Lowpoly old town (Posebyen)

[bjornkn]

This is a project I've been working on for about 3 days now, in SketchUp.

It is from Posebyen, the old part of town in Kristiansand/Norway, where I live, with mostly old wooden houses from the last 350 years.

The model is very low-poly. So far there's about 350 houses/sheds etc, and the polycount is now around 4500 polys. One of the most detailed houses is the one on the corner of the last image, with 30 polys.

It is modelled entirely from aerial ortho photos with res 20/40cm per pixel.

The height of each house has been estimated from the size/length of its shadow (if any), but some heights have been adjusted slightly afterwards to fit the facade photos. Nice to be able to model with shadow casting on

I have photos of most of the facades, but nothing from all the backyards. neither will I be able to get any, as they are almost all private properties.

 

Would it be OK to keep the backyards very simple, like on these images, or should I add some more details, which wil not be accurate anyway, because I don't really know whats inside?

I will also need to do a lot of editing out the original cast shadows from the orthophoto. Probably make all the streets from scratch, as they are quite low-res anyway.

Should I add chimneys?

 

I don't know what to do with the model yet, as it is not a commission, but just for fun. Maybe I'll put it into Google Earth to see how it works? Then I guess I'd better leave out those planned Onyx trees and bushes

 

C&C and ideas welcome.

[Antisthenes]

nice work.

 

any other villages modeled around it?

 

if you up it share the link eh?

[bjornkn]

Did you mean if there are any other 3D buildings around it in Google Earth?

Not that I'm aware of, aecept for my own, which are only accessable by direct kmz download links.

The only GE 3D buildlings in Norway that I'm aware of in the GE core are in Bergen, 500km away from here...

Edited May 22, 2008 by bjornkn
typo

[bjornkn]

Here'sa link to the WIP model in GE. 16MB so far, but it's all textures!. The geometry is only 250kB.

 

http://bknilssen.no/ge/Posebyen03.kmz

 

For some odd reason I lost all roof textures on one entire block

GE has been updated recently with quite good, but blueish, ortho photos of this area, so there's no need to overlay/drape the surroundings any longer.

[bjornkn]

Looks like I used too large a bitmap for texturing some roofs...

 

This one has all the textures, and is only 5.6 MB.

http://bknilssen.no/ge/KvadPose03c.kmz