought that would be one of the first questions! Luckily I had a plan of the roof from the same book to start me off. The first part was quite tedious, I traced all the lines then used shapemerge to transfer these onto a plane.

 

I had a vague recollection from uni that the architect Antoni Gaudi used to model his structures upside down using strings and weights to represent point loads etc, so I figured a similar principle might work with this structure.

 

I fixed the vertices around the edge and the circle and used a combination of a cloth simulation and a relax modifier to allow the form to sag naturally. Then I simply inverted it.

[Tim Nelson]

I had a vague recollection from uni that the architect Antoni Gaudi used to model his structures upside down using strings and weights to represent point loads etc, so I figured a similar principle might work with this structure.

 

I fixed the vertices around the edge and the circle and used a combination of a cloth simulation and a relax modifier to allow the form to sag naturally. Then I simply inverted it.

 

Excellent solution, way to think!

[Stephen Thomas]

Had a bit of time to spend on this today but as usual was too impatient to finish the modelling first before getting to work on some materials.

 

Here's a couple of test renders. Got the drum a bit more developed and after spending forever trying to figure out how to wrap or bend the text eventually realised it was much simpler to go with displacement.

 

Loads more to do but moving along nicely I think.

[Tommy L]

 

I had a vague recollection from uni that the architect Antoni Gaudi used to model his structures upside down using strings and weights to represent point loads etcQUOTE]

 

This is an amazing piece of mathematics/engineering. If you go into the basement of the Sagrada Famillia (spellin?) there is a string model of the structure up-side down, with little sandbags all over the place. As a stanbd alone piece, its just as impressive as the building itself.

[fcaustic]

You're making good progress. Can't wait to see it finished.